Advances in emergency services can make one town a better place to live than another. Here are two examples from my home town.

  • defibrillators in every police car, and every police officer trained in their use, can save lives that would otherwise be lost;
  • EMS workers trained in therapeutic hypothermia protocol, ambulances equipped with appropriate supplies, and ER and hospital staff familiar with this innovation can save lives that would otherwise be lost

Would you pay more to live in a community that had adopted these innovations?

Probably.

The question is to whom you should pay it, and based on what logic.

Should we pay for it via taxes on sales? Taxes on wages? Taxes on hotels and rental cars?

Or should we, as we do now, pay twice for it, once in the form of a tax on wages, sales, hotels, rental cars, or buildings, and then a second time to those who own the land, housing and commercial properties locally?

The question is to whom you should pay it. Should you pay it to

  1. the fellow with a house to sell, in the form of a higher purchase price? (and thus a higher mortgage)
  2. the local fellow or REIT with a home to rent to you, in the form of a higher rent than you’d pay in the (otherwise comparable) next town?
  3. the fellow who has a spare lot to sell you, on which you can build?
  4. the town which invested in these services and the training and goods required to supply them, in the form of a tax on the value of the land you – or the seller, or the landlord – own?

Is your answer different depending on whether you:

  1. have health problems or care about someone who does?
  2. work in dangerous occupation?
  3. earn a high salary?
  4. own your own home and plan never to sell it, or to buy another one or rent one?
  5. are dependent on a healthy local economy?
  6. make your living selling real estate?
  7. make your living renting real estate?
  8. have children who you hope will be able to afford to live and work in your town as adults?
  9. care about funding the local schools?

I’d like to pay for things like this just once – through a tax on land value – rather than paying both my landlord (or the fellow from whom I buy a home) and also paying through taxes on wages, sales or other kinds of productive activity.

Taxes on land value make land more affordable, but don’t drag down the economy. Taxes on sales and wages produce a drag on the economy.