collapse

There is a radical / revolutionary idea around tax reform that frames taxes as being applied to LAND and not improvements.

The argument is that the value of a piece of land derives from the public investments / improvements. Like decent infrastructure, public transportation, good schools etc all raise the market value of a given size of land in a given location.

Then its up to the owner to find a use case / improvement that makes the tax burden "worth it". Like the market incentives are for the highest value of private investment / private use. You don't get rewarded for land banking or sitting on empty lots or making hotels into surface parking, instead you perhaps pay 5% of the value every year AS IF you were doing something that is worthwhile with the property.

Basically the system currently rewards speculation and idle property, and when the public makes an investment in services in an area, the profits get extracted by land owners who essentially privatize the reward by cashing out after doing nothing. A lot of people feel this is fundamentally broken. Not only that, but a lot of these land owners KNOW this is a rigged game and they run city hall and get the public to commit to investments that they stand to profit from.