land value tax is an efficient tax. No need to arbitrarily ban people from using debt. if by build smaller houses you mean make it legal and easy to do, yeah. also if the government is directly building them and selling them. but don't throw yet more requirements at developers.
7 years isn’t arbitrary? Jubilees are 50 years, which is also arbitrary.
I don’t like the culture of huge debt either, but pretending solutions like this aren’t arbitrary is ridiculous. We have bankruptcy to prevent debt slavery (except for student loans in the US). We have LVT to prevent speculative bubbles, we just need to implement it.
I don’t class a person who inherits land as ‘the poorest.’ In reality, truly poor people are forced to pay income tax which I think is immoral. Most parts of the world had long periods where income taxes where nonexistent. We can do the same with LVT and get the added benefits of less property speculation! Not to mention reducing distortionary effects of income taxes.
I agree no one would make a loan longer than 7 years under that policy, but I don’t think that would be good for anyone but the richest in society.
In our system already the poorest pay no income tax.
If their father gives them a piece of land, now they have to “pay to own” it, what about the recipients who are barely making it?
Agreed that income tax is bad, but not just for the poor; but also land tax is bad. Tariffs or some sort of luxury sales tax would be better. Also reducing the size and scope of govt, but that’s another can of worms. In any case, it’s been nice but I’ll leave the last word to you.
I’m not sure what system you are in, but in the US and Aus people pay tax on very low incomes. Look up the tax free threshold in Australia, it’s almost impossible to live on that income.
If you can’t afford the LVT, you can either rent the land or sell the land. Both are better for the economy than people sitting on idle land doing nothing of value. In this case I would focus on those barely making it who have no property, and whos taxes effectively make landholder’s assets more valuable through gov infrastructure spending.
Tariffs and luxury taxes have the same problems: they distort markets and in the case of tariffs, make goods more expensive which makes life harder for poorer people. Luxury taxes aren’t significant enough to be very useful, but could be useful in addition to LVT.
> No-one should be taxed on income anywhere near that level.
Don’t misunderstand me. I completely agree with this and would prefer having the standard deduction even higher with higher taxes above it to compensate.
> Federal minimum wage is $15,080.
I know which is why I said “close to”. This also with the assumption that it’s always 40 hours a week and you never get sick or need time off (which would assuredly be unpaid).
Even working 36 hours per week, every week, at minimum wage (which is considered a full time job), would put you under the standard deduction.
