V2

Let's reduce the argument. What simple message do I want to convey?

Not taxing land is responsible for the rental crisis.

Better yet, I want to make anger porn. If the algorithm is a cesspool, the least I can do is make filth that is educational.

What parts of rental life is particularly sharp for people that I want to connect with land tax?

• Rent going up for no reason, and going up faster than your wages
• Landlords making loads of money for doing little work while you do loads
  • A third to half of the hours you work are dedicated to your landlord.
  • Same goes for every product you sell as a small business.
  • Do you even know your landlord? Rental management is a huge industry which maximises rental profits for landlords by "managing" repairs, interviews and evictions for a landlord. So landlords can do almost no work to manage a property, and still turn a profit. This largely useless industry would not exist if we taxed land.

New script
The rental crisis exists because people can make money doing fuckall.
Speculation is when you buy something like a house hoping it'll go up in value but you actually do fuckall to improve it, like making the house better or building a cafe.
Speculation in Australia is highly profitable, so much that most investment money goes straight in the property market instead of, you know, businesses that would create more jobs. That's not just for rich people, this includes you if you have any money in a savings account.
In Australia, negative gearing makes it basically impossible to lose money on a house.
Why is this allowed? Not taxing land makes it viable to make money by doing fuckall.
You can even make money off rentals doing fuckall. Rental property management exits to do all the work a landlord would have to do to maintain a rental, like organising repairs and evicting tenants to drastically increase the rent.
Now why did the property prices go up?
Properties usually have land and a house on them.
If someone can make a million by holding on an empty block of land for ten years, then they didn't do anything to make it nicer. Who did? The people working in cafes, the families, the schools, the fidget spinners, even you! That extra million, the increase in land value, it belongs to everyone.
Properties with a house on them have been going up in value mostly because the land is going up in value for the last 40 years.
So what if we taxed people for doing fuckall?
How would a fuckall tax fix the rental crisis?
Speculation does not make profits, so people don't treat housing like an asset.
Better yet, holding land costs them money every year, so banking empty properties is basically impossible. This will increase the supply of rental housing, meaning renters like you have more choice of where to live. We already physically have enough houses; there are about three houses for every person without a home in Victoria.
Land tax can't make your rent go up. If the landlord increases your rent without making the house better, then the land went up in value, and all the extra rent would go to the government.
There are loads of other benefits of a fuckall tax, like getting rid of shit taxes like income tax, GST and stamp duty. Sign our petition to tell politicians they won't be getting your vote without fuckall taxes. Check out our other videos to see how our current taxes are all fucked, and how we can fix society with other fuckall taxes.
But all of this is really fucking annoying, because...

I think I'm gonna call the account fuckalltax. Both to say "fuck all tax", because the current tax system is broken, but also to say "tax money people make for doing fuckall". It has a nice interplay with JuiceMedia too.

V1

Feedback

Feedback takeaways

1. Needs to be more emphatic, both with vocals but also perhaps with arguments and subpoints. I probably erred a bit too much on the rigorous side.
   1. I reckon I should just get angry and yell about this to myself like I'm trying to be funny and enraged at the same time. Like I would if I was explaining it IRL.
2. Could be more concise. Cut it down.
   1. Avoid rhetorical questions.
   2. Simplify the arguments. If you can say something more directly or in less words, do it.
   3. Any point you want to resonate should be conveyed through subtitles, graphics and speech.
3. Animated graphs are good, but the stacked bar chart is too dense. Highlight the point you're making; that land rents could pay for most of our income tax.
   1. Any change should be clearly signalled with simple animated graphs. I might try the pie chart or adjacent bar graphs for showing how land rents could cover most of the typical Australian's tax bill.
   2. Overlay legend onto graph, don't have separate, difficult to parse and unnecessary.
4. Minions and memeyness good.
5. Music should be more energising. It doesn't have to be charging, but it should not be relaxing.

Caro on draft 1

• trending audio helps (so add music with apps, don't bake it into the audio)
• face helps
• text animations too stimulating
• too long
• voice needs to be less zen, more emphatic and a little faster
• rent going up too wordy "scarcely"
• could be more concise about land making up most of the value of land
• match "house and location" (vocals) with "house and land" (text)
• evidence "you could make $1mil off land banking for 10 years" is unclear in overall point of "landlords don't make land go up in value"
• "don't tax income, tax land rent" gets lost in graphs, if it's a key point it should be reinforced by subtitles
• no "what can we do" rhetorical questions, just "sign the petition"
• graphs hindered more than helped. just use simplest possible ones (ie consecutive pies vs single bar chart), only include if they add to the point. leave more intense graphs for supporting document

Fran and Zac on draft 1

• graphs good but nobody paying attention to them, "registered fuck all from the graphs", contrast with fran, absorbed the graphs, didn't hear so much what i was saying (multiple modes of comms)
• too lulling, needs more energy
• landlord doesn't offer much, just zoom into his face
• a LOT of information
• really liked the animated pie charts changing over time, could make other graphs more interactive
• liked the minions etc
• zac said it was confusing how paying rent pays tax
• fran said it wasn't clear when the solution was being introduced, make it really clear
• zac said to explicitly highlight that land rent almost covers what we pay in income tax and consumption tax
• fran said for the big boy graph, don't have a legend, overlay the labels on the bar segments

Evan

1. I understood the gist as paying land tax as part of rent will help. I don't quite remember why. I'm also a fan of the land tax. You might be able to cut the amount of content. But maybe I was focusing on the wrong thing.

Yeah on a second rewatch I think there's two main points. a. land tax on rent incentivises landlords to improve the property b. land tax incentivises competition because of vacant properties

2. The animations are great!
3. I think minecraft esque music is good, I'm not sure this track is the best fitting (It's soothing when this topic isn't really)
4. I think it's a good size, but see 1
5. I had a protein shake!

You didn't ask for this, and I think it's quite important. The delivery of the video isn't as engaging from what I expected from you. You're quite engaging in person and the video lacks that. See:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i1rmvL0GKAI

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OIpb3FSWXK0

Plan

Goals

• Should be less than a minute
• No need to justify completeness, only argue the happy path. But, clear references should be available.
• Visually engaging, memes and very light graphs
• Frustrated and sardonic tone

Argument flow

1. There's a 100 year old solution to the rental crisis few people know about
2. The rental crisis is largely created by rent costs outpacing income growth. From September 2020 onwards, rents rose more in three years than they did in the 13 years before that. Source
   1. There's little to stop your landlord from putting the rent up as soon as you get a pay increase.
3. When you make more money, it's supposed to because you did literally anything useful. If your landlord makes more money by putting the rent up, they should have made the house nicer to live in.
4. But this is scarcely the case. When was the last time your landlord even repaired the building? Urgent repair requests in Victoria have risen sharply in recent years. But when was the last time your rent went up?
5. So what are you paying for with rent? It's a combination of the location and the house. And we can see, land increased in value over the last few decades far more than houses did.
   1. In 2010 in Australia, land typically made up about 70% of the property value (article, graph), but it can be as high as 90%.
   2. I'll show you how to estimate this for any property in another video.
6. But did your landlord make the land nicer? No, because you could make an easy $1mil by buying empty land from 2013-2023^[1]. The land became more valuable because everyone made it nicer to live in, with cafes, families, schools, fidget spinners, even you!
7. What's the solution? Instead of taxing income and spending, tax the land component of rent. If your landlord puts the rent up with no repairs or improvements, the house value didn't go up, so it must have been the land. This means the landlord can't make any extra money without improving the property. And when the land goes up in value, the government collects the extra rent for public spending, instead of the landlord.
8. There are a few open questions here, which can be solved with land tax's other benefits in addition to policy details. Want to learn more about how to end the cost of living crisis?

Aside, I want to discuss why LVT cannot be passed onto tenants if implemented, and think about disruptions to the market. Let's do this inductively on a case by case basis.

1. LVT is implemented at 10% pa. I think this is calculated by the capitalisation rate to discourage speculation; if investors (people with spare money looking to use it as capital to make more money and more value) could make about 10% pa investing in something else (like stocks).