"the value of your land just went up and you didn't do anything to make that happen"

Ben, with that argument, when someone wants to pay you $1M for "bengarcia.dev", you would not take it because you didn't do anything other than pay $12 to the registrar.

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Gareth321 20 hours ago | parent [-]

You would take it and then you would pay some tax.

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hyperlinerapp 18 hours ago | parent [-]

I was pointing to the argument that "you didn't do anything to make it happen. Only right that excess value goes back to society and reduces the tax burden of the working class."

Sounds like Obama's "If you’ve got a business, you didn't build that" argument (though Obama might have just screwed up the words, or maybe he simply had a Kinsley gaffe, aka a Freudian Slip).

The land owner DID work for it. He BOUGHT that land (and also the option that it could go up, or down, in value) with the sweat of his hard earned work or savings, or that of their family or business partners.

OP's wording states that he would favor confiscating value generated by the acquisition if such value happened because the market's perceived value increased.

It's basically a communist wealth redistribution logic.

My point is that if someone were to offer $1M for OP's "bengarcia.dev" domain, that OP would not send $999,988 ($1M minus $12 bucks of registration) to the Federal Government.

Yes Ben, The US Government IS READY TO TAKE YOUR GIFT!

SEE: https://fiscal.treasury.gov/financing/gifts-to-government

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Gareth321 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Are you making the argument that land banking is economically productive? Or a more esoteric point about the how people "earn" money? Because land banking is economically unproductive, and there isn't much dispute about that. I'm much less interested in a philosophical argument about whether you believe land banking is definitionally money earned or realised.

	▲	hyperlinerapp 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		“land banking is economically unproductive, and there isn't much dispute about that” I think you are confusing current utilization with economic productivity. There is an opportunity cost in hoding the land but land can also have economic value in the option. It’s the owner choice if he values its use even if it’s waiting for the option to come through and values it more than whatever alternative a self professed smart politician or OP’s abstract “society” might propose. Whats’s next? Taxing you for your unused bedrooms, unused cars, unused clothes in your closet, unused nose rings, etc etc? Just because some policymaker can identify a more productive use for someone’s property does not mean the policymaker knows the owner’s opportunity cost or future options or even risk better than the land owner. An even better argument might be why do we need to tax at all? It’s not that governments are the pinnacle of capital allocation efficiency. After some useful level, governments are basically corruption machines ESPECIALLY IN CALIFORNIA. Just look at their homeless and illegals industrial complex.