Taxes Avoided by the Rich Could Pay Off the Deficit

[MattintheCrown]

How is that working out for us, Matt?

A lot better than using microeconomics would, LOL.

There is no "the economy".

Oh lawd. Here we go...

That's a blanket term used to hide the artificially selected winners and losers in statist-distorted micro-economies. Whenever you see terms like "the economy" and "economy-wide", think whose. Always. If you and I comprised "the whole economy", and I owned half the wealth and you owned the other half, I could slit your throat and assume ownership of your half, and "the overall impact on the economy", which you say is all that matters, is a zero sum gain, since 100% of "the economy" is still there and doing just fine. If you say that "the economy" has lost your productivity in the process, I will say that is not even a problem, let alone a minor one, as "the economy" can recover from the loss of you just fine by making superior substitutions, as I can always bring others into "the economy" to make up for that. I can say that one individual needed to go "for the greater good", because after all, Matt, the overall impact on the economy is all that matters, right?

Yeah, so anyhow, Macroeconomics is what we use to analyze tax policy.

Reasoning at the individual level(s) is the ONLY way to get the full picture. Not blurring millions of microeconomic pictures into one nebulous, collectivized shape-shifting blob with no regard for the individual.

At the individual level, landowners lose the rent of their land.

Change "is" to "was", and you will be correct. By definition.

No need.

You are referring to the "stock", or overall inventory of land on Earth. The actual supply of a given quantity of land is determined by the price that sellers are both able and willing to sell. The number of sellers is always finite for any given price, and is never all-inclusive of all owners, since some have no price. OR, you can plot their price, for their quantity, at "infinity".

The supply of a given quantity? The supply of land is fixed. You can continue to talk nonsense, or accept the fact and move on.

So what? All land is was sold at some price, and therefore all land counts once counted as supply for that time at that given price.

There, I fixed it for you for greater accuracy.

No, you just neglected present and future tenses.

I wouldn't be so arrogant or presumptuous as to answer for someone else either way.

Oh please. You'll just go to any lengths to avoid the point, won't you?

To know the answer to that question, you would have to actually make such offer, to see whether or not that particular individual was WILLING to sell at that particular price (thus making it part of supply at that price, for that particular time), wouldn't you?

Not really, because we know the tree exists. It will trade for some price. We don't know the price, but under all but the most exceptional of circumstances, it will trade for a fairly predictable price, based on rational behavior of market participants. That's what economic models exist for.

Land, being fixed in supply, just sits there and exist regardless of how much people are willing to pay for it.

Gibberish. There is absolutely nothing real world or meaningful about what you just wrote.

Land that is already owned just sits there alright...as each landowner's possession. Buyers' desire, as a function of ability and and willingness to pay for a given quantity of land is nothing more than a finite spectrum of specific buyers and specific bid prices on the demand side. They don't control the supply. PROOF: If a given prospective buyer offers .25 cents, he will quickly learn that the supply (available to him), for that price, is a finite quantity - fixed for that price. Since supply is a function of willingness of an owner to sell a given quantity at a given price), the supply of land at .25 cents is likely to be ZERO.

Now, keep increasing the bid upward from .25 cents, and eventually MORE SUPPLY (the quantity which some owners will become willing sellers at that given price) will increase.

The supply is whatever land actually is made available by owners-who-choose-to-become-sellers, of a given quantity, at a given bid price. The past market price (always in the past) MIGHT serve as a guide for both buyers and sellers, but it does not dictate the future "market price" for a given parcel of land to either of them. The New Market Price (of that parcel) is not established until an owner is willing to sell and a buyer is willing to buy, and ONLY at a point where the supply and demand prices equal one another.

No, that is false. The supply is fixed.

Nice slippery "planted for production" qualification. What is utterly bizarre (albeit consistent with how you think) is that you would automatically think they do constitute supply.

Of course they do. A 5 year old could tell you that. In fact, anyone who hasn't consciously chosen to refuse to know what supply is could tell you that. This is really, really simple stuff. We're not talking about some complex concept here. The only reason you're having trouble is that you realize the implication of the fact that land is fixed in supply is troubling to your world view (and you have so much invested in opposing it, and would feel rather silly conceding defeat on the point now).

A man plants and cultivates an orchard of walnut trees on ten acres of land. The only "supply" from that orchard is whatever quantity of a thing that the owner demonstrates (or declares) he is willing to make available to the market at a given price. It is not the trees, but only the fruits therefrom. The trees (and the orchard/land itself even) MIGHT be considered supply on their own, as part of a different market. But we wouldn't know that unless a) the owner offered the trees/wood/land/etc., for sale (i.e., did become a seller, by definition), or b) an offer was made and accepted by the owner, and/or c) a counter-offer of a different asking price was made. Until then, we have not established a specific "supply" for anything but the walnuts that are already being supplied.

That's just false. Consider, instead of trees, buildings. A nation is rapidly advancing, and people are building homes and businesses. An economist would say that the nation was becoming more wealthy, and that the supply of buildings was increasing. The buildings not need to be placed on a realtor's website to be part of supply: their existence constitutes supply, period.

That's your collectivist, economies-manipulating geoinsanity speaking.

Its the current system that manipulates the economy: systematic privilege for landowners.

Hardly. You are the one who made the claim that people don't just invest hundreds of millions of dollars into skyscrapers hoping that something would eventually happen. Dubai proved you absolutely wrong on that point.

Actually, I said they don't if they want to stay in business. And you can see how Dubai has proved me right.

They can, and do. I didn't say it was a good idea, or even that it would work for them. Their risk, their reward. You're the only one who gives a shit about that, as you are the only one between us that has a desire to manipulate whole economies through state arrogation of rents for an entire factor of production. Not me.

But your point rested on it working. You offered it as a strategy. I countered, explaining it doesn't work that way. It's just a means for going broke is the vast majority of circumstances.

Yes, just like most Americans use debauched fiat currency, and for some strange reason, don't save. Hmmmm...

No, not really.

Bullshit. It would make buying them, not owning them, cheaper. By design. Something that is "bought" can actually be "paid for". In full. Under LVT, the concept of "owning them" is not "cheaper, because it is not ownership at all. That concept is fully distorted, as it can NEVER be bought and paid for in full. Thus, "ownership" is nothing but a rental, as the cost of "ownership" imposed by the tax, as a condition of "ownership", is tantamount to a rental fee for usage only, paid to the state - the entity you want permanently enthroned as the ultimate owner under a geocommunist regime.

Blah blah blah. By this "reasoning" there isn't a single homeowner in the US, right now.

That's where you went completely goofy-loopy, and completely blind. Under LVT, people would still pay for improvements, just like now. Those can be paid for in full, just like now. Their "payment for land" would be a tax shift of all taxes, as they are shifted to LVT, and paid in perpetuity. They would pay less interest on the dwellings, even as the land itself is treated exactly like an interest-only, variable interest rate loan -- the worst and most predatory of all loans, because there is absolutely no path to ownership, no ability to escape the artificial treadmill imposed, no control over the "interest rate" (the actual mill rate multiplier of the assessed land value), and no economic security that comes from true ownership. For anyone. So no, whatever principle and interest they no longer pay to a previous owner is more than made up for on crack in perpetual interest payments to the state.

Nope. Because under LVT, instead of paying taxes to the government, and then paying a landowner for access to what your taxes just paid for, you simply pay the government once. Your burden is halved. And again, land is allocated more effectively, reducing prices for pretty much all forms of wealth, including dwellings.

 

[Roy L]

Living above or behind your business is pretty common the world over.

And if you want to use your UIE there, be my guest.

Even if your enterprise took up most of a skyscraper, if you filled the lower floors or basements with rooms for interns, and used some of the top floors as executive penthouses, your entire business would be running tax free.

Possible but unlikely. As I said, the UIE would be for roughly 20% of per capita land rent, and skyscrapers tend to make economic sense only when the land is extremely valuable. The floor space being used for residential could not easily be used for business, and the people living there could just as easily use their UIEs elsewhere, so there's no real reason to try to get them to use their UIEs on space in the building they work in.

Why wouldn't you want to live near where you work.

I can think of lots of reasons, but it's irrelevant: some people would like to do that, others wouldn't.

So... the entire weight of government falls on those who use to much land to game with exceptions, like farmers who would mystically not be able to charge more for produce and so would go bust. There's a useful outcome.

I'm curious: how do you prevent yourself from knowing the fact that plenty of farmers farm rented land; they don't charge more for their crops; and they don't go bust? LVT is just the market land rent. Instead of paying taxes to fund government services and infrastructure and then paying land rent for access to the services and infrastructure your taxes just paid for, you would pay only for the services and infrastructure, but you would pay the government that was providing them, and eliminate the payment to the landowner for doing nothing.

WHY DO YOU WANT TO PAY FOR GOVERNMENT TWICE?

The more interesting distortion would be the people living in shacks on top of big box stores and malls.

You are astronomically far from understanding the fact that LVT is a voluntary, market-based, beneficiary-pay, value-for-value transaction. The market land rent paid to the public treasury would be exactly the same amount people would voluntarily pay a private landowner for use of the same land. The shacks on top of big-box stores make no economic sense, because the people in them could apply their UIEs anywhere. Why would they consent to live in shacks on big-box stores? How could such an arrangement make economic sense for the store owner under LVT, if it doesn't now (leaving aside zoning problems)? And if it did make economic sense (there are certainly buildings where apartments are located above retail and/or commercial space), what would the problem be?

 

[awake]

So the Georgists would have a monopoly government set the tax rate on lands and in turn redistribute that collection to the community? And tax it a 100% to boot? How is this not complete communization of land?

Rothbard pulls your thread with this statement...

"...Thus, pure site value could never be found in practice, and the single tax program could not be installed except by arbitrary authority."

Arbitrary authority making impossible tax calculations of land used or unused is simply re-inventing the state.

 

[Steven Douglas]

No. And even if he did argue that (he doesn't), I neither call nor consider myself a "Georgist," and thus don't feel obliged to defend his arguments.

No, you just quote him a lot, tout his theorem as if it was the eighth wonder of the economic world, and add in your own fifty cents as a Roy L remix.

What the passage you quoted (and -- surprise! -- altered) said was that a man BELONGS to himself, not that he OWNS himself. The term "individual ownership" refers to property ownership BY individuals, not OF individuals.

It's that kind of semantic hair-splitting and definition-torturing that makes you so entertaining to me, Roy.

A man's self-belonging is not ownership of property, because it is immutable as a matter of physical fact: he can't transfer himself to anyone else.

Ergo, in Roy's lexicon, "ownership" is of property, and property cannot be considered property without the ability to "transfer" said ownership. He cannot transfer "himself" (whatever that means to Roy, which is not clear or defined), so we'll invoke a "non-ownership" term called "belonging", or "self-belonging".

You have your own lexicon of LVT Political Correctness, Roy. Cute as shit, I just want to tussle your hair (assuming you have any) and give you a big noogie!

Your unique, peculiar framework, while in reality a George-spawned mutation (like so many Keynesian-spawned mutations in economics today) is not, like you said, "Georgist". Not strictly. No more than Lutherans can be said to be Catholic. Neither is it quite in line with other Georgists, geolibertarians, geoists, generic "single taxers" (yada yada), and other protestant factions of the original Georgist Mother Church. But that's OK to you, I suppose, because while they may not be on the LVT Straight and Narrow, at least they are on the "right track", headed generally in the "right direction". At least they can "learn", yeah? So hat off to you, for the herculean effort and energy you must expend trying to get everyone -- including fellow LVT "single tax" proponents at times - to reason, precisely and exactly, from your highly constrained, incredibly complex, tightly interwoven and most of all intensely dogmatic paradigm!

Tiny congregation you've got there under your little tent, Roy, but man oh man, nobody can pound and rock the LVT Antipropertarian Hellfire and Brimstone Revival Pulpit the way you can!

 

[MattintheCrown]

No, you just quote him a lot, tout his theorem as if it was the eighth wonder of the economic world, and add in your own fifty cents as a Roy L remix.

I don't believe I've seen Roy ever quote George. He certainly doesn't quote him often. And you should know, the Henry George Theorem is not a product of George himself; it was named in his honor. Joe Stiglitz came up with it.

FYI, George's writings are great stuff, and you'd actually probably rather enjoy them if you could ever get over yourself. George had a real way with words. Sadly, if anyone dares quote him, said person will get accused of "worshiping" George, so it's just not worth it.



ETA: on further consideration, I think Roy did quote George once fairly recently. IIRC, he quoted part of the intro to "Protection or Free Trade," which is on of my favorite passages. Still, Roy quotes George less than I do, and I don't quote George frequently.

 

[Steven Douglas]

A lot better than using microeconomics would, LOL.

How would you know that?

Yeah, so anyhow, Macroeconomics is what we use to analyze tax policy.

Yeah, pay no attention to the track record behind the curtain.

At the individual level, landowners lose the rent of their land.

They lose a hell of a lot more than that.

Not really, because we know the tree exists. It will trade for some price. We don't know the price, but under all but the most exceptional of circumstances, it will trade for a fairly predictable price, based on rational behavior of market participants. That's what economic models exist for.

You're giving a lot more credit to models than they deserve, and inferring facts about them that are not in evidence, even by those models. Just like physics (the ones classical economists VERY loosely borrowed from), models can be probabilistically and generally predictive. But they dictate nothing, and at the quantum level they fall completely apart. But you don't know that, Matt, because you're all fuzzy collectivist forest, in a vacuum, at a distance, with not a single tree in sight.

You honestly think that because some, or even most, particles behave(d) in a certain way, under a given set of conditions, that ALL particles should/would/will behave in exactly the same way. It is from this absolute disregard for individuals, except as collectivized and averaged, that you are able to reach your completely false, erroneous conclusion, or assumption, that "It (meaning each, every and all) will trade for some [fairly predictable] price".

You even go to the point of dismissing any individuals that do not fit your preferred model as "under all but the most exceptional of circumstances". And now that we have treated real, irrational human beings as collectivized, averaged particles, we can make the mental leap that ALL OWNERS are sellers by default, and that EVERYTHING IN EXISTENCE, regardless of ownership, is part of a generalized, collectivized, nebulous thing called "supply". No choice, no individual willingness needed now that we already know this. We have studied this, the behavior is generally predictable, and we can deduce that They will [all] sell at some price.

As the tired old joke goes: "Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?" If the answer is yes, comes the response, "Now that we have established what you are, let's get real about the price." The collectivist moron presumption skips the preliminary setup question altogether. They already assume that since whores abound that everyone is a whore, and so that's how everyone is treated.

The next leap comes (now that we have macroeconomic models of predictable human behavior from which the social engineers can work from and take from there) is the question of what price. We no longer need to ask individual owners, since we have already determined that they don't determine prices anyway. The Demand Price Tail has probabilistically wagged the Owner Willingness To Sell Dog. We already know his "willingness" to sell in the future already (at some price), based on models of the past. Comes the next leap, since we have eliminated INDIVIDUAL CHOICE (willingness to sell) on the part of the owner as a predictable foregone assumption, and that is for a Competent Appraiser to step in and determine for the owner what his supply price WOULD HAVE BEEN (realistically, let's be "reasonable" about this after all), or what that owner-presumed-seller-at-all-times WOULD have sold a thing for.

The only question in my mind after that is: What size wood chipper would be required in which to fit all these sociopathic, clueless, macro-meddling pointy-heads?

A 5 year old could tell you that.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense, as I think one just did.

The buildings not need to be placed on a realtor's website to be part of supply: their existence constitutes supply, period.

How very Marxist of you, calling other people's shit your "supply", without actually checking with the owner. Oh, that's right. In the geocommunist framework, the real "supplier", and therefore owner of all land, is the state.

But your point rested on [Dubai] working. You offered it as a strategy.

The fuck it did. How dishonest of you. By "a" strategy, and using the words "You offered", you mean to imply that it was "my" strategy, or one I thought would work. It wasn't. It was an example of a strategy employed that you claimed WAS NOT DONE. Period. We don't know the outcome of that little experiment yet, because we aren't far into the future looking back at skycraper ruins. Whether it works FOR THEM as a strategy or not, however, was strictly your trip down that rabbit hole, in an attempt to escape the fact that your were DEAD WRONG.

EDIT: One thing I'm absolutely sure of: If Dubai is ultimately successful, and LVT is implemented in Dubai following that success, the very existence of those skyscrapers, all the economic activity from whence they were erected, will be attributed, by some idiot child who is devoid of critical thinking skills, to LVT.

By this "reasoning" there isn't a single homeowner in the US, right now.

Depends on how you define homeowner, doesn't it? But now you're catching on. Whether any actual homeowners exist in the US right now or not, those who are compelled to pay property/land taxes are certainly not among them. They are "homeowners" in label only. In reality they are renters, and those who oppose taxes on individuals on the basis of ownership are what I would call victims of extortion.

Because under LVT, instead of paying taxes to the government, and then paying a landowner for access to what your taxes just paid for, you simply pay the government once.

Oopsie, you skipped one. Forget the moronic question begging assumption that land is "what your taxes just paid for" - I reject that shit outright - If you were an actual landowner (an opportunity everyone should have), then you would have paid another landowner, not for "access", but rather a full transfer of ownership.

And "you simply pay the government once" is UNADULTERATED BULLSHIT! Did you forget something? There is no "once" payment to the government, and you know it. Unless you just got lazy and left out the once [PER TIME PERIOD]. It is perpetual. Never ending.

 

[EcoWarrier]

So the Georgists would have a monopoly government set the tax rate on lands and in turn redistribute that collection to the community? And tax it a 100% to boot? How is this not complete communization of land?

It is Geoists. The market dictates the tax. Land VALUE tax. It does not redistribute. It reclaim community created wealth to pay for community services. Get it?

It is a tax shift. Land ownership and title stays the same. Business behavior stays the same - except the focus will be on enterprise not parasitical activities.

"...Thus, pure site value could never be found in practice, and the single tax program could not be installed except by arbitrary authority."

All those around the world who use LVT have no problem in valuing the land.

 

[MattintheCrown]

How would you know that?

Because I know what microeconomics is.

Yeah, pay no attention to the track record behind the curtain.

Sigh. It's not like microeconomics is some competing school with macroeconomics. It's just the same stuff applied in a different way: instead on the economy as a whole, it's applied to specific situations.

They lose a hell of a lot more than that.

Nope. They lose the land rent.

You're giving a lot more credit to models than they deserve, and inferring facts about them that are not in evidence, even by those models. Just like physics (the ones classical economists VERY loosely borrowed from), models can be probabilistically and generally predictive. But they dictate nothing, and at the quantum level they fall completely apart. But you don't know that, Matt, because you're all fuzzy collectivist forest, in a vacuum, at a distance, with not a single tree in sight.

You honestly think that because some, or even most, particles behave(d) in a certain way, under a given set of conditions, that ALL particles should/would/will behave in exactly the same way. It is from this absolute disregard for individuals, except as collectivized and averaged, that you are able to reach your completely false, erroneous conclusion, or assumption, that "It (meaning each, every and all) will trade for some [fairly predictable] price".

Good god. It's not that, Steven, it's simply a matter of I'm willing to know that the general circumstance is what's important, and that exceptions to those circumstances aren't frequent enough to be of consequence to the general point.

You even go to the point of dismissing any individuals that do not fit your preferred model as "under all but the most exceptional of circumstances". And now that we have treated real, irrational human beings as collectivized, averaged particles, we can make the mental leap that ALL OWNERS are sellers by default, and that EVERYTHING IN EXISTENCE, regardless of ownership, is part of a generalized, collectivized, nebulous thing called "supply". No choice, no individual willingness needed now that we already know this. We have studied this, the behavior is generally predictable, and we can deduce that They will [all] sell at some price.

We don't have perfect knowledge, Steven. There's no other way to do economics than to make realistic assumptions. Duh. All you're doing now is ditching economics entirely.

You've now opted to just become intentionally ignorant of economics, and permanently ineducable. If that what you feel you have to do to avoid admitting you are wrong, whatever. But I'd suggest that it's a worse path to take.

The next leap comes (now that we have macroeconomic models of predictable human behavior from which the social engineers can work from and take from there) is the question of what price. We no longer need to ask individual owners, since we have already determined that they don't determine prices anyway. The Demand Price Tail has probabilistically wagged the Owner Willingness To Sell Dog. We already know his "willingness" to sell in the future already (at some price), based on models of the past. Comes the next leap, since we have eliminated INDIVIDUAL CHOICE (willingness to sell) on the part of the owner as predictable and irrelevant, and that is for a Competent Appraiser to step in and determine for the owner what that price WOULD HAVE BEEN (realistically, let's be "real" about this after all), or what that owner-presumed-seller-at-all-times WOULD have sold a thing for.

The only question in my mind after that is: What size wood chipper would be required in which to fit all these sociopathic, clueless, macro-meddling pointy-heads?

I have little doubt that that is indeed the only question in your mind.

How very Marxist of you, calling other people's shit your "supply", without actually checking with the owner. Oh, that's right. In the geocommunist framework, the real "supplier", and therefore owner of all land, is the state.

That's not Marxist, Steven, that's how economics is done. From Adam Smith on down, every economist considers all the buildings in a country part of that country's supply of buildings. Their sales status just isn't relevant.

The fuck it did. How dishonest of you. By "a" strategy, and using the words "You offered", you mean to imply that it was "my" strategy, or one I thought would work. It wasn't. It was an example of a strategy employed that you claimed WAS NOT DONE. Period. We don't know the outcome of that little experiment yet, because we aren't far into the future looking back at skycraper ruins. Whether it works FOR THEM as a strategy or not, however, was strictly your trip down that rabbit hole, in an attempt to escape the fact that your were DEAD WRONG.

It was your strategy. Here's your idiotic theory, which you presented in post 214:

Now for the Neat Trick - the insidious consequence and side effect, regardless of anyone's intent:

Since a downtown skyscraper (or casino in the desert) with lots of "community activity" automatically raises the land rents/LVT on all empty adjacent parcels in its vicinity, all a developer needs to do in order to price the majority of the population completely out of neighboring land market (in terms of LVT cost of ownership ONLY) is concentrate on developing his own small parcel of land! That automatically makes all the remaining parcels in the vicinity -- including empty lots -- cost prohibitive to all but the most well-healed developers.

You paint this picture of nefarious developers pricing people out of all land -or something. It's not really coherent. But the point is, it is in fact a strategy you offered. It's shitty that you made me go back and find it, and worse still that I had to read it again. Shame on you. By the way, here's what I actually said:

Well, you have it ass-backwards. That's just a fact. You don't spend hundreds of millions of dollars building buildings in the hope that, someday, its cost will be justified. Not if you want to remain in business. High land values precede skyscrapers; they're what justifies such an intensive use of land.

Note I never said no one ever had or would do that -just that you don't do it if you want to remain in business. It's just not how things work generally, because it's ass-backwards; it's a massive gamble that rarely pays off.

EDIT: One thing I'm absolutely sure of: If Dubai is ultimately successful, and LVT is implemented in Dubai following that success, the very existence of those skyscrapers, all the economic activity from whence they were erected, will be attributed, by some idiot child who is devoid of critical thinking skills, to LVT.

Well, the land in Dubai is owned by the state.

Depends on how you define homeowner, doesn't it?

Right. By your definition, there are no American homeowners. So your point is, uh, kinda pointless.

But now you're catching on. Whether any actual homeowners exist in the US right now or not, those who are compelled to pay property/land taxes are certainly not among them. They are "homeowners" in label only. In reality they are renters, and those who oppose taxes on individuals on the basis of ownership are what I would call victims of extortion.

The alternative is feudalism.

Because under LVT, instead of paying taxes to the government, and then paying a landowner for access to what your taxes just paid for, you simply pay the government once.

Oopsie, you skipped one. Forget the moronic question begging assumption that land is "what your taxes just paid for" - I reject that shit outright - If you were an actual landowner (an opportunity everyone should have), then you would have paid another landowner, not for "access", but rather a full transfer of ownership.

Ownership is means to access. Duh.

And "you simply pay the government once" is UNADULTERATED BULLSHIT! Did you forget something? There is no "once" payment to the government, and you know it. Unless you just got lazy and left out the once [PER TIME PERIOD]. It is perpetual. Never ending.

I don't mean you make a single payment, I mean you only pay for one time when you pay. Taxes are always ongoing, as services are ongoing. Duh.

 

[Steven Douglas]

It is Geoists. The market dictates the tax. Land VALUE tax. It does not redistribute. It reclaim community created wealth to pay for community services. Get it?

It is a tax shift. Land ownership and title stays the same. Business behavior stays the same - except the focus will be on enterprise not parasitical activities.

Yes, LVT geoist not care if black LVT cat or white LVT cat, so long as it catch mice for LVT. It no redistribute, it only reclaim to pay for service to help the LVT cat. Get it?

 

[Zippyjuan]

I ran some numbers as to what an LVT would cost in another thread. http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?386844-Robin-Hood-Tax/page3

I assumed the US budget was the same size it is now and you paid for all of it via LVT. If you tax only cities, it came to over $63,000 an acre- about 50% higher than the median income. If you include all farmlands and grazing lands, it drops down to about $3500 an acre per year- but that is also about 1.5 times the current average value per acre of that land too (just over $2000 an acre). That will discurage people from having farms (say goodbye to your food production or food prices would soar by multiples so the farmers could afford to pay the taxes (the taxes are due every year, the purchase price of the land is one- time)- so much for not being able to pass along the tax to consumers- or they will simply go out of business and everybody starve to death) or if you exclude the farm and rangeland, nobody can afford to live in the cities. This is our economic nirvana brought to us via the LVT?

For comparison's sake, the highest state property tax average is less than three percent. The tax on farmland would be over 150%.

 

[Steven Douglas]

Sigh. It's not like microeconomics is some competing school with macroeconomics. It's just the same stuff applied in a different way: instead on the economy as a whole, it's applied to specific situations.

More accurately, microeconomics is applied TO ALL specific situations, whereas macroeconomics is applied only to those deemed Big Enough To Manipulate, and Too Big To Fail.

We don't have perfect knowledge, Steven. There's no other way to do economics than to make realistic assumptions.

Interesting choice of words. What does that mean, "do economics"? Economics is supposedly descriptive, predictive, and informative. Not normative. When you say "do economics" you are going outside of the merely informative, using your theories and interpretations to support the normatives you advocate; shoulds, oughts -- major policy decisions. Actual central planning and macro-engineering. (BTW, EcoWarrier[sic] thinks I'm saying "Norman" - just humor him).

Duh. All you're doing now is ditching economics entirely.

I didn't know there was a single collectivized, homogeneous blob called "economics" to ditch. That's like Roy thinking that because "weeza hatesa [HIS ICKY-ASS VERSION of] gubmint" that automatically means that we are against government in general. That's arrogant, presumptuous and non-self-aware. Did you consider that it is possible that I am ditching only what I consider BAD economics, Matt -- incorrect theories, baseless assumptions, and all the misapplied policies based thereon?

From Adam Smith on down, every economist considers all the buildings in a country part of that country's supply of buildings. Their sales status just isn't relevant.

How ironic that you should invoke Adam Smith. I know geolibs love quoting Smith because of his position on the Land Value Tax. However, just as Keynes is considered to be the father of modern the macroeconomics you rely on in support of the tax, Adam Smith is widely considered to be the father of the microeconomics that you don't personally find necessary, relevant or applicable to tax policy. And it's no wonder, as microeconomics attempts to describe granular reality at all scales, as it is the study of how people interact and how markets actually work. Macroeconomics (the Keynesian-spawned statists' whore, IMO) only concerns itself with how governments can manipulate people and markets.


Let's finally clear some more macroeconomics apples to microeconomics oranges once and for all. Not for you, but for others reading:

The definition of supply I use comes from microeconomics, and is absolutely 100% accurate in that context (as cited and sourced in previous posts) - AKA reality, at the only level that is truly important in my mind; the individual -- each and every one -- not jointly, collectively, or averaged in any way. The definition of supply you are using comes from macroeconomics, and is 100% accurate, but ONLY in that context, where ONLY THE WHOLE is considered -- "the economy", as individuals are blurred, or averaged out into virtual nonexistence, or irrelevance, in deference "to the whole" - which is the only thing that matters to collectivist statists and others such as yourself.

Here's a treatment on the law of supply in one context from one textbook that actually distinguishes the macro from the micro, at least at the level of industrial use of land:

Supply of Land:

Supply of land, from the point of view of an economy, is perfectly inelastic. It means the total supply of land in an economy cannot be increased. Supply of land is free for an economy, as it has no cost of production.

Supply of land for an industry depends on its opportunity cost. If opportunity cost of land increases in one industry compared to another industry, then more of it will be used in the former industry than the latter. Thus, supply curve of land for an industry will slope upward. It means supply of land will increase with rise in its price and decrease with fall in its price.

Supply of land is perfectly elastic so far as a competitive firm is concerned. It means at the price fixed by industry, a firm can use as much land as it requires.

So you can stop with the claims that the definition of supply I am using is "incorrect", and so will I. If you want to be intellectually honest about this, you can argue that the definition is "inapplicable" (and then actually argue why). I have stated above why I believe yours is inapplicable, as it has no regard for the individual. You claim that macroeconomics and microeconomics are not "competing schools", and yet you and Roy BOTH attempt to describe individual behavior from a branch of economics that does not even pretend to do such a thing. That's obfuscation (or ignorance) on both your parts.

Here's your idiotic theory, which you presented in post 214:

You paint this picture of nefarious developers pricing people out of all land -or something.

Yeah - and/"or something". I painted a picture of a natural consequence of LVT, which occurs with or without anyone's intent, nefarious or otherwise. Understanding the natural consequences of an artificial policy can definitely provide a strategy, but that is beside the point.

More on that in my next post.

 

[MattintheCrown]

More on that in my next post.

LOL. The internet eagerly awaits.

 

[Steven Douglas]

LVT, GROUND RENTS & STATE CAPTURE RATIONALE (and why a casino owner specifically should favor such a "single tax")

Let's say that I am a visionary who builds a casino in the middle of a desert and promotes it. Eventually it takes on an economic gravity of its own, as more and more people come to take advantage of all the opportunities and amenities induced by the casino. Over time a primarily entertainment and gambling based economy blossoms in the middle of the desert.

As a casino owner, I now have a small problem. I (along with each customer by extension), am now subject to a wide range of taxes. All all those taxes -- gambling, property, sales, capital gains, etc., could go completely away under LVT, as they are "shifted" to a Land Value Tax. That seems like A Very Good Thing. For me specifically, at least.

As a profit-maximizing Casino owner, I should LOVE LVT (assuming it really was a single tax), given that it is particularly suited to favor my type of business. The ONLY reason I would favor it over other taxes is the same reason any financial services firm should love it: because my ratio of economic activity to land is much, MUCH higher than literally anyone else's. By nature. And the higher I stack that financial activity, the greater my profits. Of course, that also increases the land value of mine and surrounding lands, but that's incidental, to me at least, as it is my economic activity specifically that is causing that increase.

As a casino owner, I am fully aware that people are coming to take advantage of the privately owned, non-shared, non-public, for-profit capital investment on my privately owned land. I am not so blind or daft as to think for a moment that people are flocking to be in (or near) my casino because they heard about all the wonderful "community infrastructure" and "community created wealth". I know that's complete and utter bullshit. The common infrastructure that I share with everyone is a necessary, but wholly incidental part of a very small cost that is shared in common with others, with no profit-taking on anyone's part for it. Likewise, the other private entities that show up to take advantage of opportunities bring opportunities of their own: so the more the merrier, because that's Division of Labor at work, and everybody wins, as a desert that once offered nothing but hard, dry dust, was seeded with a casino, and now sports a burgeoning Oasis -- Something For Everybody.

ENTER LVT AND ITS ENHANCED GRAVITY EFFECT

Eventually LVT is imposed, forget the details, as a tax on the basis of 100% annual land rents only. Magically, there is no other tax, as they have all been shifted to LVT as a single tax. That is an enormous windfall for me in particular, because while my land is valued relatively high, it is only due my ratio of economic activity to required land.

The owner of the new skating rink next door did not fare so well. He paid/owes a lot for his property, hoping to profit from some of the traffic I drew in, but value of his land (along with land anywhere in close proximity) is now assessed as being of comparable value to the land my casino is on. That represents a cost of ownership increase that has literally priced the skating rink owner, and a few of my non-casino-owning neighbors, off of their land. The skating rink uses the same amount of land as I do, but will never, ever enjoy the same land-to-economic-activity ratio that I enjoy. His land might be "efficiently used", but only for that specific purpose, and only from his point of view -- not the state's, and not those chomping at the bit for the opportunity to set up shop next to a casino.

Result: Bye-bye skating rink. And bye-bye anyone else who must now keep up financially with neighbors in the artificially induced Concentrated Cost of Ownership Zone. Those who cannot keep pace must move away from the casino to cheaper land, and all because they cannot pull in enough economic activity (PER SQ. FT) to support the same Land Value Tax rates that my casino caused in the first place, based on the nature of my going concern, and its ability to draw in the largest paying crowd. So I am happy, because LVT encourages and rewards those with the least dependency on land, along with the densest concentration of financial activity, while shifting the bulk of the tax burden onto those with the greatest dependency on population and land, but without a high ratio of income to land required for use.

In other words, LVT is special privilege tax, as it is particularly well suited to special types of industries and firms. Well, its proponents would argue simply that it is "more efficient land use". What do I care? Yay for me and other casinos, and hooray especially for banks, brokers, insurance companies, developers, and any rent-seeking firm with a high financial activity to land use ratio. They are the clear winners, all of whom are seen as "more efficient" by the aggregate-only thinking geonomists under the new LVT regime.

Oh, and what about actual residences near the casino? Hehehe...they're the biggest losers of all, because they aren't even firms. Nothing "productive" about homes in the macroeconomic sense. Not unless you're a home developer or lender. Houses are not geared competitively for high LVT either. As as casino owner, however, I think I'll do just fine with my house. Time for some expensive improvements on my house -- make the nearby land more desirable so that I can get those land values up. As a bonus, I'll have geoists arguing that none of my improvements - not the casino or the house, have ANYTHING WHATSOEVER to do the value of the underlying land. Talk about useful idiots as economic allies! I'm not that stupid. Thanks to LVT, I now have a mechanism for clearing out all the "less productive" :::sngt!::: riff-raff from my neighborhood.

LVT - THE RADIAL PERIMETER BURNER EFFECT

So take the case of a landowner who is simply content to exist, serve, and live a quality life, and who is not prone to, or needing, artificially induced economic growth for the sake of growth alone; someone who does not require heavy local traffic, or whose business is not inherently geared for a high financial-activity-to-land ratio (as not all are equal by nature in that regard). Under an LVT regime, the very worst thing that can happen to that landowner is for a big fat Disney, or a casino, or anything else that draws a big paying crowd into itself, to plop its ass down and buy up land anywhere nearby. The cost of ownership is about to heat up, despite the fact that not all businesses or industries are geared the same way (nor need they be under normal circumstances). The blind LVT macro-assumption is that all economic activity is "good for the community", and therefore automatically good for everyone therein. The economic wealth-siphoning heat from a Big Behemoth is what "soaks into the ground". That is what radiates outward, as land values rise (along LVT as a cost of ownership), regardless of specific land use, and regardless of whether there really was any "increased economic benefit" to that particular landowner.

LVT proponents have their own spin on all of this, of course, as well as, I am sure, disagreement with what I've written or how I've characterized it. It doesn't matter. It is obvious to me why LVT has always been an easy smack down, which has nothing to do with Roy's characterizations of opponents as evil, murdering apologists for landowner privilege.

 

[EcoWarrier]

Yes, LVT geoist not care if black LVT cat or white LVT cat, so long as it catch mice for LVT. It no redistribute, it only reclaim to pay for service to help the LVT cat. Get it?

Steven you are confused - this we all know. Yes, who cares what color the collection is.

Geoism reclaims community created wealth to pay for community services. But as a great side affect it distributes, not redistributes, wealth more fairly in a society than any other economic system. The variations of LVT implementations around the world clearly, with glowing lights, show this.

In other parts of the world LVT is not implemented however they capture the wealth in the natural resources the land provides - Saudi Arabia is a prime example of that to the point their is no personal income tax.

Combine that with LVT and masses of commonwealth is reclaimed by the community - then economic freedom for all. No Income, Sales, Inheritance and every other stealth tax. Men are released from slavery keeping the fruits of their labors to spend as they please.

 

[EcoWarrier]

As a casino owner, I am fully aware that people are coming to take advantage of the privately owned, non-shared, non-public, for-profit capital investment on my privately owned land. I am not so blind or daft as to think for a moment that people are flocking to be in (or near) my casino because they heard about all the wonderful "community infrastructure" and "community created wealth". I know that's complete and utter bullshit. The common infrastructure that I share with everyone is a necessary, but wholly incidental part of a very small cost that is shared in common with others, with no profit-taking on anyone's part for it.

That is absolute tripe!

The casino owner needs roads, airports, etc, for customers to go to his casino. Also the hotels for customers, shops, schools for the employees, restaurants, electricity, sewers, water pipes, water reservoirs, hospitals, leisure facilities, etc. All of which without, the casino would make little to no money.

Without people the casino makes zero profit. The casino owner pays LVT on his valuable land which he contributed to, but the vast majority of the value in the land was created by the surrounding economic community activity that soaked into the land crystallizing as land values.

The owner of the new skating rink next door did not fare so well. He paid/owes a lot for his property, hoping to profit from some of the traffic I drew in, but value of his land (along with land anywhere in close proximity) is now assessed as being of comparable value to the land my casino is on. That represents a cost of ownership increase that has literally priced the skating rink owner, and a few of my non-casino-owning neighbors, off of their land. The skating rink uses the same amount of land as I do, but will never, ever enjoy the same land-to-economic-activity ratio that I enjoy. His land might be "efficiently used", but only for that specific purpose, and only from his point of view -- not the state's, and not those chomping at the bit for the opportunity to set up shop next to a casino.

Result: Bye-bye skating rink.

That is the same as today with the crazy system we have now. I see no skating rinks in central Manhattan with one floor buildings on the land. Businesses who can't make it sell up their highly valuable land or others offer them a high price for their land to make better economic use of it. The price they are offered is worth wrapping up the ice rink business.

1. LVT Is based on an unrigged free-market.
2. Markets may be fluid.
3. Most make in that market, some may fail.
4. LVT does NOT change business behavior.
5. LVT is not a welfare system propping up people and businesses to stay in one location.
6. LVT does not ensure a market stays static.
7. LVT is not a system that bestows privilege on any landowners.
8. LVT clearly promotes enterprise - look at Taiwan.
9. LVT does not artificially induce Concentrated Cost of Ownership Zones. The FREE-MARKET does that. LVT reacts to the free-market. The free-market determines the land values not LVT. LVT follows the market.

A quote from Roy:
The maximum amount of LVT is simply the market rent: the same amount the high bidder would voluntarily pay to use the land. It is therefore always affordable to the right user. It just might not be affordable to the current user, if they are not using it as productively as someone else would.​

LVT encourages productive use of land.

In other words, LVT is special privilege tax,

With LVT being exactly the opposite, the above proves your analytical skills are zero.

 

[EcoWarrier]

The blind LVT macro-assumption is that all economic activity is "good for the community", and therefore automatically good for everyone therein.

99% of people would say no economic activity at all is bad.

regardless of whether there really was any "increased economic benefit" to that particular landowner.

Once again ....LVT reclaims wealth created by the surrounding community, nothing else. A landowner did not create that wealth. The community reclaims its wealth. That is simple to understand. No one is stripping anything from the landowner. What he earned he keeps 100%. He is just not appropriating common wealth - a form of stealing from the community. That is simple to understand. He keeps 100% of what he earned and prevented from stealing wealth from the community.

 

[Roy L]

I ran some numbers as to what an LVT would cost in another thread. http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?386844-Robin-Hood-Tax/page3

Numbers that were of course wildly wrong.

I assumed the US budget was the same size it is now and you paid for all of it via LVT. If you tax only cities, it came to over $63,000 an acre- about 50% higher than the median income. If you include all farmlands and grazing lands, it drops down to about $3500 an acre per year- but that is also about 1.5 times the current average value per acre of that land too (just over $2000 an acre). That will discurage people from having farms (say goodbye to your food production or food prices would soar by multiples so the farmers could afford to pay the taxes (the taxes are due every year, the purchase price of the land is one- time)- so much for not being able to pass along the tax to consumers- or they will simply go out of business and everybody starve to death) or if you exclude the farm and rangeland, nobody can afford to live in the cities. This is our economic nirvana brought to us via the LVT?

LVT. Not LAT. So simple. But so hard for some people to comprehend...

The maximum amount of LVT is simply the market rent: the same amount the high bidder would voluntarily pay to use the land. It is therefore always affordable to the right user. It just might not be affordable to the current user, if they are not using it as productively as someone else would.

For comparison's sake, the highest state property tax average is less than three percent.

It's actually less than 2%.

The tax on farmland would be over 150%.

That's actually not a meaningful way of thinking about it, even if it were accurate, which it isn't, because the tax would cause the value of land to decline effectively to zero, at which point the notional ad valorem tax rate would be infinite. Which is of course meaningless, too. LVT can't exceed the market land rent because the land value (and thus the tax) would become negative.

 

[EcoWarrier]

EcoWarrier[sic]

Warrier
They are considered higher than the royal family castewise and are second-highest in caste-rankings.
​

 

[Steven Douglas]

Warrier
They are considered higher than the royal family castewise and are second-highest in caste-rankings.
​

I didn't realize you were a kind of royalty. My bad, your second highest highness. I guess that makes sic the only word that was misspelled.

 

[Roy L]

So the Georgists would have a monopoly government

Non-monopoly government is called, "civil war."

set the tax rate on lands

Land rent is set by the market, not government. There is a difference between "setting" a quantity and measuring it.

and in turn redistribute that collection to the community?

No, provide the desirable services and infrastructure people are willing to pay land rent for access to. That is how LVT aligns the government's financial interest with the public interest.

And tax it a 100% to boot?

Any publicly created land rent not recovered for public purposes and benefit is a welfare subsidy giveaway to the landowner.

How is this not complete communization of land?

The use and rent would be set by the market, and the land would be managed and exclusively occupied by the private landholder.

Rothbard pulls your thread with this statement...

"...Thus, pure site value could never be found in practice, and the single tax program could not be installed except by arbitrary authority."

Rothbard made a prize fool of himself when he tried to refute geoist arguments, and the above is a good example. People find pure site rent in practice all the time: it's what they pay for use of land.

Arbitrary authority making impossible tax calculations of land used or unused is simply re-inventing the state.

Funny how those "impossible" calculations were made quite successfully even in ancient societies where hardly anyone could read...

Reinventing the state to be better than the kind of state we have sounds like a good idea to me.