Benjamin Ljung
4 HN mentions · mentioned in 4 months, 2020–2022
3:34 · 75K views · Jan 26, 2014
A four-minute clip of Milton Friedman, from a 1978 address, discussing property taxes and land value taxation. He says property tax is the least bad tax and explains why it is so unpopular.
HN cites it in tax and housing threads as a libertarian economist endorsing property or land taxes.
4 comments from Hacker News
Many of the OG "classical liberals" had a much more nuanced take on privatizing land, supporting something more like usage rights, rather than fee-simple or alloidal land titles (private enclosure of land beyond subsistence was associated with aristocracy): "All the property that is necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual and his propagation of the species is his natural right, which none can justly deprive him of; but all property superfluous to such purposes is the property of the public, who by their laws have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the welfare of the public shall demand such disposition." - Benjamin Franklin "Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed." - Thomas Jefferson There is a wide range of middle-ground between the extremes of carving up the earth into micro-fiefdoms of absolute ownership, vs. all land being controlled by apparatchiks in the State Politburo. One of the most moderate is a tax on "ground rents", as proposed by Ricardo, Paine, and many others [0], to compe
> When you want to take what’s someone’s property and make sure you want to ‘allocate’ it to someone else who wants it..it’s called redistribution. No one's property is taken, they'll just sell it on the market to whoever can pay the most. That's not redistribution, it's called markets (what America is build on). I think we fundamentally disagree on economics, so I doubt we'll come any useful agreement here unfortunately. However, one thing I wanted to note is that Milton Friedman, one of the most libertarian modern economists thinks property tax is the best tax [1][2]. If a libertarian economist thinks a policy is good, yet you're comparing the policy to authoritarian socialist countries and re-education camps, you may want to consider that your mental model of economics/definitions of common words is extremely off base from how everyone else uses it. The Conservative Party in UK did the same thing, where they called land value tax (essentially what I'm arguing for here) a "Marxist tax grab", even when Marx opposed it! In general, using words to mean the exact opposite of what everyone else considers them is not a great strategy. Even ignoring that, I think claiming that property taxes are the "same thing" as re-education camps is a fairly tone-deaf statement to make (and one most readers would consider wrong), and it only serves to weaken the rest of your argument. [1]: in his words, the "least bad tax", but that's equivalent, since he considers taxes to be required [2]: se
Milton Friedman once commented that property tax is particularly unpopular because it's the only tax for which people still have to write a check[0]. That said, we could make income tax more visible without requiring tax professionals. (e.g., end withholding and send me a monthly tax bill; show the money go into my bank account and then back out, whether automatically or forcing me to write a check.) [0] this video
Milton Friedman also proposed Land Value Tax as the least worst tax. Only the second least worst was this negative income tax. Both mentioned in this short clip [3:33 mins] "Milton Friedman talks about property taxes". this video