Well I guess we could just do away with my assumption that government has some legitimate authority to tax and go back to running it all with voluntary contributions and user fees.Originally Posted by Roy L
That works for me.
Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.
NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012
Right. And in our current reality, people vote to steal from others to pay for their ideologies - with the HAPPY TO SERVE YOU government, that LOVES to steal from some to pay for others.
How about THIS - No more rationalizations. Taxation is theft. Arguing over which tax is least offensive is like trying to pick out of a line of girls, all of whom have STD's. "I'll take the one with crabs, that bitch with the Ghonnorhea sludge is just too gross".
$#@!. THAT.
"My form of stealing is less offensive then your form of stealing!!"
And people wonder why society is $#@!ed up.
Good, I'm glad.
Assuming the government should, or does, have the right to steal...is mistake #1...and the foundation for all that is $#@!ed up in society.
Had food been scarce and Crusoe not been lonely, Friday would have been floating face down.
That's pretty much what those who have no land would say.All are naturally at liberty to use all land, whether greedy thieves claim to own it or not. That is just a fact of physical reality.
Those without land are granted permission to use someone else's land to obtain the means to pay for land. Thus the right to land is a fallacy conjured up by those who have no land.Clearly that is self-contradictory, because without using land, no one could ever have worked to obtain the means to pay for land. The right to use land therefore has logical precedence over any claim to payment for land. Therefore, it is logically impossible to subordinate the right to use land to any claim to ownership of land.
It is at least quite a bit better form than repeatedly lying.
Everyone lies from time to time ("Do these pants make me look fat?"). That is not the same as being a liar.You didn't call me a liar. You just said I lie.
No, their statements. If you feel you have been exposed to ridicule as an idiot, perhaps you should consider the nature of the claims you have been making.Similarly, you would never dream of calling anyone an idiot. That would just be low. You just say that they are idiotic.
Stupidity is only one reason for opposing land value taxation. There is also ignorance, greed, cowardice, laziness and dishonesty.But you'd never call anyone an idiot. How dare anyone accuse you of that? Anyone who did that is just naked, smirking evil, obviously despicable in every way, and has the same tragically low intelligence as everyone who opposes land taxation.
Sigh.
PREMISE -- 'Government has a legitimate authority to tax'.
PREMISE -- 'Land is the most transparent form of wealth (can't be hidden)'.
PREMISE --'Any form of taxation should be as fair and simple as possible'
CONCLUSION -- 'A land value tax is a valid mechanism of taxation'
Not rationalization, just advancing an argument for consideration.
Last edited by WilliamC; 09-16-2011 at 06:51 PM.
Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.
NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012
It's a lousy idea, why?
It is much harder to abuse than other taxes. Corruption is of course always a danger under any system.I've read a bit about Georgism and LVT and, given that government has some authority to collect taxes, I can see where a land tax is possibly the most transparent (can't hide land) but as with any tax it can and will be abused if at all possible.
The land can never be "paid-for," because the occupant is getting an ongoing, permanent stream of benefits from government and the community.But the thought of someone being thrown out of their paid-for residence for failure to pay property taxes is abhorrent and should never happen.
You don't expect to go to a grocery store and buy some food, and then expect to get more food every week, forever, without paying any more. Why do you expect to get access to the services and infrastructure government provides and the opportunities and amenities the community provides for an indefinite period without paying any more for them?
Why not let the owner opt out of the permanent stream of benefits the government and community are supposedly supplying?
You can say that about any object-even about a person's body. That doesn't make it wrong-it just means you don't like it. As for your last statement, the reason we get access to those things is because we pay for them, one way or another. Nothing in this world is free.
You tell me.
And the power to arbitrarily raise taxes in order to remove people from their land is tempting for those looking to be corrupted.
But the tax could be paid for at time of title transfer, since the government (supposedly) lasts longer than any individual.
Why should the government get money every year? Why not every 10 years or every week?
Why not at time of title transfer?
Food is consumed. Land is not.
I don't. Let the free market provide these instead.
Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.
NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012
I've only gotten halfway through this thread but have seen Somalia mentioned several times as some kind of empirical evidence against the anarcho school of thought.
Personally while I think there are good arguments to be made for the Geoist POV, that's not one of them. Check out:
http://mises.org/daily/2066
http://mises.org/daily/2701
and especially
http://mises.org/daily/5418
Though it may be obvious where my philosophical preferences lie, I don't believe one side will ever be able to convince the other of its superiority. But that doesn't mean we can't be honest and responsible in our debate. The "Somalia" argument is a page straight out of the totalitarian propaganda book, and I have to say I am surprised to see supposed libertarians using it.
Only if Crusoe was an evil, greedy fool -- i.e., a typical apologist for landowner privilege.
As it is objectively correct.That's pretty much what those who have no land would say.
No, that's self-evidently false, ahistorical, and self-contradictory. No one was "without land" because no one had any right to deprive others of their liberty to use land. And no one could ever have come to own land in the first place because there was initially no landowner to grant permission or to pay for it.Those without land are granted permission to use someone else's land to obtain the means to pay for land.
See how easily your dishonest garbage is proved to be dishonest garbage?
The rights to life and liberty do not depend on a grant of permission from some greedy, evil thief for their exercise. If you need someone's permission to sustain your life, you are their slave.
LOL! You are conveniently forgetting that in the first instance, no one "had" any land because it was all unowned, so no one could ever have survived if they had no right to use land.Thus the right to land is a fallacy conjured up by those who have no land.
See how easily all your claims are proved absurd and self-refuting?
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire
The more interesting corollary of Voltaire's astute observation is that those who would make you commit atrocities will first try to make you believe absurdities. The purpose of your absurdities is to rationalize, excuse, and justify the atrocities committed in the name of the Great God Property.
Check your premises.I think you may be the only one supposing that they are libertarians. They never claimed to be.
Last edited by helmuth_hubener; 09-16-2011 at 07:24 PM.
Why would I waste my time even clicking on a link to mises.org?
As Nobel laureate in economics Amartya Sen has pointed out, no democracy has ever suffered a significant famine -- a fact that is relevant to the case of Somalia for, in Dr. Strangelove's delicious phrase, "reasons which must be all too obvious at this moment."The "Somalia" argument is a page straight out of the totalitarian propaganda book, and I have to say I am surprised to see supposed libertarians using it.
So, how's that "meeza hatesa gubmint" thing workin' out for ya?
Well if you're not going to read the articles, I'm not going to engage in a tit for tat.
Of course Marx, from whom you so desperately try to distance yourself, agreed with you that property is the root of all evil. As did Godwin, Proudhon and all the bad anarchists (left anarchists).
Libertarians, on the other hand, believe that property is the root of all good.
There really isn't any common ground. If you were smart, like redbluepill, you'd interminably bring up quotes of liberty-lovers from days of yore, trying to at least give the appearance of some common ground. But the fact is your philosophy and the philosophy of most of us on this board are diametrically opposed.
That's just it: you wouldn't! You're too smart for that kind of behavior. I mean, you've already demolished everything they've ever written over there with a few well-chosen turns of phrase. Point, set, match. They're out of the game. Courtesy of Roy L. Mises is dead, long live Henry George!
Already answered: the first thing they voted for was to make someone else pay the taxes.
What's fair is to recover the publicly created value of land for the purposes and benefit of the public that creates it. The landholders in a rent recovery system are not paying their own money in return for a proportional political voice. They are REpaying value that was ALREADY GIVEN TO THEM IN RETURN FOR NOTHING. When you pay for what you take home from the grocery store, that does not entitle you to be the boss at the store: you ALREADY GOT value for your money, just as landowners have. LVT just asks them to pay market value for what they are used to getting for free.Also, their votes are tallied in proportion to how much LVT they paid -- if you pay twice as much LVT, you get to vote twice as much. One dollar, one vote. That's only fair.
Already disproved by historical fact: landowners are the only net tax receivers, yet land taxation is relentlessly decreasing.Let net-tax-receivers vote and you guarantee the tax rate will forever be increasing.
Of course, you have no choice but to lie about what Georgists plainly say.Of course, the Georgists think that's not abhorrent at all, but that what is abhorrent is this: themselves not being able to occupy whatever land they want in whatever location they want.
Only to the extent everyone else is. That's called having equal rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of one's labor.Oh yeah, and one more minor detail: they are entitled to it without paying anyone anything.
Despicable. Landowner privilege inflicts a Holocaust worth of robbery, enslavement, oppression, suffering, starvation, despair and death on innocent human beings EVERY YEAR -- and you are rationalizing and justifying it.Oh, the injustice they must suffer! My heart is bleeding, here.
How many millions more human sacrifices must you lay on the altar of your Great God Property?
~~~
~~~
Marx was angry, confused, and wrong; but he did finally admit, deep in the bowels of Vol III of "Capital" where no one would ever read it, that the excessive, unearned returns he claimed went to capitalists in fact all went to landowners.
Greed (unfortunately mistranslated as "love of money") is the root of all evil. Privileges such as slavery, landowning, private banks' debt-money issuance, etc., are the institutionalized legal empowerment of greed. They are evil implemented as public policy.
I am not an anarchist.As did Godwin, Proudhon and all the bad anarchists (left anarchists).
If property is the root of all good, you must favor chattel slavery, taxi medallions, licenses to steal, and every other form of robbery and oppression that can be implemented as ownable property. Ooops...Libertarians, on the other hand, believe that property is the root of all good.
You need to find a willingness to know the fact that not all property is good or rightful. Once you have progressed to that point, you can begin to consider what forms of property are rightful under what conditions, and why.
Not as long as you refuse to know facts that prove you wrong, there isn't.There really isn't any common ground.
I could do that. In fact I have, elsewhere.If you were smart, like redbluepill, you'd interminably bring up quotes of liberty-lovers from days of yore, trying to at least give the appearance of some common ground.
Here's Milton Friedman: “In my opinion, the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago.”
Here's David Nolan, Libertarian Party founder: "My own preference is for a single tax on land."
Do these quotes and others convince you that I am something other than a raving communist? Of course not. You have made up your mind, and are not open to factual education on this subject.
I don't know what most on this board believe, but I do know that I was reading Rand, Mises, Friedman, Nock and the rest before Ronald Reagan even entered politics. I know the libertarian canon better than most, and I have devoted a great deal more thought and research to the question of how rightly to fund government than almost anyone on this forum, I promise you. I have come to understand why so many great economists and champions of liberty have advocated land value taxation because I have been willing to learn, and to change my beliefs when they were proved wrong. I invite you to try to find a willingness to do likewise.But the fact is your philosophy and the philosophy of most of us on this board are diametrically opposed.
I've read ample similar apologias for Somali anarchy before. I don't have to read every one to know what they say. If you have an argument, make it. Don't just post urls and pretend they make your argument for you.
There is no way to do that, and in any case he is not paying because he is enjoying those benefits (he may just be a speculator, keeping the land idle), but because he is depriving everyone else of them. If you buy a hamburger at McD's, you have to pay for it even if you are going to throw it away untasted, because someone else would have wanted to eat it.
There. Fixed it for you.
But not correctly. Whatever benefit you get from government, you have to pay a landowner full market value for. That is why land is so expensive.
We have to pay landowners for them, one way or another. The value of land is the precise measure of the extent to which landowners get them WITHOUT paying for them.As for your last statement, the reason we get access to those things is because we pay for them, one way or another. Nothing in this world is free.
It violates the two most fundamental and widely accepted principles of sound tax design: "beneficiary pay" and "ability to pay."
Land taxes can't be raised arbitrarily, because anyone can see the land, and check the taxes against those on neighboring land. Moreover, there is no way to increase the tax above the full rent, which is what should be paid anyway: the land would simply be abandoned, reducing the government's revenue. And there is likewise no motive to remove people from "their" land if they are paying the full rent: no one else would be willing to pay more than that.And the power to arbitrarily raise taxes in order to remove people from their land is tempting for those looking to be corrupted.
That just encourages people to hold and hoard land out of efficient use, hoping to evade the tax entirely. See California since Prop 13.But the tax could be paid for at time of title transfer, since the government (supposedly) lasts longer than any individual.
Because it provides the landowner with the advantages of services and infrastructure every year.Why should the government get money every year?
The annual payment of land taxes was originally based on the annual agricultural cycle. Nowadays it could just as easily be quarterly, monthly, etc. But budgets are done annually, so that seems a good enough maximum length for a revenue cycle.Why not every 10 years or every week?
Because that would encourage hoarding and the associated allocative inefficiency.Why not at time of title transfer?
The benefits and advantages provided to the landowner in any given period of time are consumed in the sense that they are gone forever, and cannot be enjoyed by anyone else. Try again.Food is consumed. Land is not.
Yes, of course you do. In fact, you DEMAND them.I don't.
The free market can't provide efficient quantities of public goods, as Somalia proves so very thoroughly. This is Economics 101.Let the free market provide these instead.
You are old; we are young. You will die; we will win.
Well the person purchasing the land from an individual (or their estate) is benefiting from owning the land so why shouldn't they pay the taxes? And if they can't afford to purchase the land and pay the tax then someone else will buy it instead, so I don't see your point.
Of course they could be if corrupt people were running the system.
Oh, so I get to set my own tax rate? Cool, then I'll set it to $1.00 per years.
Problem solved.
No, the government could raise the taxes until the current owner could no longer pay and was forced off, then the government could take possession, turn right around and sell the land to it's buddies and then lower the taxes.
Corruption is a bitch.
Why not simply have government collect whatever taxes when the title is transferred then?
Nothing is sure but death and taxes, and government will be their waiting to collect it's tax after the current owner dies and before a new owner can take possession.
Why? Does it abolish annual property taxes in favor of a title transfer tax at time of sale?
No, it provides these every second of every day. So why not have the government collect the tax monthly? Or weekly? Or daily?
Or when the land is sold and the title transferred?
So it's arbitrary. Fine, then let government wait until the current owner is dead and collect the tax from the new owner before they take title.
How? If you have to pay taxes when you purchase property and before you take title then this would limit how much land one could buy to how much one could afford.
As long as the tax is paid up front why should the government care how long an individual holds the land? Government will be there after they have died waiting to collect from the next person wanting to buy it.
No, land is not consumed, and these 'benefits' you speak of I say should largely be provided by the free-market to begin with, and so the land owner would be paying for them anyway. No need to try again.
**looks at our exchange in this thread**
Where?
LOL! Somalia has a free-market? That's news to me.
Tell me about how their government upholds contract laws and regulates against fraud and coercion in the market.
No, this is a cordial debate on RPF, not an economics class.
Thanks for the feedback.
Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.
NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012
lvt means you never own the land, any tax on the land means you do not own the land ever!!
2016 gop est business as usual, rules do not apply.
until you get rid of land tax no one owns land
2016 gop est business as usual, rules do not apply.
There's no if about it.
Any time the success of any proposal that gives someone power over other people depends on the occupant of that position being the right kind of person, the decision of whether or not to create such a position must be made with the assumption that the person who actually occupies it will be the wrong kind.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Connect With Us