@Fried_out_Kombi

@Fried_out_Kombi

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3982249

The housing market is a prime example of poor management and a huge driver of Canadians’ inability to get rewarded for their work, he said.

Yan said in Canada, social mobility is becoming stagnant due to these factors, and that’s making the country a less desirable place to live.

Many experts agree, saying Canada is in a full-on housing affordability crisis. A recent Rental Housing Index report found that 18 per cent of renters in Vancouver and Toronto are spending at least half their income on rent and utilities, while about 40 per cent are spending more than 30 per cent of their income on it.

Canada has now surpassed the U.S. with higher levels of household debt to GDP, with the figures dropping south of the border over the last decade. But as housing unaffordability continues its march in Canada, and as the country already has the worst household debt load in the G7, such debt levels are expected to continue to climb further and income inequality to further increase.

Land Value Tax

A land value tax (LVT) is a levy on the value of land without regard to buildings, personal property and other improvements.[1] It is also known as a location value tax, a point valuation tax, a site valuation tax, split rate tax, or a site-value rating.

Land value taxes are generally favored by economists as they do not cause economic inefficiency, and reduce inequality.[2] A land value tax is a progressive tax, in that the tax burden falls on land owners, because land ownership is correlated with wealth and income.[3][4] The land value tax has been referred to as “the perfect tax” and the economic efficiency of a land value tax has been accepted since the eighteenth century.[1][5][6]

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Most taxes distort economic decisions and discourage beneficial economic activity.[14] For example, property taxes discourage construction, maintenance, and repair because taxes increase with improvements. LVT is not based on how land is used. Because the supply of land is essentially fixed, land rents depend on what tenants are prepared to pay, rather than on landlord expenses. Thus landlords cannot pass LVT to tenants, who would move or rent smaller spaces before absorbing increased rent.[15]

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LVT’s efficiency has been observed in practice.[18] Fred Foldvary stated that LVT discourages speculative land holding because the tax reflects changes in land value (up and down), encouraging landowners to develop or sell vacant/underused plots in high demand. Foldvary claimed that LVT increases investment in dilapidated inner city areas because improvements don’t cause tax increases. This in turn reduces the incentive to build on remote sites and so reduces urban sprawl.[19] For example, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s LVT has operated since 1975. This policy was credited by mayor Stephen R. Reed with reducing the number of vacant downtown structures from around 4,200 in 1982 to fewer than 500.[20]

LVT is arguably an ecotax because it discourages the waste of prime locations, which are a finite resource.[21][22][23] Many urban planners claim that LVT is an effective method to promote transit-oriented development.[24][25]

Georgism

Georgism (otherwise known as geoism) is an economic philosophy holding that the economic value derived from land, including natural resources and natural opportunities, should belong equally to all residents of a community, but that people own the value that they create themselves.

Most Georgists support:

A broad-based land value taxation scheme, either to mostly or entirely replace existing harmful taxes on income, consumption, and corporations.

The social redistribution of this revenue either directly, through a Citizens’ Dividend, or indirectly, through government programs, to citizens.

Some (but not all) forms of market intervention by the state.

The abolition of tariffs, quotas, patents, and other barriers to trade and commerce.

The overall goal of Georgism can be summarized as follows: to eliminate rent-seeking and monopolism so that the economy can be free, fair, efficient, and prosperous for all.

The Georgist paradigm crosses the left-right political divide. This means that there are statist, anarchist, progressive, and conservative Georgists.

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[article] Ten years ago Canada stole the American dream. Now the U.S. is taking it back.

[article] Ten years ago Canada stole the American dream. Now the U.S. is taking it back.

Ten years ago Canada stole the American dream. Now the U.S. is taking it back