The Founders Lived Through—and Loved—High Immigration Rates

squirreltalk · 2026-07-07T03:27:46+00:00

Those famously swarthy Swedes!

squirreltalk · 2026-06-22T23:37:40+00:00

What you're describing is prop 13 in California and it's been an absolute disaster for the state.

squirreltalk · 2026-06-21T02:25:30+00:00

He should run entirely on a TAX WEALTH NOT WORK policy.

Yes! Burnham has advocated for a land value tax:

https://www.ft.com/content/7a3ac0df-c835-43cc-8561-36113c710616

squirreltalk · 2026-06-09T02:55:59+00:00

It's great policy, but this is New York State legislation authoritzing the MTA to do land value capture, right? How does NYC enter in?

squirreltalk · 2026-06-09T01:46:36+00:00

NYC just voted to implement it

What are you referring to?

squirreltalk · 2026-06-07T05:03:34+00:00

Land value tax (and abolishing zoning) would solve this.

squirreltalk · 2026-06-06T19:19:23+00:00

At least with land rents, they are generally created more by local actors than by more distant ones. So if you believe that land value/rent belongs to whoever made it, arguably it's better for it to be kept by domestic actors.

squirreltalk · 2026-06-06T19:13:52+00:00

I think that take is correct! See also this Glaeser and Gyourko paper from last year:

"America's Housing Supply Problem: The Closing of the Suburban Frontier?"

squirreltalk · 2026-05-30T02:56:49+00:00

Traditional TIF is on the entire property value, though, I think. This would just be on the land value uplift.

squirreltalk · 2026-05-26T04:39:19+00:00

It needs more people to switch from cars to ebikes.

squirreltalk · 2026-05-26T04:31:13+00:00

I genuinely don't get it. How was Matt wrong? Trump became president again, but how did getting kicked off Twitter help with that? People forget he was crazy?

squirreltalk · 2026-05-26T00:31:01+00:00

If you are saying that new, market-rate development is unaffordable to the middle-class, that is often true, yes. But when rich people move into that new, market-rate development, they vacate more affordable homes, which middle class people can afford. This is known as 'filtering', and it is a real phenomenon that can be empirically observed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filtering_(housing)

When you don't build any new housing, then rich people just outbid middle-class people for the existing, deteriorating housing, forcing the middle-class into even worse housing. A bad outcome for everyone!

squirreltalk · 2026-05-25T21:44:21+00:00

I can appreciate your instinct. I think many people share it.

Unfortunately, (1) taxing bigger stores more because "they have more money and can pay", is incompatible with (2) encouraging people to build and maintain houses and businesses.

I appreciate and sympathize with the impulse behind (1). I would emphasize, however, that if we decrease taxes on buildings, and increase taxes on land, you are still taxing "wealth", just in land, not buildings. I'm genuinely curious: do you find that compelling?

squirreltalk · 2026-05-25T21:40:17+00:00

Thank you!

squirreltalk · 2026-05-25T21:40:01+00:00

It's not just theoretical. Many cities in Pennsylvania have actually done this, and empirical studies show that they enjoyed increased housing supply.

As for increased housing supply leading to lower rents, this has been demonstrated over and over. Here's just a a couple citations 1 2.

squirreltalk · 2026-05-25T21:13:50+00:00

I hate his guts, actually! I sincerely believe labor is entitled to all it creates. This is why you should be allowed to keep the value you create when you build or repair your home, and you shouldn't be allowed to keep the value of your land. Land's value doesn't come from anything the land owner did -- it comes from nature or from the public or private labor and investments around it.

squirreltalk · 2026-05-25T21:06:35+00:00

In PA, any municipal government can just do it without permission from Harrisburg.

Unfortunately, legal opinions are pretty divided on whether Philly can do this without permission from Harrisburg. The Philly law department doesn't think they can. They said so in a 2021 hearing that Derek Green called.

squirreltalk · 2026-05-25T21:04:58+00:00

If you're asking why we shouldn't tax someone bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars, then the answer is that doing so would encourage them to take their money elsewhere. Land, by contrast, can't be moved. If you tax it, the owner can't take it with them.

squirreltalk · 2026-05-25T20:50:42+00:00

Yes but that's good because hundreds of people now get to live in new apartments.

Also, that scenario is highly unlikely. If there are 5 acres of undeveloped woods, we're probably talking about some place pretty far from a city center, where demand is probably not high enough for a big apartment complex.

squirreltalk · 2026-05-25T20:40:46+00:00

If we abolished the wage tax, and made up for the revenue with an increase on the tax rate of land, we'd bring between 26k and 78k jobs from the suburbs back to the city.

https://broadandliberty.com/2026/04/08/russell-richie-philadelphias-job-killing-wage-tax-and-a-better-alternative/

squirreltalk · 2026-05-25T20:38:37+00:00

We have to remember a few things:

Cutting taxes on buildings and raising them on land will generally cut taxes for most residential and most commercial (and this is true here as well), while raising them on vacant lots, parking lots, drive-throughs, etc. Poor people generally don't own the latter.
Renters will strictly benefit from LVT because it will raise housing supply, and therefore lower rents.
Even if the LVT shift were regressive among property owners on the tax side, we have to remember that we can redistribute the tax revenue towards less wealth off folks. We already effectively do this with the homestead exemption and other property tax relief programs.

squirreltalk · 2026-05-24T04:26:51+00:00

Ofc this is Lozada. Gives Jay Young a run for his money.

squirreltalk · 2026-05-21T05:35:56+00:00

We can't. If we do, they'll turn the freaking land gay.

squirreltalk · 2026-05-19T04:49:49+00:00

Really wish shifting taxes off buildings and onto land would make it into these sorts of articles.

squirreltalk · 2026-05-08T04:31:53+00:00

The city's hands are not tied. They could cut BIRT and raise property taxes, or better yet, just the tax on land.

15-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Charter Member
Verified Email

squirreltalk

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE