The real horrendous injustice is that when you purchase real estate your payment includes a large unearned increment to the previous owner over what they paid for it. A system where you pay the previous owner only for the value of improvements and make regular ground lease payments to the local municipality (instead of general property taxes) would be more ideal.

Why?

(if your answer is going to include some form of 'but housing is an essential requirement to live', be aware that my next question will be how to differentiate housing from food, or some other essential requirements to living, which are also left to the market to the chagrin of only the most hardcore communist)

Sorry, I went to sleep before seeing your reply.

There could be a lot of reasons 'why' but the biggest reason for me is that land/location value usually has nothing to do with the actions of the individual owners. There exists cheap/marginal land that can be had for almost nothing because it either has nothing or is near nothing while there also exists land which is rich in minerals, fertile virgin* cropland or forest, or other natural resources or is is valuable urban land which happens to be located near well paying jobs, good schools, good food, entertainment, accessible open space, or has really good weather or views. As the physical space of varying quality along all these different dimensions is in fixed in supply its price is determined by demand. Oxygen in the air is another "essential requirement to live" but fortunately it cannot be enclosed as easily as land can. Water is already somewhere in between. Land is differentiated from housing, food, and other essentials because there is no work required to produce and distribute it. It just exists and those who happen to own valuable locations are unjustly able to take the economic rent which is the common right of everyone. For a lot of things, you're right, it's often best to leave the production and allocation up to market forces and we end up with an abundance of food and other goods. But there is no real market for land and other natural opportunities because it's not something that can even be produced in the first place.**

Questions to consider:

- When someone claims a house costs more because the weather is mild and temperate (like coastal California), who should be paid for the good weather? Why pay the previous owner?

- When someone claims a house costs more because the local schools are really good, why not pay the municipality more for the schools? Aren't you paying twice by first paying local taxes that fund the schools and then paying the previous owner?

- When someone claims a house costs more because it is on a hillside with a panoramic view of mountains, bridges, bodies of water, and city skylines, who should you pay for the natural topography and shining lights? Why pay the previous owner?

- When someone claims a house costs more because it is near a lot of high paying jobs or is close to shopping, doesn't it seem like a significant amount of profits and wages of the businesses and employees (particularly the least profitable businesses and least paid employees) are being siphoned off to land owners?

- When someone claims a house costs more because it is close to a quality transit station/stop (and other public services) doesn't it seem like you are paying twice to access those services? Once as a fare or usage fee and again as rent or payment to the previous owner?

* land that has never been farmed before or forest that hasn't been logged before as sustainable soil management and forestry do in fact carry a long-term cost for production. Still, there is location value as it relates to climate conditions, access to water, and access to markets for labor, processing, and distribution.

** even landfill (common in parts of the sf bay area, manhattan, and boston) are only done because the /location/ is so valuable that it is worth the cost of filling in with soil moved in from elsewhere. It's less common today not only because of higher costs of dredging and filling but because we also tend to be more aware of the cost of environmental externalities.

Presumably, the aggregate effect of local municipalities coffers increases improves the local area, making it more desirable/valuable, which is increased value. You could indeed realise that value: by selling your house and buying one in an area with the same desirability that your current house had when you purchased it.

So you can either hop around similar places and profit, or stay in one place that improves over time, and also pay more taxes over time.

Well, no, you could take a reverse mortgage.

The US does substantially favor “primary residences” vs other forms of capital ownership, basically for the reasons you give. Renters, typically, receive fewer such protections (but this depends on the state).

> Well, no, you could take a reverse mortgage.

Borrowing against a potential future gain is not realizing that gain, and such a loan incurs the risk of losing some (or all) of my equity in the home.

I’m sorry. Exactly where do “profits” come from if not your equity?

Not sure I follow. My equity is illiquid until I sell the home. I could, in theory, borrow against it, but that carries risk.

I think you can make the flip-side argument that private property in land is the least obviously defensible kind of property for people to really own (in an absolute sense), because nobody produced it and there is an inherently fixed amount of it (except for unusual cases like land reclamation).

I remember feeling sympathetic to the argument that property tax means that you don't really own land but just rent it from a state, but if there's a particular kind of thing that you possibly shouldn't really be able to own but should just rent from some institution purportedly representing a community, it now seems like it's more plausible that that should be land, as opposed to movable property, labor, debt, and contractual interests.

This is the best argument I've seen for property tax, but coupled with a lack of something like UBI it means you can't live a life apart from society. You must always participate in work to justify your continued existence.

You don't ever really own anything. The natural state is that some bandit with more guns comes and takes it from you, and if you want to possess something you better be the bigger bandit.

Feudalism and the modern tax-supported state are two approaches to avoiding constant conflict. With feudalism, the king protects your holdings, and in return you owe him military service to support this protection. With a modern nation-state, the state holds a monopoly on physical violence, and you pay taxes to the state so they can maintain a standing army and legal system to enforce your property rights.

Debates over which form of taxation is best are better framed in economic terms rather than moral terms. Which forms of taxation encourage beneficial pro-social behavior and discourage anti-social behavior? There's a good argument that wealth taxes (particularly when taxing natural resources like land, data, the electromagnetic spectrum, CO2 emissions, or pollution) are much more effective at this than income taxes.

Yes, and:

> Debates over which form of taxation is best are better framed...

Discuss whole systems. Piecemeal is how these messes are created.

I no longer care what any one opposes. Yes, yes, yes, everything sucks. We know. WE KNOW.

I want to hear solutions, not complaints.