What do you think of Land Value Tax (LVT)

[LibForestPaul]

Government has a role to ensure that land is not monopolized by just a few. We have continuous poverty in the best nation in the world because we have allowed a select few to control nearly all of it.

Ever played the game Monopoly? Did you know that Monopoly is based on The Landlord Game. It was created to teach people how landlords prevent true productivity. At a certain point in the game its nearly impossible to win. Very similar to the real world. Did you know that only 3% of the population owns 95% of the land? Without the right tax reform this is not going to change (and will prbly only get worse).

They own 95% of the land because a, the free market prevents them from buying land or
b, a fascist regime/corrupt government/banking cartel ensures that they are not privileged to buy land.

The first step to breaking monopolies is liberty; not ever greater monopolistic application of violence and force.

 

[redbluepill]

They own 95% of the land because a, the free market prevents them from buying land or
b, a fascist regime/corrupt government/banking cartel ensures that they are not privileged to buy land.

The first step to breaking monopolies is liberty; not ever greater monopolistic application of violence and force.

Corrupt government certainly does ensure the denial of land access for the majority so I pick b.

Henry George was very pro free market: "Free trade means free production. Now fully to free production it is necessary not only to remove all taxes on production, but also to remove all other restrictions on production. True free trade, in short, requires that the active factor of production, Labor, shall have free access to the passive factor of production, Land. To secure this all monopoly of land must be broken up, and the equal right of all to the use of the natural elements must be secured by the treatment of the land as the common property in usufruct of the whole people." ~ Protection or Free Trade by Henry George

 

[redbluepill]

A little more on the compatibility of a free market and geoism from Mason Gaffney:

Common Property in Land is Compatible with the Market Economy.

You can enjoy the benefits of a market economy without sacrificing your common rights to the land of Russia. There is no need to make a hard choice between the two. One of the great fallacies that western economists and bankers are foisting on you is that you have to give up one to enjoy the other. These counselors work through lending and granting agencies that seduce you with loans and grants to learn and accept their ideology, which they variously call Neo-Classical Economics, or "monetarism," or "liberalization." It is glitter to distract you and pave the way for aliens to acquire and control your resources.

To keep land common while shifting to a market economy, you simply use the tax system. Taxation is the form that common property takes in a monetary, market-oriented economy. To tax is to socialize. It's then just a simple question of what you will socialize through taxation, and how; but in the answers lie success or failure.

Not only can you have both common land and free markets, you can't have one without the other. They go together, like love and marriage. You need market prices to help identify land's taxable surplus, which is the net product of land after deducting the human costs of using it. At the same time, you must support government from land revenues to have a truly free market, because otherwise you will raise taxes from production, trade, and capital formation, interfering with free markets. If you learn this second point, and act on it, you will have a much freer market than any of the OECD nations that now presume to instruct you, and that are campaigning vigorously to make all nations in the world "harmonize" their taxes to conform with their own abysmal systems.

The very people who gave us the term laissez-faire — the slogan at the core of a free market economy — made communizing land rents a central part of their program. These were the French economistes of the 18th Century, sometimes called "Physiocrats," who were the tutors of Adam Smith, and who inspired land reforms throughout Europe. The best-known of them were François Quesnay and A.R. Jacques Turgot, who championed land taxation. They accurately called it the "co-proprietorship of land by the state."

Since their time we have learned to measure land values, and we have broadened the meaning of "land" to comprise all natural resources. Agrarians will be relieved, and may be surprised, that farmland ranks well down the list in terms of total market value. Thus, a land tax is not primarily a tax on farms; only the very best soils in the best locations yield much taxable surplus.

http://www.wealthandwant.com/themes/Free_Market.html

 

[Travlyr]

Why do you assume one cannot afford it as they get older?

Because it is a likely event in the hypothetical scenario. Let us assume that even after removing all other taxes from society that there remains one or more individuals who are too decrepit to earn enough to pay the taxes on their home and have depleted their savings. What right do others have in taking their home from them?

On average older people tend to be much more well off than younger people. Plus the removal of the income tax, sales tax, capital tax, etc will more than offset the burden of the land value tax.

How is this relevant? What would you do for the below average people who lose their home for non-payment of taxes? Put them in a poor house?

 

[redbluepill]

Because it is a likely event in the hypothetical scenario. Let us assume that even after removing all other taxes from society that there remains one or more individuals who are too decrepit to earn enough to pay the taxes on their home and have depleted their savings. What right do others have in taking their home from them?

How is this relevant? What would you do for the below average people who lose their home for non-payment of taxes? Put them in a poor house?

A system under the LVT would dramatically reduce costs making this scenario much less likely. Under your system where you are fine with individuals and companies monopolizing the land someone who is strapped-for-cash is more likely to be sent to the poor house because rent costs would escalate.

 

[Travlyr]

A system under the LVT would dramatically reduce costs making this scenario much less likely.

Let's just say it did anyway. Would you kick them out of their home?

Under your system where you are fine with individuals and companies monopolizing the land someone who is strapped-for-cash is more likely to be sent to the poor house because rent costs would escalate.

I never proposed a system. How would rent costs go up if an individual owned the land outright?

I advocate no property taxes so that people can OWN their homes and acreages without anyone being able to take it away from them without just compensation. "Secure in their possessions."

 

[helmuth_hubener]

No one else is living on that asteroid. Not an issue.

It is an issue. Are you saying that even if a few years down the road all the asteroids are claimed (hey, high birth rate maybe), none are left, and there's a thousand people who really want to live on my asteroid, I can rightfully deny them that, and also never be charged any land value tax, forever? That is, may I own the asteroid absolutely, free and clear?

 

[helmuth_hubener]

By the way, BillG is that you?

 

[helmuth_hubener]

I never proposed a system. How would rent costs go up if an individual owned the land outright?

Much the same way product costs would go up if we repealed regulation on businesses. Without Big Bubba Government stopping them, businesses/landowners will consolidate into powerful monopolies and jack up the price of rent/products like you wouldn't believe. Wages will be pushed down to bare subsistence levels, too. We will essentially all die in the street, landless, helpless, and alone. Alone except for the georgists who will be there educating us, reminding us they were right all along.

 

[redbluepill]

Let's just say it did anyway. Would you kick them out of their home?

No, because the home is actually private property. And he still is allowed access to the land. He just has no rightful claim to exclude others from accessing the land.

I never proposed a system. How would rent costs go up if an individual owned the land outright?

Do you not endorse a system where landgrabbing is allowed unrestrained?

I'm sure you acknowledge when there is a monopoly then costs go up. Same goes for land.

I advocate no property taxes so that people can OWN their homes and acreages without anyone being able to take it away from them without just compensation. "Secure in their possessions."

Homes are capital. Acreage is land. A georgist would never advocate taxing a home let alone taking it away from the owner.

 

[redbluepill]

It is an issue. Are you saying that even if a few years down the road all the asteroids are claimed (hey, high birth rate maybe), none are left, and there's a thousand people who really want to live on my asteroid, I can rightfully deny them that, and also never be charged any land value tax, forever? That is, may I own the asteroid absolutely, free and clear?

A thousand people who really want your asteroid when theres probably billions if not trillions in this solar system alone? Can you come up with a more logical scenario please?

 

[Roy L]

Of course, he never gives any indication of how to determine the value... because it is wholly subjective.

Value is not subjective, it is a fact of the market: what a thing would trade for. The notion that value is subjective is an Austrian school confusion. It is utility (the capacity to satisfy human desires) that is subjective, not value.

Being that it is subjective, there is no way of definitively creating a price for all intents and purposes.

Appraisers prove that claim false every day.

But your solution of the LVT gives the ability to the government to define an arbitrary price for purposes of defining a taxable amount.

No, it does not. LVT is automatically limited to the land rent. Any attempt to charge more than that simply makes the land value negative and results in abandonment and no revenue. LVT is the ONLY POSSIBLE tax system that aligns the government's own financial incentives with the public interest.

 

[Roy L]

They own 95% of the land because a, the free market prevents them from buying land or

There has never been any such thing as a free market wherein people can buy or own land, and there never can be. Owning land is inherently a privilege of violating others' rights to liberty -- a welfare subsidy giveaway to the landowner -- and by definition, no such privilege can exist in a free market.

b, a fascist regime/corrupt government/banking cartel ensures that they are not privileged to buy land.

Only a corrupt government can possibly privilege anyone to buy or own land, as proved above.

The first step to breaking monopolies is liberty; not ever greater monopolistic application of violence and force.

Bingo. Property in land inherently violates people's rights to liberty, so the only way to stop government from applying ever greater violence and force for the benefit of landowners is to require landowners to repay more of what they take from society with government's help. That is what LVT does.

 

[erowe1]

Only a corrupt government can possibly privilege anyone to buy or own land, as proved above.

Do you really believe that there are no circumstances where I, by natural law, can claim some plot of ground as specially mine to the exclusion of others? If I choose to inhabit some unoccupied land and build a house there, is every day of my continuing to live in that house just a privilege that the rest of the human race allows me to have, and any time the rest of them want to use that land where my house is, it's every bit as much theirs as it is mine?

 

[helmuth_hubener]

A thousand people who really want your asteroid when theres probably billions if not trillions in this solar system alone? Can you come up with a more logical scenario please?

I said, high birth rate. That's the scenario, love it or leave it. Are you going to force me to pay land tax in exchange for the "privilege" of keeping the asteroid monopolized all to myself and the teeming rock-less hordes at bay? Also, are you BillG?

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Do you really believe that there are no circumstances where I, by natural law, can claim some plot of ground as specially mine to the exclusion of others? If I choose to inhabit some unoccupied land and build a house there, is every day of my continuing to live in that house just a privilege that the rest of the human race allows me to have, and any time the rest of them want to use that land where my house is, it's every bit as much theirs as it is mine?

Yes, they really believe that. That is a completely accurate presentation of their view. That's why eventually BillG or his clone redbluepill is going to admit (yet again) that he would steal my asteroid.

You see, Smithian economics sets up these three classes: Capitalists, Landlords, and Laborers, and they're always battling each other for scarce resources, with the landlords and capitalists winning, of course. Smith figured the landlords have the upper hand against the capitalists and long-term will generally win out, over time expanding and expanding their land holdings and charging higher and higher prices. Thus you've got these useless parasites called landlords and you need to use the state to tax and smash them as much as possible, to level the playing field. Marx built on Smith and Ricardo's ideas but figured the capitalists were going to be the dominant class and thus they must be smashed. So if you want to smash the landlords, you're a Georgist. If you want to smash the capitalists, you're a Marxist. Some people take both paths, becoming Marxo-georgists.

 

[Roy L]

Let us assume that even after removing all other taxes from society that there remains one or more individuals who are too decrepit to earn enough to pay the taxes on their home

LVT does not levy any tax on their home. The tax is on the value of the LAND: i.e., what the landholder is taking from society.

and have depleted their savings.

Assuming these people are more intelligent than LVT opponents (not much of a stretch), long before their savings were depleted they would sell their home to someone able to use its location more productively, and seek accommodation in a location better suited to their needs and means.

What right do others have in taking their home from them?

No one is "taking their home from them." That's just a fabrication on your part. They would simply lose the privilege of excluding others from the land, and so probably sell the house (houses can also be moved, if they could afford to do that). The more relevant question is: what right have THEY to deprive others, without just compensation, of the liberty to use the land nature put there?

What would you do for the below average people who lose their home for non-payment of taxes? Put them in a poor house?

Nobody would lose their home for non-payment of taxes because homes would not be subject to taxes. People who couldn't afford the land tax would just sell their houses and move to a location better suited to their needs and means, same as they do now if they can't afford to pay income tax, sales tax, property tax, etc. Same as tenants do if they can't afford a rent increase. Why do you believe people are too stupid to figure that out?

 

[Roy L]

Do you really believe that there are no circumstances where I, by natural law, can claim some plot of ground as specially mine to the exclusion of others?

Correct. You have no right forcibly to deprive others of their liberty without making just compensation. By what right could Crusoe claim to own "his" island, and tell Friday to either be his slave or get back in the water?

If I choose to inhabit some unoccupied land and build a house there,

You mean just as people did for thousands of years WITHOUT owning or forcibly excluding others from the land....?

is every day of my continuing to live in that house just a privilege that the rest of the human race allows me to have,

The privilege is not living in the house but forcibly excluding others from the land. Try not to change the subject.

and any time the rest of them want to use that land where my house is, it's every bit as much theirs as it is mine?

The land is no one's. If you want to deprive others of their liberty to use what nature provided for all, make just compensation to them for what you deprive them of. Simple.

 

[Travlyr]

There has never been any such thing as a free market wherein people can buy or own land, and there never can be. Owning land is inherently a privilege of violating others' rights to liberty -- a welfare subsidy giveaway to the landowner -- and by definition, no such privilege can exist in a free market.

Only a corrupt government can possibly privilege anyone to buy or own land, as proved above.

Bingo. Property in land inherently violates people's rights to liberty, so the only way to stop government from applying ever greater violence and force for the benefit of landowners is to require landowners to repay more of what they take from society with government's help. That is what LVT does.

Given the fact that people need food, water, and shelter for survival along with the fact that all wealth comes from the earth makes this counterintuitive. Pure liberty doesn't sound like fun. No IP, no land, self-centered individualism ... seems like an uncreative, unstable, lonely state of being.

 

[Roy L]

That's why eventually BillG or his clone redbluepill is going to admit (yet again) that he would steal my asteroid.

What could make it "your" asteroid, other than your having stolen it (with or without government's help) from everyone else who would otherwise be at liberty to use it?

You see, Smithian economics sets up these three classes: Capitalists, Landlords, and Laborers, and they're always battling each other for scarce resources, with the landlords and capitalists winning, of course. Smith figured the landlords have the upper hand against the capitalists and long-term will generally win out, over time expanding and expanding their land holdings and charging higher and higher prices.

And Smith certainly appears to have been right.

Thus you've got these useless parasites called landlords and you need to use the state to tax and smash them as much as possible, to level the playing field.

The state tilts the playing field by giving landowners their privilege of parasitism. The state can therefore level the playing field by rescinding it.

Marx built on Smith and Ricardo's ideas but figured the capitalists were going to be the dominant class and thus they must be smashed.

But Marx was clearly wrong, as unlike ownership of land, ownership of capital (in the economic, not the accounting sense) rarely results in significant accumulation of wealth.

So if you want to smash the landlords, you're a Georgist. If you want to smash the capitalists, you're a Marxist.

Right. The difference being that capitalists contribute to production while landowners do not. That is why Marxist China stayed poor, while semi-Georgist China has rapidly become richer.

Some people take both paths, becoming Marxo-georgists.

There is no such thing as a "Marxo-georgist." Marx and George, who were contemporaries, detested each other, and their views are inherently contradictory.