ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[David Horn]

(09-08-2017, 06:41 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(09-08-2017, 09:26 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-07-2017, 04:51 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: David George's idea is that of all the ways of making money, taking advantage of a permanent scarcity of real estate in a captive clientele, is the easiest.  Heavily taxing income that people earn with great difficulty can drive people out of a marginal activity, but heavily taxing 'easy money' isn't going to drive people out of it.

OK, but land no longer holds the intrinsic worth it once did.  Sure, every square inch of Manhattan is worth enough to offset any taxation cost, but what about the prairie?  If I'm a farmer with 5 sections of land growing row crops, I own a large percentage of the taxable assets within my taxing authority, but the utility of the land is not high.  

This was a good idea that may have seen the limit of its value.

A plot of land large enough to hold a farmhouse in a giant city might be worth more than five sections of farmland growing row crops or a few  square miles of range land. In the county in which I live (which has much lake property) farmland is taxed almost at a zero rate and lake properties are taxed heavily.

I'm OK with this kind of wealth tax, but it's inadequate to the needs of the country if we decide this is our standalone solution.  From the right, this is a good idea, because it will gut taxation.  Rich people won't allow the rest of us to tax away their wealth.  Unless that changes, this is an ancillary tax at best.