I was talking about taxation in general. Most people don't care how their tax bill is broken up so much as what their total tax burden is.

1) If your land taxes go down a dollar, some poor guy doesn't go a day without a can of soda. It just doesn't work that way.

If your local or state government lacks the revenue to pay for their services, they end up either taxing more or transferring dollars from higher up. (In practice, the Northeast and Pacific Coast provide a huge transfer of money into the South and Mountain states, by way of the federal coffers. Ironic, considering voting patterns regarding small vs. big government.) Their other option is to cut services, which usually disproportionally impacts the poor.

You're making the mistake of assuming that at any level of government, you pay a dollar in property taxes and it ends up in a bin marked 'property taxes'. It goes to the treasury. This is why earmarks are so abusable-- maybe I institute a lottery with the proceeds earmarked for education.... and then just cut the normal education budget since it's now partially funded by the lottery.

So you can't just talk about cutting land taxes in a vacuum. You have to stat by raising revenue elsewhere, or reducing spending somewhere.

2) I'm not really in favor of the government handling my retirement. If it wants to force me to save something for myself, in a relatively not-stupid way, ok. Social security doesn't work like that. It's pretty much the 'shoebox' approach to retirement savings.

The government is constrained by needing to be ultra-conservative (low-risk, which lowers mean reward) and not favoring individual companies, so yes they can't match a good investor. (It's still far superior to shoeboxes, in aggregate.) The problem is that most people aren't good investors in practice, and don't save any money. (This is more true in America than Europe or Japan, even normalized for net income, which suggests cultural forces.) Unless you have another plan for what to do with these people, the safety net provided by Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is often why the elderly are worried about being 'poor' rather than 'broke'.

And finally, do you think you could take Sweden's entire system, apply it in America and get the same success without any dire consequences? If not, why do you keep on bringing up Sweden, etc?

The Scandinavian Model provides real-world data on the economic impacts of a very high tax burden. I acknowledged that it comes with its own problems, more specifically low entrepeneurship, 'fleeing' wealth, and high unemployment. It's merely useful in demonstrating that high taxes aren't why retirement is a problem-- retired Scandinavians don't have these problems, and they have a lifetime of much higher taxes.

How you go from that to a complete endorsement of the Scandinavian Model is puzzling.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com