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this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Sure, but it pushes it onto wealthier people more, since generally cost of property scales with income. It would also discourage vacancy even more, which would put more properties on the market, and it would probably push property values down because the long-term cost of ownership is higher. Likewise, cities and states tend to get their income from property taxes, so they could reduce sales taxes to account for it, and sales tax is much more regressive on the poor.
So I think it would be a net benefit.
You do realize this discussion is about the housing crisis right? The one caused by the available units being below the demand for them, causing prices to rise?
Punishing landlords for vacancies won't materially help things, the only real solution there is zoning changes to encourage more construction of higher density housing instead of lower density housing. We can only build so many housing units in a given year, so we should be focusing on higher density instead.
But we're not talking about zoning in this thread, we're talking about taxation.
Vacancy rates are really low for residential property pretty much across the board, at least relative to the last few decades. So there's not a lot we can do just by changing the costs for vacancies. The reason I suggest increasing property taxes is for a few reasons:
Since we have a limited capacity to build new housing, we should encourage building the types of housing that will resolve the crisis. Penalizing vacancies just encourages landlords to fill vacancies ASAP instead of renovating properties, whereas increasing property taxes should encourage more dense construction.
I'm sorry, I misread your post, and completely missed the last line (it was a long day). I thought you were arguing against this suggestion.
I agree, taxes aren't a huge part of the solution, and incentivizing high-density housing (as well as making them more palatable)is a bigger part of it.
The housing crisis cannot be solved by taxes. They are irrelevant.
This is basic economics, supply and demand. Reducing demand will affect prices, and incentivizing not having vacant properties will increase supply.
This is not the complete solution, but it will have some effect. And thinking there is a single complete solution is as wrong as thinking that the suggestions in this article are that complete solution.
Changing taxes won't do anything as they don't affect the property market much. The only real solution is to build more. But to build more, construction should be deregulated. But that will make landlords in the government poorer so that will never happen.
I have rarely seen deregulation where money is to be made working out well for the average person. Feel free to look up the history of the FDA for a taste of what unregulated markets can look like. That said, yes, changing regulations for urban planning will be necessary to have a meaningful impact on the housing problem, and yes, most politicians have very good financial reasons to not let that happen.
You can check deregulation history in Europe and what benefits it brought like cheap and quality flights, cheap and quality railways, etc. I don't know what FDA is, but if something is wrong, then the market is over regulated.
They were the people who said you couldn't sell bread with sawdust in it, or lie about your bread having sawdust in it. Which is what America dealt with before regulations.
Other fun considerations are things like phossy jaw, a fatal condition caused by companies forgoing safety at a cost of 1% of their revenue, until regulations were imposed.
Certainly, there is a such thing as too much regulation, but too little is also demonstrably bad.
Why would anyone buy bread with sawdust? I think the US problem is not the lack of regulation, but that people like shit.
There are three mistakes you're making in those two statements, and an indication that you made a fourth.
What makes you think false advertising or doctoring food with cheap filler is an exclusively American thing? I gave two before, here's another that is both more recent and not in America: Chinese Milk Scandal.
Why would you assume the people buying bread with sawdust knew it had sawdust in it? Do you suppose it was listed in the ingredients, or do you imagine the people who are buying the cheapest bread they can find have the time, means, or knowledge to determine their food is in fact doctored?
You pose questions like it's unlikely that something would ever happen when being provided with knowledge that that thing did in fact happen. At this point I can only assume you're trolling or willfully ignorant.
I mean even without sawdust modern American bread is not really a bread...