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.