patrick.net

Yes he's good.

I liked the point on Malthus, which I did not understand until reading Henry George's Progress and Poverty:

The very rich see themselves as superior Darwinian winners, and everyone else as mere scum mucking up the planet, scum that needs to be exterminated. The truth is the opposite. Human productivity and wealth rises with density of population as people specialize and provide goods and services to each other. The only reason that poverty increases with population is that the very rich are monopolizing the land and other natural resources, stealing whatever wealth is created by the density of population.

There is no need to limit population since people limit the number of children they have voluntarily as they get richer. The key is to let ordinary people get richer by making it unprofitable for the very rich to extract unearned land rent from the work of everyone else. That is, we need to eliminate income tax and sales tax and instead have a single tax on land values (not buildings) and other natural resources like mines and radio spectrum.

You may wanna re-think having land values as the sole source of taxes.

During 2010-2012 vast swaths of California had negative land values. SFHs were being sold at a price less than the cost it would be to replace the structure. Hence, the land values were negative. Having a tax authority send funds to the hapless owners wouldn't be sound policy.

Also, the sheer volatility of land prices would bedevil any government that tries it. Taxes for the helpless owners could easily go up by 5 times the amount the prior year. Likewise, tax revenue could easily plummet by 50% in a given year causing any and all spending programs to become a crapshoot as well as government employment levels to fluctuate wildly (you think we have graft and corruption now wait until 75% of a police force is fired for simply not having the tax resources).

Misc says

SFHs were being sold at a price less than the cost it would be to replace the structure. Hence, the land values were negative.

Structure is not land. So don't you mean to say, "The property values were negative"?

Misc says

Having a tax authority send funds to the hapless owners wouldn't be sound policy.

Doesn't matter if they can't pay. Same thing will happen as does now: tax liens and maybe even confiscation

Misc says

Also, the sheer volatility of land prices would bedevil any government that tries it. Taxes for the helpless owners could easily go up by 5 times the amount the prior year. Likewise, tax revenue could easily plummet by 50% in a given year causing any and all spending programs to become a crapshoot as well as government employment levels to fluctuate wildly (you think we have graft and corruption now wait until 75% of a police force is fired for simply not having the tax resources

Land value taxation reduces speculative bubbles like you are describing. Simply because there is a real cost to buying and sitting on land (developed or not).

So volatility will go down.

What is waaaay the fuck more volatile than tax revenues from land is revenues from 'progressive' income taxation. That is why California is flush with money and can quickly go into big deficits in like less than a year.

Texas & Florida don't have that problem. Gee, wonder why?

cisTits says

What is waaaay the fuck more volatile than tax revenues from land is revenues from 'progressive' income taxation. That is why California is flush with money and can quickly go into big deficits in like less than a year.

Happening right now I believe.

CA got a massive windfall from the Wuhan Virus rate cuts. Stocks went up and many people sold.

But now they're going to get fucked because there won't be capital gains to tax. Brandon made sure of that.