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When it comes to taxing wealth: There is the old idea of a land value tax. One could increase the size of the tax more than linear with the size of the land. This way owning for renting would be less profitable and owning ones own appartment would become more affordable.

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Interesting. A possible way to address the way private equity firms are snapping up apartment complexes and single family homes (mostly to flip or rent)? And I assume that by linear you are suggesting that a family farm would not be affected, but a building on a small plot would? And would there be an exemption if you inhabited the property so that homeowners wouldnтАЩt get clobbered?

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Yes, for example the tax could be quadratic. Small landowners would pay 0 because x^2 is 0 for x=0 and grows very slowly for small x. But since the rent will increase with x^2 where x is the area of the owned land, large landowners will pay much higher tax. This will incentivize large landowners to sell to small landowners and thus result in a fair allocation of land. What counts as fair has to be determined by the political process, but that is exactly where it pays to live in a democracy. Taxes are beautiful because they can be adjusted in a democratic way by a small government and do not require any complicated regulation.

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