patrick.net

Believing in man-made global warming (or not) is simply a matter of whether one believes in the "greenhouse effect". I have no scientific doubt about the greenhouse effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Greenhouse_Effect.svg

Man is certainly dumping enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And through ice core studies and sound science, it has been proven that there is a direct relationship between global co2 content and temperature.

It's interesting that a seemingly small man made activity can have a huge effect on climate. Researchers have been studying the contrails left by jets since we first started flying, with much debate on their effects on our climate. These are the white trails that look like long clouds you see high in the sky which are of course the results of exhaust particles, from the burning of jet fuel, creating water condensation thus forming man made exhaust "clouds" (apologies as I'm sure most are already well aware). The grounding after 9.11 for the first time offered researchers the opportunity to have a solid look at the debate. Know what they found? The average temperature over the US increased a full 2 degrees during the daytime, as the contrails were not there reflecting sunlight. At night, without the contrails trapping heat through a greenhouse effect, we were a full 2 degrees cooler.

At once amazing, and to me frightening. Man's activities absolutely can have an effect on our environment.

justme Says:
Or was the sin the explicit use of the word “should” (your emphasis)? I don’t think that deserves being called a jackass.

Sorry, no personal affront intended. I just have very little patience for income-redistribution schemes masquerading as "progressive" ideas about what should be done at the expense of other people.

justme Says:
Did we not all talk about what SHOULD happen to other people’s wealth and income when we discussed property tax and income tax?

There is a difference between asking for the government leaving people's earnings the hell alone for the most part, and advocating forced confiscation of their wealth so that it can be squandered inevitably on some bureaucrat's social1st wet-dream.

At once amazing, and to me frightening. Man’s activities absolutely can have an effect on our environment.

Were the effects "global" in scope and "climate" in nature?

The Bay Area in particular is susceptible to the problems caused by bad land use policy coupled with bad tax policy. There is so little land available in the cities as its been locked out by anti-growth laws, that its hard for workplaces to open that can hire poor or working people to even pay taxes like sales or income taxes.

A tax on land helps pry land into use where it SHOULD be used rather than forcing land into use that requires a two-hour commute each way.

Most cities (with some exceptions like Philadelphia, New York, Scranton, or Detroit or SF) rely to a great degree on the property tax. As a source of revenue, it is stable, predictable and easy to administer. Unlike wage, business or sales taxes, it is hard to avoid.

Yet, one part of the property tax has problems equal to other taxes on labor and capital: the property tax on buildings. Countless studies and economists have proved that high tax rates on buildings have a corrosive effect on investment, construction and rehabilitation of existing structures.

Old but classic industrial and commercial properties that might have been warehoused or mothballed while waiting for a new use were knocked down by the dozen, so that the (often absentee) owner could avoid taxes. A prospective homeowner deciding where to live would logically choose a site in the lower-taxed exurbs.

The Good
The other part of the property tax is a tax on land values. The effects of a tax on land values are very different.

First, a homeowner or a business does not create land values. The community, most often through government investment and services, creates land values. If the community creates those values, the justification for the community recouping those values is clear.

Second, the current system of a low tax on land values leads to land speculation and private land banking. The holding cost of land under our current tax system assures that the landowner can hold out for a very high price for a very long time.

Third, a higher tax on land values (coupled with reduction in building taxes) creates an incentive to sell that land, or do something with it rather than waiting. In other cities that use land value taxes, real estate markets start to work again. Neighborhoods recover. SF's case is very particular, however.

There are enough subsidy, abatement and giveback programs to make construction in SF a bonanza for the private market. Yet, many authorities have identified the high cost of land and assembling land parcels of the greatest obstacles to writing rental housing. When land is freed for development or sale on the open market, the cost of that land forces the builder/developer to make sure high-end properties are constructed. The high cost of land can be correlated into high costs for working and poor residents.

The land tax tax works where used, and when used strongly, like Singapore or Sydney, it provides a great city for all.

NVR,

Loved the Rhine analogy. Also made the point about creeping feudalism quite nicely.

Methane gas is worse than CO2 because no ones aware of it being a greenhouse gas. Rice fields around the world and decaying natural materials create more greenhouse gases than man creates. Yes, there's global warming but the idea that man has created it and can somehow control it is a farce. It's another false economy like Y2K. It's something for liberal hippie dipshits to latch on to and be self righteous about.

Joshua911.

I agree land hoarding can be bad, and proper land taxation can do something about it.

But what do you think about incentives to make land use more effective, meaning building up rather than out (sprawl). All the people who commute far and wide to get to silicon valley could easily live here if we built high-rises, shopping and office buildings next to light rail and caltrain only.

That problem seems to be more along the lines of zoning and NIMBY-ism than taxation, I would think.

Predicting the world is going to end will always be very profitable. Convince the masses that something bad is going to happen and then sell them something. It's another way to fleece those with some spending money, it always will be.

Empty houses,

The CO2 emissions from decaying fields and forests is in balance with CO2 absorption in growing fields and forests (minus deforestation, of course, which is another problem).

Burning oil and coal excavated from the earth is what created the imbalance. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased from 280ppm (part per million, or 0.000280%) to 380ppm in the last 150 years or so. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_Earth%27s_atmosphere

Dear Just Me:
The way a land value tax works in the US (and elsewhere) is not just to up-tax land where we want land used, but to down-tax the actual labor and capital that goes into building structures.

Zoning plays a huge role to be sure, often to prevent development. But if in Area A, if you zone for density, AND tax land values, the community will recapture increases in land value that come from the zoning change as well as rewarding someone who wants to spend their money and work on a building.

The desirability makes Area A the "place to be" as opposed to Area B, which may be far away and require a long drive or even new infrastructure.

In the end, though, zoning to promote Smart Growth may exist, but if the financing is hampered by a bad tax policy, you won't get the growth where you want it.

NIMBY-ism is a tough nut to crack! My feelings run along the lines of "If you want no one in your backyard, then move to a place where it's just you. But, you have to pay a price - in dollars and cents - for the privilege."

Taxation is actually one of the more powerful forces in society. That's why most government taxes are hidden in paycheck deductions, or in a sales transaction. Taxation can be harnessed to help society, not fragment it.
Cheers, josh

justme Says:
February 13th, 2008 at 8:48 am

Joshua911.

I agree land hoarding can be bad, and proper land taxation can do something about it.

But what do you think about incentives to make land use more effective, meaning building up rather than out (sprawl). All the people who commute far and wide to get to silicon valley could easily live here if we built high-rises, shopping and office buildings next to light rail and caltrain only.

That problem seems to be more along the lines of zoning and NIMBY-ism than taxation, I would think.

Justme asks about sprawl and incentives. It seems to me that Proposition 13 creates amazing lock-in effects, keeping single-family homes on property for many decades beyond when under a more responsive system, those SFH's would give way to multi-family homes.

The concept makes some of us itchy. We tend to like things the way they are, the way we remember them. But if you look at a healthy neighborhood other than one to which you're emotionally attached, you're likely to notice that it has changed over the past 20, 40, 60 years, and that the changes generally represent progress. Yes, it may be that some lovely older structures may have been sacrificed in the process. But today, a 1-acre lot that 40 years ago housed a single-family home may now have a mid-rise building that houses a dozen families. That's a very good thing if that site is close to public transportation, existing schools, and all the other kinds of infrastructure that is funded by public investment. Far better than having the other 11 families' workers commuting from the current fringe, alone in their own cars or even via the best of public transportation system.

Prop 13 has resulted in it being rather inexpensive for the current long-time owners of, say, Marin County or Silicon Valley housing (and for that matter, commercial property) to stay put. Where a new owner of a, say, $1 million property is paying about 1.25% of that market value in property taxes, or $12,500 per year (or about $34 per day), the guy who owned the identical neighboring property but bought it in, say, 1975, for $250,000 (I'm guessing -- could be lower, I suspect), would be paying property taxes on an assessed value of about $470,000. So if I've got the 1976 value right, he's paying less than half what his new neighbor pays. Rising property taxes are not going to cause him to consider moving, and in fact that lock-in effect will discourage him from considering moving even if his health declines, even if his ability to care for a house sized for 4 or more people declines, even if he no longer needs to be close to the amenities -- jobs, cultural, etc -- that drew him there in the first place.

And don't forget that that "million dollar property" is likely a fairly modest house -- a home that would sell for $200,000 or $250,000 or less in many other parts of the country. The difference is land value, which has been driven sky-high by the finiteness of land, particularly along the coast. (I have a hypothesis, for which I've not yet seen any definitive proof, that part of why land costs are high on the coasts and in the Chicago metro, aside from the facts of ports and infrastructure that has grown up around those ports, is that instead of population being able to spread out in a 360 degree radius, as is the case where only a river divides a city from the adjoining area, the coasts have only 180 degrees of expansion area.)

A Federal Reserve Board study published in May 2006 suggested that on average for the top 46 metro areas, land represented something like 51% of the value of single family housing stock in 2004. This ranged from a low of about 20% in Oklahoma City to a high of 88% in San Francisco metro. The lowest metro in California was Bakersfield at 62%. Boston and NY were in the high 70s, as I recall. Outside the 46 metros, I think the land share averaged something like 28%.

It seems to me that at some point, single family homes in the close-in neighborhoods will yield to multi-family homes, if we have the incentives right. California's Prop 13 disrupts those incentives, and that has made worse the problem of long commutes (which was already an issue before Prop 13).