North Dakota to vote on ending property tax

[EcoWarrier]

Someone who's worked their whole life to buy a home is NOT a freeloader. The freeloader is the state who confiscates property after having done ZERO work to purchase it and has done ZERO work to maintain it.

You are wanting the state to annul debts. If someone runs up debt then the normal procedures of reclaim apply, as they do now. You have a problem with this. Someone who does not want to pay debts and have their debts wiped out is a free-loader.

Who are you to determine when someone has a home that is "far too large for her requirements?" If she chooses to do something like that, that's different. But having a government who forces that "choice" on you directly or indirectly is bullshit.

No one is advocating the government to decide where people live. If they run up debts then they have to pay and the normal reclaim procedures apply.

You are wanting the state to subsidize someone who can't pay their debts when they have assets. That is free-loading.

And here's the thing about Income/Sales tax--yes, both forms of slavery (as the property tax is), but both are forms of taxation that are, at the very least, more easily avoided without becoming homeless.

You are very confused. If you do not pay your income tax your house can be sold to pay the debt. That is how it is now. Yon have problem with that and think it only applies to property taxes. Land value tax sets people free. Free from having the fruits of your labors stolen.

The old lady's lost her "usefulness" to society, so we need to "free up" her home so more "productive" people can use it, and you advocate government force to do so. She's not taking anything from you, she's just not contributing via that method to your socialist paradise.

You are very confused. An old person's income has diminished. The state can come in and help and defer any payments until sale of house or death. The old widow can stay there as long as she can pay her debts. If she has problems the state can defer LVT so she has a content end of life. But deffering payment for an old lady who stuggles with debt in a 5 bdedrrom house is not fair. She must be in a house suitable for her needs. Sounds fair and civilized.

 

[specsaregood]

For those that missed it. This amendment to abolish the property tax LOST 76% to 24%. In otherwords, it got slaughtered.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

As much as I hate Roy's arguments, I love his snark. Good snark like his is pretty rare.

Please, thread it out with him for 100 pages. You will realize he is just a parrot, repeating the same lines over and over. It's not cleverness he has, it's total blinding hate, unlimited time, and lack of the mechanism that would make most of us crazed with boredom after typing the same snarky sentence 500 times in a month (500 times in a few days, probably, if you were to monitor his accounts on all the various message boards across the internet). You will rarely find a post of his with more than 20% new original content.

Realizing that, you should realize it's pointless to try to change his mind. He's not even thinking about his own posts -- he can't, the repetitiveness and banality would drive a human nuts -- and so he's certainly not thinking about yours! It's best to just consider him a simple Turing machine responding to certain key trigger words with certain preset responses. Then you can have some fun with it, that is, if you enjoy automated caustic rantings. It's like talking to Siri, except she hates you, and humanity in general, and has a lot of weird ideas. Well, mostly one weird idea. She thinks all the stuff she hates about the world can be solved by this Idea X -- let's call it "everyone should eat more fish." That would make the world a beautiful place. So settle in (if you like) and she/he/it will tell you all about the Annual Holocaust of the Fishless and George the ex-prison camp inmate who really was even worse off when he got out of the gulag because, after all, he still didn't have any fish.

 

[EcoWarrier]

For those that missed it. This amendment to abolish the property tax LOST 76% to 24%. In otherwords, it got slaughtered.

We know. Very sensible indeed. They now need to aim towards full LVT

 

[EcoWarrier]

Please, thread it out with him for 100 pages. You will realize he is just a parrot, repeating the same lines over and over.

That is because people do not take in what he writes. He demolishes arguments with ease.

 

[Tod]

Roads ought to be paid for through user fees (tolls in this case). What if I walk to work?

If you walk to work on a sidewalk or road that isn't your own, it makes sense that you would pay. Since the requirements for a walking path are less than a road for heavy vehicles, it makes sense that the payment would be less.

 

[EcoWarrier]

If you walk to work on a sidewalk or road that isn't your own, it makes sense that you would pay. Since the requirements for a walking path are less than a road for heavy vehicles, it makes sense that the payment would be less.

This notion of paying for services as you receive them, I can think of few that are sensible. Infrastructure greatly assists in creating economic growth. All benefit from this growth, even those who do not use the infrastructure.

Some infrastructure is unviable on ticket prices, urban mass-transit comes to mind. Few urban rail networks pay for themselves via ticket sales. They create economic growth for sure so are economically viable. They need public finances to plug the gap. LVT does that wonderfully, as occurred in Hong Kong when they built an underground subway. LVT also funds the maintenance of the network. Those who know accountancy and not economics look at the ticket prices and running cost and say they are not viable, not understanding where and how they are profitable.

So many benefit from the economic growth mass-transit rail gives, and also in the quality of life in using these rail networks in getting about.

 

[Steven Douglas]

I have concluded you are some sort of obsessed nut. You have been repeatedly told, with backup from eminent economists, etc, that what you view is wrong, yet you keep reciting the same mantra.

lol, did someone have a big bowl of Obsessed Nut for breakfast, chock full of irony? Perhaps more ad nauseam repetition of your own views, your own mantras, will finally make them correct.

George DID NOT advocate state appropriation of all land title at all.

Oh, well of course the titles would remain as they are. Just the meaning of each title would be appropriated; a minor trivial detail, really. Everything else would remain the same.

Are you really that naive, or do you just think other people are? I referred to ownership, not "title", of which there are different meanings (as was already pointed out to you, with no response). The full force and effect of LVT is no different than if all landownership titles were converted, unilaterally and en masse, into rental agreements (with or without any agreement).

Did you honestly buy into your own empty semantics shell game? The power to tax is the power to destroy, and in the case of LVT, as with any ad valorem tax, the very concept of ownership with regard to titles in land is completely destroyed. Argue why that should be the case all you want, but at least be honest enough, even if to yourself only, to call it what it is. Everyone can hold "title", on condition that everyone with a title is a renter only. It's little different, in principle, than what happened to "titles" in money. Everyone retained "title" to each "dollar", silly us, as none of those "titles" were appropriated. Only the meaning of the word dollar, and what each "dollar bill" was actually title to, was appropriated. But any fool can see that we still have titles called "dollars", so what's all the fuss about?

 

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

If you walk to work on a sidewalk or road that isn't your own, it makes sense that you would pay. Since the requirements for a walking path are less than a road for heavy vehicles, it makes sense that the payment would be less.

No, not necessarily. Sidewalks and parking lots for instance are free-to-use. It is a product which is given freely by the owners of the business to entice customers to their establishments. If you had to pay to use their walkways, most people would refrain from patronizing their establishment. The business bears the burden of cost for this convenience for the customer, or not. Merely walking by their establishment is a form of advertisement.

In many cases this applies to urban roads as well. Only rural, or large thoroughfares would be pay for use in most cases. In many other instances it is bundled with other goods and services such as say....Disney World. I still affirm that most property owners who own commercialized property would happily let anyone ambulate to and fro their pathways and roads because it is an economic benefit for them to do so.

 

[Tod]

This notion of paying for services as you receive them, I can think of few that are sensible. Infrastructure greatly assists in creating economic growth. All benefit from this growth, even those who do not use the infrastructure.

Some infrastructure is unviable on ticket prices, urban mass-transit comes to mind. Few urban rail networks pay for themselves via ticket sales. They create economic growth for sure so are economically viable. They need public finances to plug the gap. LVT does that wonderfully, as occurred in Hong Kong when they built an underground subway. LVT also funds the maintenance of the network. Those who know accountancy and not economics look at the ticket prices and running cost and say they are not viable, not understanding where and how they are profitable.

So many benefit from the economic growth mass-transit rail gives, and also in the quality of life in using these rail networks in getting about.

Just because YOU consider something a benefit doesn't mean that a landowner views it that way. Benefits are subjective. A lot of people consider resale value when they purchase a property and they hope that their land becomes more valuable by virtue of its location. I, on the other hand, don't wish my land to be more valuable in the usual sense and vote against things that might increase its value on the market. A landowner should not have to pay for things that YOU consider to be a benefit but that they don't.

 

[EcoWarrier]

Oh, well of course the titles would remain as they are. Just the meaning of each title would be appropriated; a minor trivial detail, really. Everything else would remain the same.

Nothing would be changed in title. You must stop making things up.

LVT does not care if the land occupier has title or "owns" the land or not.

You only have land title. The state owns the land. You have difficulty with this. LVT reclaims community socially created wealth for social purposes from the tile holder. Socially created wealth for social purposes leaving the individual free.

 

[EcoWarrier]

Just because YOU consider something a benefit doesn't mean that a landowner views it that way. Benefits are subjective. A lot of people consider resale value when they purchase a property and they hope that their land becomes more valuable by virtue of its location. I, on the other hand, don't wish my land to be more valuable in the usual sense and vote against things that might increase its value on the market. A landowner should not have to pay for things that YOU consider to be a benefit but that they don't.

The landowner may not be informed or bright enough to know he is benefiting. Everyone benefits from a well educated population, but many people without children at school contribute to the education system.

Mass-transit rail clearly benefits large cities and its people, whether uninformed individuals think so or not. Overnight, take away the underground rail networks from NYC, London, Paris, etc, and these cities will fall apart. They will rapidly contract and economically decline.

 

[Steven Douglas]

You only have land title. The state owns the land.

Your normative, from your ideological framework, your political paradigm. Even if those two sentences were positive statements of fact (the way you have it mentally diced), it would not change the fact that these are the very political questions (the normatives) at issue in our little discussion.

The extreme difficulty you seem to be having is in understanding the difference between normative (should/ought) and positive (is) statements.

 

[redbluepill]

If you walk to work on a sidewalk or road that isn't your own, it makes sense that you would pay. Since the requirements for a walking path are less than a road for heavy vehicles, it makes sense that the payment would be less.

So the government would have me pay less in income tax if I walk to work? Don't think so. And what if I work from out of the house (lots of people do that these days through computers.)

I find it hilarious you defend income tax. Directly taking from the fruits of an individual's labor. Even the National Sales Tax got a nod from Ron Paul. And its the Georgists, the people who want to eliminate every tax but one, who get the vitriol.

 

[EcoWarrier]

The extreme difficulty you seem to be having is in understanding the difference between normative (should/ought) and positive (is) statements.

FACT: You only have land title. The state owns the land.

You must stop making things up. Roy L call you a re liar. I see why.

 

[Steven Douglas]

The landowner may not be informed or bright enough to know he is benefiting.

Ah, the ignorant rabble card most often played by those with a leftist bent, as the unenlightened mouth-breathers of privilege or ignorance are too stupid to know how truly wonderful everything is under a given scheme/scam.

Everyone benefits from a well educated population, but many people without children at school contribute to the education system.

A total non-sequitur, of course, since we're talking about revenue mechanisms for the state, of which LVT is only one, and any of which could support public education (and even that, buying into the collectivist idea that "the education system" automatically means "public education").

Mass-transit rail clearly benefits large cities and its people, whether uninformed individuals think so or not. Overnight, take away the underground rail networks from NYC, London, Paris, etc, and these cities will fall apart. They will rapidly contract and economically decline.

Another completely irrelevant non sequitur, for the same reasons, right down to the assumption that "mass-transit" automatically means publicly funded mass transit. What makes this one ironic is that you constantly hold up Hong Kong as a model, but you didn't list that in your cities that would "fall apart". Could that be because you knew that the "public" mass transit system there (which I use regularly, and really is quite something) is 100% privately owned and operated? Likewise, what about Singapore and Tokyo, with their highly successful privately owned mass transit systems?

Oopsie?

 

[helmuth_hubener]

George DID NOT advocate state appropriation of all land title at all.

Actually, he did. That's exactly what he wanted. It's in his book.

 

[Steven Douglas]

FACT: You only have land title. The state owns the land.

Keep telling yourself that, and keep regurgitating it as a mantra, ad nauseam.

You must stop making things up. Roy L call you a re liar. I see why.

...said the other poster with a single red reputation bar below his name.

 

[redbluepill]

This won't be anything like Marx' seeing the problem of evil, labor-exploiting capital in the hands of the few, with the solution being the entire appropriation of all capital into the hands of the benevolent state. No way, no siree Bob.

Lol, Marx considered George's Single Tax idea as capitalism last ditch ploy. And George referred to Marx as the king of all muddleheads. Just because they both recognized a flaw in the economic system doesn't mean they had similar solutions.

Under a Georgist regime, Capital and Labor - two of the basic factors of production - requirements for productivity and wealth creation, would remain in private hands where they rightly belong.

There are in fact three basic factors of production. You forgot land.

No, just give the state ultimate ownership and control of Land, the one remaining factor of production. Just transfer that one basic requirement for life itself, and not just productivity or wealth creation, to the state. Nothing need change, as all will be well once nobody is a landowner, as everyone is a perpetual renter.

You still have trouble understanding the difference between common property and collective property dont you?

Denying Common Rights
Many anti-Marxists deny common rights because they have bought into the Marxist confusion between common rights and collective rights. In doing so, they sometimes inadvertently embrace collective rights -- the very thing to which they are opposed. For example, many anti-Marxists propose upholding titles to land that had originated with the state and have no basis other than state issuance. Many even advocate that the state sell lands remaining under its jurisdiction. Unlimited property in land, which violates Locke's proviso and classical liberal principles generally, rests on the collectivist premise that the state has a right to assign land by selling it. This begs the question, "By what rationale can the state rightly sell what it does not rightly own?" In proposing that the state sell land, they turn the great body of classical liberal thought on land tenure against them while vainly asserting that they are the modern extension of classical liberalism.

The True Opposite of Collectivism
The true opposite of collectivism is not neoconservatism, but classical liberalism. The opposite of collective rights is not private rights purchased from the collective, but of common rights that precede the collective. The answer to attacking property as if it were privilege is not to defend privilege as if it were property, but to clearly distinguish between property and privilege. Most importantly, the answer to Marxist mythology is not to react with an anti-Marxist mythology, but to begin with principles of liberty and follow them wherever they might lead.

As Albert Jay Nock, founding editor of The Freeman and author of Our Enemy, The State, noted,

"The only reformer abroad in the world in my time who interested me in the least was Henry George, because his project did not contemplate prescription, but, on the contrary, would reduce it to almost zero. He was the only one of the lot who believed in freedom, or (as far as I could see) had any approximation to an intelligent idea of what freedom is, and of the economic prerequisites to attaining it.... One is immensely tickled to see how things are coming out nowadays with reference to his doctrine, for George was in fact the best friend the capitalist ever had. He built up the most complete and most impregnable defense of the rights of capital that was ever constructed, and if the capitalists of his day had had sense enough to dig in behind it, their successors would not now be squirming under the merciless exactions which collectivism is laying on them, and which George would have no scruples whatever about describing as sheer highwaymanry. Free Speech and Plain Language, February 1935, p. 159"
http://geolib.com/sullivan.dan/commonrights.html

 

[Keith and stuff]

For those that missed it. This amendment to abolish the property tax LOST 76% to 24%. In otherwords, it got slaughtered.

I'm fine that 77% of voters opposed the measure but what did it need to pass? Did it need a majority, 3/5s or 2/3s to pass? If it needed 2/3s to pass and over 3/4s rejected it, that's a pretty resounding defeat.