Rising Rate of Poverty - NYTimes.com.
Re “Poverty Rate Soars to Highest Level Since 1993” (front page, Sept. 14): I know this is heresy, but why don’t we increase taxes on the wealthy and spend this money on infrastructure projects to put unemployed people to work?
Just asking.
ROBIN LEVIN
San Francisco,
Sept. 14, 2011
And consider what would happen: the infrastructure projects would increase the value of the land served by them, and make things work better in those communities, as reliable streets and bridges and other worthwhile projects do.
Who owns that land? Is it local folks, who one might hope would spend their infrastructure-created windfall locally (but who might simply use it to buy additional land, benefiting the seller, be he absentee, local, corporate, whatever)? Is it REITs? Sovereign wealth funds?
Now suppose that instead of leaving all that infrastructure-created wealth in the pockets of the landowners, local communities wised up and collected some significant fraction of it (without raising taxes on buildings in the process: the really wise communities would take this opportunity to reduce or eliminate the taxes on the buildings!) for public purposes. What do you think would happen?
I suspect that the vacant lots in town would soon start to disappear. They wouldn't leave town. They'd get built on, when their carrying costs as vacant lots rose and the disincentive to build was decreased or eliminated. That would create jobs.
Depending on what the market wanted, it would also create housing, and creating housing also leads to creating jobs to service those homes -- plumbers, electricians, painters, home improvement of various kinds.
But it might not be the high-end housing we're used to seeing; not McMansions, but more modest homes. Not luxury condos but housing for people of all ages and stages, and not just for the highest-income people but for people of more modest means.
Sounds like a virtuous circle to me. Natural Public Revenue.
But if you like the current approach, by all means tell us why we should stick with it. (California's Prop 13 is an extreme case of suppressing this wise form of taxation. Look where it has gotten them!)
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