Went out to the @kexp 50th birthday party at Seattle Center yesterday and enjoyed it, lots of good music and a chill crowd on a hot (for Seattle) day. But I asked myself why I don't do more of that sort of thing… 1/ Well, for a start, getting there is a collection of poor options. I could ride a bike if I wanted to spend the better part of 8-10 miles on either a state highway masquerading as a local road or various other local streets, all in bicycle gutters. 2/

Washington's "uniformity clause" is often cited as an impediment to a state or local income tax. People love to tax labor rather than wealth or unearned income. Maybe they own assets they don't want taxed or are expecting to inherit unearned wealth. 1/

leg.wa.gov/CodeReviser/Do… The real win to separate land from improvements into different classes, assessing a tax that reflects the "highest and best use" of land and reducing the burden of developing/owning improvements. We already know that developers prefer ground rents. 2/

This argument will never make any sense, that vast resources of the productive wealth — cities — are somehow going to be put under austerity budgets. In today's post-industrial/knowledge economy, land/location is the means of production… 1/

https://twitter.com/TPM/status/1329122685826314247

…the store of value that creates wealth and attracts investment of money and energy. We were told the Internet would make it possible to work anywhere, hollowing out the expensive cities. Anyone who has looked at Seattle or SF home prices know didn't pencil out. 2/

Can't is right. I learned this from watching Netflix's The Crown when it started…the idea that a job/position has its own agenda, regardless of what the person holding it wants. Does anyone really think @BarackObama wanted to do all the things he had to do in his tenure? 1/

https://twitter.com/absurdistwords/status/1328905381549125632

The USA became the world's leading oil producer during his time…did he want that *personally* or was it something the job of POTUS needed to see happen, for the economic strength of the country? A center-right country is not changing course for a temporary change of captains. 2/

So how is a 4 million vote margin out of 147 million votes a #blowout? Ask @kingjames if a 75-71 score is a blowout in basketball? If we look at the electoral college, is 306-211 a blowout? Would a (rounded) 31-21 football score be a blowout? 1/ Or to round down further, would a 3-2 baseball score be anything remarkable? No. I get that 4 million is a lot but against 147 million? It's 3%. If you left a 3% tip you'd better run out the door. Would you be happy w a 3% raise? 2/

Anyone among my followers who knows scams, specifically money laundering through craigslist (or something like that)? Someone offered to buy something I listed and sent what appears to be a stolen check for 10X the amount…obvs not cashing it. Bkgd: I offered a bike for sale on CL for $200 and someone replied with a full price offer + $50 to hold it. Said he would send a cashiers check (I should have stopped there but people are weird: why not PayPal/venmo?). Got email from Fedex to expect a package from Florida (!).

Rent control is one of those ideas, like "term limits," that tells you how much someone has thought about the problem. Not much, it turns out. I wrestled with rent control until I read Progress & Poverty and learned how land value, not shelter rent, is the driver.
1/

#LVT We already have term limits: they're called "elections." And anyone who can win, in a fair and equally-funded race, can stay in office as long as their constituents say. But "fair and equally-funded" are where we need to put in some work. The power of incumbency is real. 2/

Thought experiment for the urbanists, housing advocates, etc.

If you could buy a house in NE Seattle (98115) for $216k with a $5,000 land rent, forgoing the value of the land or you could pay $500k for both, which would you choose? If you buy the house and rent the land, you would pay $1,226.42/month vs $1,975.60/month…$750/month that you would spend on any number of other things. Sure, you get more mortgage interest to deduct but is it worth it?

I had heard of this Real Rent idea but never looked into it til now. The idea is that the people who live and work in Seattle (and other places founded on indigenous land) should pay something on top of the pittance granted by treaties, if any. 1/

realrentduwamish.org At first glance it sounds like a fine idea but I think it's like so many of the solutions around inequality and social justice…it misses the point, asks the wrong people to make good on the wrongs of the past. 2/

Convo over a Seattle/WA state income tax (vs a local or broader ground rent), it struck me that NYC residents pay multiple income taxes — city, county, state — in the midst of broad inequality and some of the most valuable land in the world. 1/
thebalance.com/new-york-city-… A deadweight income tax will be gamed or massaged to exclude passive income or larded up with exemptions that ensure never quite achieves the desired outcome. It will raise revenue but the inequality it was meant to address will endure. Look to the postwar history of the US. 2/

Blame the Wealthy, Not the Left, for Seattle's Coming Decline thestranger.com/slog/2020/08/2…

A few years ago, Tyrone Beason at the SEATImes wrote a Sunday magazine piece asking if Seattle could hold onto its newfound wealth: the answer was obvious even then… 1/ Betteridge's Law was in full effect, of course. Seattle's wealth is its location, the indoor/outdoor lifestyle — the old climate and access to culture and activities, for those who can afford them. But it is selling that off, by allowing the land to be bid out of reach. 2/

Came to the slow resolution that buying a house (w land) would be like an abolitionist buying slaves back in the day…

Land ownership as a means of keeping housing expensive/out of reach at the intersection of capitalism and white supremacy… 1/ Why own land? The majority of a home purchase (in Seattle, anyway) goes to buy the land which you don't need/can't really use *except* as a wealth store/scarcity token. Privately-held land divides/dilutes civic power and blocks progressive land use policy. 2/

I hear a lot about "affordable housing" in Seattle and other cities that are showing both strong economic growth and a tight housing market. My interrogation of this tells me that without affordable land, affordable housing is a dead letter… 1/ #LVT Here is the property tax assessment for a modest 4 BR house in NE Seattle…note the price of the land relative to the house. Note how the land gets more expensive, eventually passing the value of the house. But isn't the house all that you want? 2/ #LVT

BBC News - The boss who put everyone on 70K.

Has it really 4.5 years since @DanPriceSeattle put his money where his beliefs are?

I have been thinking of how Seattle's income/wealth inequality affects the business community as well as the workers. 1/

bbc.com/news/stories-5… Think of the things that people like me won't buy as renters…

We're not remodeling kitchens or bathrooms so plumbers and contractors are missing out. We know landlords aren't doing that either… 2/

‘Why should I bother to come downtown?’ | What if there was more to downtown than shopping? 1/
seattletimes.com/business/local… What if operating rents were managed, not at the retail (customer) level but at the wholesale (rentier) level? What if we could make downtown about experiences vs purchases? It would be interesting to see how many people go d/t just to be where something might happen. 2/

The story isn't that Value Village is closing, it's that the rentiers want more $. What makes that land valuable? The roads leading to it, the neighborhood around it, the increased buying power of local residents, which the rentiers did nothing to bring about. #LVT 1/ Whoever does take on that lease will be sending their checks to Bellevue and from there, who knows? More locally-earned money going right out of the local economy. Seattle's new city council needs to take a hard look at the wealth created by the people who voted for them… 2/

This is interesting. A couple of things that came to mind…
1. Costco stores are (almost?) always located in outlying areas/suburbs/exurbs, making car travel a necessity. To make that easier, they sell cheap gas.

https://twitter.com/investing_city/status/1179974257779982336

2. Part of the big box store model is land — owning that scarce resource and extracting rents from it. Some of these chains hold the land in a separate business unit and rent it back to the retail business (which would seem to prove the value of land rents).

Four uses of the word "gentrification" in this article…and no solutions posed, other than to elect people to office who look like the electorate. How does that stop gentrification?

seattletimes.com/seattle-news/p…

1/ You get gentrification when whoever owns the land decides to cash out on the increased value (if it's a rental) or when the land value pushes the taxes so high, the owner has no choice but to sell. The cost to hold land is low for speculators but high for working folks. 2/

There is something to this but *local* concentrated wealth — land values and the reaping of wealth by property owners — is a factor. Housing inequality starts with low costs to hold/high costs to acquire land for development. 1/

https://twitter.com/sharethecities/status/1155133664583249920

20% of Seattle's precious single family homes are rentals: that keeps prices higher through scarcity and rewards owners. 1% property tax makes land cheap to hold and the red-hot economy's demand makes land more valuable each year. 2/

A thought experiment, using a piece of disused land and a land value tax model. This graffiti exhibit is in front of a disused business, currently being demolished at a glacial pace. Last I looked it up, it was assessed at $2M for the land and the building was a write-off. 1/ So $2M for the land, before you can do anything with it. Note that it is zoned for 18 units and 26 parking spaces. At 18 units, the developer is already at $111K per unit before she turns over a shovel of dirt or drives the first nail. 2/

As long as people's wealth is tied up in their home values (and longterm Seattle homeowners have seen it pile up over the past 10-10 years) I don't see anything changing. They will vote in a corporatist city council if it preserves/expands the value of their property… 1/

https://twitter.com/RottenInDenmark/status/1147507126748585984

…by importing more high-wage workers and allowing them to set higher rents or sell for bigger sums. I think a land value tax/location fee with zoning changes (some of which are in place, I think) that drives density and puts disused land back to work should be considered. 2/