pineappledragon

Karma: 2

pineappledragon 24 Feb 2024 13:04 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: harsimony’s comment on: Some Thoughts On Using Auctions For Land Valuation
Death is foreseeable?
(Well, okay, yes, but the timing often isn’t.)

pineappledragon 24 Feb 2024 0:07 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: harsimony’s comment on: Some Thoughts On Using Auctions For Land Valuation
> Owners hate property taxes and land values are less than property values. Why not slowly switch to using land values and lower everyone’s property tax bill?
Separately, I would suggest being very careful about claims like this.
1. Lower values for the tax base don’t mean lower taxes in dollar amounts. The previous state I lived in assessed property at about half the market value but more than made up for it in the rates.
2. A non-trivial revenue-neutral tax reform by definition has to produce some losers. Yes, technically we’ll be paying less “property” tax and more “land value” tax over time as it switches over, but I suspect most folks would put both in the same mental bucket (and unless I’m specifically trying to make a distinction between a land value tax and more traditional property taxes, I do too).
  
  Also, assuming folks would be writing just one check/year during the transition and not two separate ones, that’s another factor leading folks to think of them on a combined basis.

pineappledragon 23 Feb 2024 23:48 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: harsimony’s comment on: Some Thoughts On Using Auctions For Land Valuation
>This proposal doesn’t involve any forced moves, owners only auction when they want to sell their land.
The article already lists two counterexamples that aren’t uncommon situations...
>There will be situations where the valuation growth from point 5 outpaces the true value of the house. The owner can update the land value by putting the land up for public auction, but they have to win that auction fair and square. If they win the auction, the land value is updated to their new bid, but no money changes hands (essentially, they pay themselves for the bid).
So if my land value has ratcheted up faster than its true value, my choice is: get gouged on taxes, or roll the dice on losing control of the land. The odds of this problem grow over time, so people caught by this will tend to be 1) long-time residents and 2) older.
> Fourth, auctions are a fairer way to allocate land, preventing families from passing land wealth down the generations without updating their valuation.
So if I want to keep my parents’ house in the family after they die, I again have to roll the dice. (I also wonder if this tends to be regressive since wealthier families have a greater ability to bid high for sentimental reasons and absorb the extra tax burden, so the folks featured in news stories as victims of this policy will be those of more modest means—this is more speculative though.)
In neither situation does the current owner actually want to sell.

pineappledragon 15 Nov 2023 17:06 UTC
1 point
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on: Monthly Roundup #12: November 2023
The tragedy is our continued focus on the symbolically superior pure electrics over the vastly better for the planet hybrid vehicles.
Pure electric vehicles can have non-symbolic benefits too, though maybe not environmental ones. In our case, we would very rarely have use for the option to use gasoline. By going purely electric, we avoid: 1) a bunch of maintenance, such as oil changes; 2) worrying about the price of gas, where convenient gas stations are, or even about the shelf life of gas (if you go through it slowly enough it can actually go bad in your tank); and 3) hauling a heavy, seldom-used engine around.
Also, fun news tidbit: this year, as Hurricane Idalia was rolling toward Florida, a worker at a port terminal made a mistake that contaminated regular gasoline with diesel. Said gas then went out to a bunch of stations and on to consumers. That was one extra headache folks did not need while prepping for a hurricane.

pineappledragon 7 Feb 2021 16:46 UTC
1 point
on: Democracy, Bureaucracy, Central Banking
This strikes me as something akin to a not-quite alternating Prisoners’ Dilemma. The party in power can unilaterally take the selfish option (goose the economy for electoral benefit) or not. Over time there are three types of outcomes. 1) if you act selfishly when given the chance and I don’t, I’m a chump (and vice versa); 2) if neither of us act selfishly, we’re even; and 3) if we both act selfishly we’re still even, but the economy is worse overall because we keep flooding the information system (prices) with noise.
One natural solution would be for all parties to agree to remove the option to act selfishly and lock in outcome #2. Such a setup, then, can emerge from all parties initially consenting, just as Odysseus asked his men to bind him to the mast. (Of course, this system can also arise in less consensual, more problematic ways.)
The idea of a civil service seems similar in spirit. Each party might prefer to stuff the bureaucracies with their cronies and use all the various Assistant to the Regional Postmaster positions as electoral giveaways, but of course the tables will get turned when they lose and who knows if any of those people are even marginally competent.
(In both examples, though, the solutions have their own problems, since we can’t escape tradeoffs.)