Destroy the businesses, rental prices go down, land value tax rates punish land owner for keeping land empty, so either land owner sells the property to someone who can make the numbers work, or land owner accepts lower profits.

Obviously, there is pain for the current players, but long term, the landowner should not be able to extract so much profit margin without also providing sufficient utility, such as operating an in demand business.

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asdff an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Something to be said about the number of vampires out there. I think about my own apartment complex. Less than half a dozen units owned by a single landlord. They pay a handiman probably less than $1000 worth of work on the property a year, really nothing major every happens. They pay a crew to come by once every other month and trim the bushes and blow everything out, mostly because the city has fire code saying the bushes cannot touch the structure. Whatever the cheapest two man crew for that costs I guess.

And for that couple hundred in upkeep maybe they pay a year, my landlord clears probably between 150k to 200k in rent doing nothing at all. I think they actually own a couple more similar properties so its more than that.

So here is this couple in this city, that has found for themselves a way to pull out at least 200k from the local economy, and contribute basically nothing back at all. They don't otherwise work. They just cash checks pretty much and text the handiman when an tenant texts them. Imagine how cheap my rent would be not having to pay for these vampires considering actual costs of this building. Probably like $50/mo each between all of us tenants would be plenty to cover typical yearly overhead. I'd certainly go out to eat a ton more and heavily support local economy if I was only losing $50 a month of my pay to rent. I'd probably get away only having to work 10 hours a week. But no I work 40 hours and give them like 30% my gross because my landlord needs 200k to do nothing. Literally all they do is suck my blood. Their whole existence based on sucking my blood.

	▲	IncreasePosts 14 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Why won't you just buy an apartment/condo then?
	▲	singleshot_ 27 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		“basically nothing back at all,” or, “ the time value of money.”

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RobGR an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But currently, most of the high intensity retail areas tax the landlords on the value of the land PLUS the value of the building ( "improvements" ). They owe this tax even if the building is empty.

How does switching to a land value tax, which only taxes them on the value of the land, help at all ?

	▲	lotsofpulp an hour ago \| parent [-]
		In urban and suburban areas, it benefits society to have more development on a given piece of land. Taxing the land only does not mean the nominal tax liability goes down. Taxing the land only means the land owner is incentivized to do something with the land. The more productive the use, the better for their bottom line, and the better for society. Easiest example is having an empty lot or a detached single family homes taking up 0.2 acre lots in the middle of a city that could house 10x as many people on the land. Right now, leaving it underutilized makes it a cheap savings account for the landowner. Developing it is work. So let's incentivize the development taxing the land only (can be the same or more), so that the only way it makes sense to control that land is to do something sufficiently useful with it.

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Waterluvian an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

This feels like a solution at the barrel of a loaded gun.