The Single Tax - Land Value Tax (LVT)

[Roy L]

The other way around. Certainly. Automatically.

Nope. That's just more stupid garbage from you with no basis in fact, logic, economics, or anything else other than your own hatred of liberty, justice, humanity, and truth.

As usual, you have everything exactly backwards, Roy.

ROTFL!! I am not the one who claims Hong Kong cannot possibly be free or prosperous, Steven. You are. I am not the one who claims the people of Bangladesh or Guatemala or the Philippines enjoy liberty while the people of Hong Kong do not, Steven. You are.

Mandatory revenues paid to any monopolistic entity forces absolutely nothing from that entity.

<yawn> LVT revenues are not mandatory, Stevil, stop lying. They are simply the market price for the economic advantage use of the land provides. If the government does not make use of the land advantageous -- IF IT DOESN'T MAKE USING THE LAND WITHIN ITS JURISDICTION MORE DESIRABLE, WHICH IS ALMOST A DEFINITION OF GOOD GOVERNMENT THAT SERVES THE COMMUNITY -- then it won't get the revenue. People won't pay it. They can't be forced to pay it any more than a private landowner's tenants can be forced to pay more than the market rent.

Everything you say is the exact, diametric opposite of the truth.

People will continue to require land for life and commerce regardless whether it is under a public or private landownership regime, and without regard to whether any publicly funded infrastructure or improvements are made.

But they WON'T PAY AS MUCH for land that does not provide the advantages that desirable and efficient government services and infrastructure provide.

It's no surprise to me that you think this way, Roy, as you don't even believe it's possible for a state to withhold land availability to the market as a means of increasing its value, the state's revenues, through artificial scarcity.

It's possible -- but not with LVT, because LVT recovers the full rental value of the land. The government can't get more than that by withholding land from the market any more than a private landowner can increase his rent income by withholding his own land from the market.

But that's because you don't know any real-world economics.

?? ROTFL!! I am not the one who claims the supply of land is determined by how much landowners want for it, Steven. You are.

[EcoWarrier]

You added it because you hate liberty, justice and truth.

His self-centeredness and greed gets the better of him. He believes in a winner takes all and exploit the rest - all fair play to his warped mind. He will tell himself lies and believes them. He think Geoism is some sort of state collectivism - how further from the truth. It is sad really.

[Steven Douglas]

I am not the one who claims Hong Kong cannot possibly be free or prosperous, Steven.

Neither am I, but then again I don't have a collectivist hive mindset, and would never refer to "Hong Kong" or any other state or jurisdiction as if it was a single entity, like A PERSON. When you say "free or prosperous", WHO in Hong Kong are you referring to, exactly? Under any state monopoly there will be BIG winners, just as there will be BIGGER LOSERS. And for the actual winners there, the majority of the wealth in Hong Kong came from financial activity OUTSIDE of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong's poorest living in 'coffin homes'
Hidden amid the multi-million dollar high-rise apartments and chic shopping malls of Hong Kong's urban centers are scores of tiny, unseen tenements -- some no bigger than coffins -- that many people call home.

[Mak is a] Hong Kong native, he went bankrupt after a series of unsuccessful ventures in finance and now makes barely enough to cover his rent -- around $150 a month. He is now among the 1.2 million Hong Kong residents who currently live in poverty, according to a government advisory group.

For Sze, the "coffin home" phenomenon is the result of an urban perfect storm: a combination of skyrocketing real-estate prices and arguably the biggest wealth gap in Asia.

A 2011 survey by Savills -- a real estate company based in the UK -- found that the city's top end properties sell for a confounding $10,550 per square foot.

"Hong Kong has gotten more and more wealthy, but these people have been left behind," she said. "A dweller once said to me, 'I'm not even dead yet but I'm already living in my coffin -- four walls and nails'."

Sze said more than 300,000 people in Hong Kong are currently waiting for public housing. And although the average waiting time is three years, many wait in cramped spaces, like coffin homes, for as many as 10 years.

Sound like LVT heaven to you? Is that "good enough land to live on"? Sound like freedom and prosperity to you? Are you going to credit LVT for that, or will you conveniently blame whatever doesn't make Hong a "free and prosperous" place on something else, or the lack of more LVT? You cite Hong Kong as an example of LVT success (or "prosperity-despite-LVT" at worst) when convenient, but when equally convenient you will say that Hong Kong has other problems, and is not really LVT as it should be implemented.

Or how about this related gem:

Hong Kong under pressure as poverty levels rise

All four of them live in a room that measures just six feet by 10 feet... Altogether, they earn just HKD9,000 a month (£740) and immediately shell out over 40 per cent of that in rent.

Their large tenement building is a maze of what have become known as "coffin homes", apartments that have been subdivided by slumlords into tiny plywood boxes, some too small for anything other than a camp bed.

"Housing is the worst issue, because they have almost stopped building public housing," said Eddie Tsang at the Hong Kong Council of Social Security.

Last year, the city only built under 14,000 units, despite the island having a huge amount of land available.

Critics suggest that the government, which once promised to build 85,000 units a year, is in thrall to the island's property tycoons, who are keen to keep apartment prices high. Prices have risen 76 per cent since 2008.

I can pretty much assure you that someone is prospering in all of that - including Hong Kong THE STATE. But so much for a mere tax causing a state to be "automatically forced" to do anything at all. Hong Kong has LVT and other taxes.

So much for your ideal that:

IF IT DOESN'T MAKE USING THE LAND WITHIN ITS JURISDICTION MORE DESIRABLE, WHICH IS ALMOST A DEFINITION OF GOOD GOVERNMENT THAT SERVES THE COMMUNITY -- then it won't get the revenue. People won't pay it. They can't be forced to pay it any more than a private landowner's tenants can be forced to pay more than the market rent.

And now we return you back to the regularly scheduled real world....

What Hong Kong proves to me is that LVT (Socialism Lite) is FAR worse than Marxism, in that it might actually persist much longer under the cesspool of the Crony Capitalism it would engender, encourage and feed (your "most productive hands" doctrine, which really means "most productive to the state"). That's not free market capitalism, where value is discovered as a result of myriad individual preferences. It's a state sponsored, state controlled dog fight/cockfight ring, where the winners and losers are all decided on the basis of who serves the state's interests best.

Geoists hit the nail on the head when they talk about the effect that monopoly ownership of land can do to keep the effects of slavery alive. But that's where the Geoist sanity ends, as their solution is to make the entire state a land-controlled plantation, with the state LICENSING slave ownership by extension. At least sharecroppers and other victims of rent-seeking land monopolists could actually move away, even if to the frontier. For Hong Kong residents, the only "frontier" available to them, besides leaving the state altogether if possible, is a COFFIN.

With LVT there is no longer a frontier. It's no longer a question of who is a slave to which rent-seeking private monopolist. That monopoly on land rents question is finally settled. The only question that remains is which Plantation Commune-ity a slave "chooses" to belong, and to what extent he wants to actually serve as a slave for that community. He is free to choose which master he serves, but he is not free to choose none.

Your nasty Socialist Lite human enslavement experiment is ripe for corruption from the onset:

Zoning laws and land and resource preservation schemes that cause artificial scarcity (rent-seeking by the state)
Renaissance and Enterprise "partnership" Zones whereby the state can pick winners and losers, giving the wealthy and politically well-connected decided economic advantages.
Rent-seeking crony capitalists would be the real winners, the ultimate "Licensed Plantation Renters" in all this, just like in Hong Kong, like so many mafia bosses buying up territories, so long as they give proper tribute to the ultimate mafia Don. But that's OK with you, because whomever wins the bidding war is presumed, not just to have the most money, but also to be "the most productive hands". And fuck Granny with her unproductive hands in her unproductive "good enough land to live on" promise while she waits in living coffin.

?? ROTFL!! I am not the one who claims the supply of land is determined by how much landowners want for it, Steven. You are.

Go roll on the floor laughing in your Hong Kong coffin, Roy, and pray for the state to place you on a short-list that will save you from a slumlord, because LVT sure in the fuck hasn't - and won't.

And speaking of Hong Kong, this just in:

Leung Faces Record Hong Kong Wealth Gap as City’s New Leader

Leung, 57, has pledged to raise the income of the poorest and boost Hong Kong’s housing supply. City officials said this month that its wealth gap, the biggest in Asia, widened to the worst since records started being kept in 1971.

Public discontent in Hong Kong may draw as many as 100,000 protesters at the start of Leung’s term to push the government to address rising living costs and hold China to its promise to allow direct leadership elections in Hong Kong by 2017. Leung will need to address that pressure from below while meeting China’s demand for stability as it goes through its own once-a- decade leadership transition later this year.

“He’s going to make a number of changes in livelihood issues,” said Martin Lee, the founding chairman of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, which is questioning the legitimacy of Leung’s election victory. “He will do it right away because he wants to endear himself to the Hong Kong people. These are the things that would make Hong Kong people less afraid of Communist rule.”

Scary religion you believe in, Roy.

[Steven Douglas]

Double post from a server error.

[EcoWarrier]

that LVT (Socialism Lite)

This clearly indicates your political conditioning. This is sad.

[EcoWarrier]

Taiwan To Close Land Tax Loophole
The government’s proposed action is in response to those property developers who, instead of building on undeveloped land to provide much-needed residential properties, leave the real estate idle to profit from its untaxed rise in value, thereby contributing to inflationary property pressures.

http://www.tax-news.com/news/Taiwan_...____45858.html

Taiwan’s land taxes were a major cause of its economic success. In the 1950s and 1960s, Taiwan was transformed from an impoverished agricultural backwater to a thriving industrial state with one of the world's strongest economies. If the tax is applied to land value rather than the value of the harvest, then the land-value tax is not a burden on farmers, since it reduces the price of farmland, and does not add to the market rent of land.

A major strength of Taiwan's property tax system is its constitutionality. The implementation of the equalization of land rights is stipulated in the Constitution, rather than merely in laws that can be more easily changed or eliminated.

http://course.earthrights.net/node/102

Taiwan, 1940s. Old Formosa was mired in poverty and fast breeding. Hunger afflicted the majority of people who were landless peasants. Less than 20 families monopolized the entire island.
..
..
A follower of Sun Yat-sen, the father of modern China and an adherent of Henry George, Chiang knew of the Single Tax. Borrowing a page from George via Sun, the new Nationalist Government of Taiwan instituted its "land to the tiller program" which taxed farmland according to its value. Soon the large plantation owners found themselves paying out about as much in taxes as they were getting back as Rent. Being a middleman was no longer worth the bother, so they sold off their excess to farmers at prices the peasants could afford.
..
Working their own land with newly marketed fertilizers, new owners worked harder. They produced more,
..
Taiwan began to set world records with growth rates of 10% per annum in their GDP and 20% in their industry. (Fred Harrison, Power in the Land, 1983)

http://www.progress.org/geonomy/Numbers.html

New York City, 1920s. After World War I, many New Yorkers suffered from lack of housing. To solve the problem, Governor Al Smith borrowed a page from Henry George (who ran for mayor of New York City in 1886, finishing second ahead of Teddy Roosevelt, and again in 1897, dying four days before the election). Smith persuaded the New York legislature to pass a law allowing New York City for the next ten years to tax land but not the buildings on it.

New construction more than tripled while in other big cities it barely doubled. Not only was there more housing, and thus lower cost apartments, there were more jobs and higher wages for construction workers, and more business for merchants who sold goods to the employed workers.

Economic good times in New York came to an end, though, when owners in 1928 began to anticipate the expiration of the tax-shift law. (“How New York Solved Its Housing Crisis”, Charles Johnson Post, 1931?, Schalkenbach Fdn, Mason Gaffney, 2001) Some say that the drastic decline in building starts, not the stock market crash of 1929, was the real trigger of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
..
..
Watching land prices inflate in the 80's, followed by farm takeovers and slowed housing starts, land-focused econometricians predicted land prices to hit bottom in about 1990, then next around 2008.

[Roy L]

Neither am I,

Yes, you are.

but then again I don't have a collectivist hive mindset,

<yawn> Stupid, dishonest, deceitful filth.

and would never refer to "Hong Kong" or any other state or jurisdiction as if it was a single entity, like A PERSON.

ROTFL!! Of course you would, and do, because it is perfectly correct English to do so. You do it as often as anyone, so stop lying.

When you say "free or prosperous", WHO in Hong Kong are you referring to, exactly?

The people.

Under any state monopoly there will be BIG winners, just as there will be BIGGER LOSERS.

No, you're just spewing stupid lies again. Who are the BIG winners and BIGGER LOSERS under the US Postal Service monopoly, hmmmm?

Stupid, dishonest, deceitful filth.

And for the actual winners there, the majority of the wealth in Hong Kong came from financial activity OUTSIDE of Hong Kong.

No, that's just more of your stupid, dishonest, deceitful filth.

Sound like LVT heaven to you? Is that "good enough land to live on"? Sound like freedom and prosperity to you?

No, it sounds to me like you are trying to change the subject. You do that a lot. HK is one of the richest places on earth, and routinely tops lists of the world's freest economies, and there has been no private landowning there for 160 years. You just have to tell any sort of lie in order to avoid knowing that fact.

Are you going to credit LVT for that, or will you conveniently blame whatever doesn't make Hong a "free and prosperous" place on something else, or the lack of more LVT?

HK doesn't use LVT, you know that, and I will definitely blame the poverty, inequality, and overcrowding there on lack of LVT, because that is what is causing them.

You cite Hong Kong as an example of LVT success (or "prosperity-despite-LVT" at worst) when convenient,

That is a lie. HK does not and cannot use LVT because the land is not privately owned. I cite HK as proof that private landowning is entirely unnecessary to prosperity and economic freedom.

but when equally convenient you will say that Hong Kong has other problems, and is not really LVT as it should be implemented.

HK definitely has other problems, lack of democratic accountability being the biggest, and its system is definitely not LVT as it should be implemented. Approximately 3/4 of land rent is left in private leaseholders' hands, the government consequently tries to increase its initial lease payment revenues by restricting releases of public land for private use, and there is no universal individual exemption.

I can pretty much assure you that someone is prospering in all of that - including Hong Kong THE STATE.

It is private leaseholders who are ripping money out of the state, as proved by the astronomical exchange value of the leases.

But so much for a mere tax causing a state to be "automatically forced" to do anything at all. Hong Kong has LVT and other taxes.

It does not have LVT, stop lying.

So much for your ideal that:

So much for your lie that HK uses a system similar to full recovery of publicly created rent for public purposes and benefit under democratic accontability, with a universal individual exemption to restore the right to liberty.

And now we return you back to the regularly scheduled real world....

The signal that you are about to tell more absurd lies.

What Hong Kong proves to me is that LVT (Socialism Lite)

Which HK doesn't use, and isn't socialism, stop lying.

is FAR worse than Marxism,

That is a stupid lie, as proved by every statistic, and the fact that the Chinese who actually lived under Marxism in the Maoist era were so desperate to get to HK millions of them risked their lives to do it.

in that it might actually persist much longer under the cesspool of the Crony Capitalism it would engender, encourage and feed (your "most productive hands" doctrine, which really means "most productive to the state").

Stupid lie with no basis in reality. The market decides what the most productive use is, and it is the most productive use to the economy.

That's not free market capitalism, where value is discovered as a result of myriad individual preferences.

Indeed it isn't, as free market capitalism is a logical impossibility. It is an oxymoron, as capitalism requires private landowning, and the resulting subsidy to landowners contradicts the free market. A true free market, as under LVT (and closely approached in HK, as every credible international comparison proves), does discover value through myriad individual preferences.

It's a state sponsored, state controlled dog fight/cockfight ring, where the winners and losers are all decided on the basis of who serves the state's interests best.

No, that's nothing but a cretinous lie from you with no basis in fact. It is precisely because LVT's perfect justice rewards people in exact proportion as they contribute to production of goods and services that OTHER PEOPLE DESIRE that you hate it with such maniacal ferocity.

Geoists hit the nail on the head when they talk about the effect that monopoly ownership of land can do to keep the effects of slavery alive.

Thank you for agreeing that your agenda here is to serve an evil equivalent to slavery.

But that's where the Geoist sanity ends, as their solution is to make the entire state a land-controlled plantation, with the state LICENSING slave ownership by extension.

No, that's just another stupid lie from you. The geoist solution REMOVES the privilege of the slave owner, and restores the individual liberty to use land via the universal individual exemption. No one is privileged, no one is disadvantaged.

At least sharecroppers and other victims of rent-seeking land monopolists could actually move away, even if to the frontier.

Already proved a stupid lie. The landowners kept them so poor they couldn't move away: they'd starve before they got to the frontier.

For Hong Kong residents, the only "frontier" available to them, besides leaving the state altogether if possible, is a COFFIN.

Another stupid lie. The people of HK are mostly housed in very modern and comfortable, if small, accommodation. Of course there are poor people in HK who squander their earnings on alcohol, gambling, drugs, etc. and can't afford a decent place to live, just as there are anywhere else. And as HK doesn't have a universal individual exemption, they are deprived of their liberty without just compensation, just as homeless people in the USA are.

With LVT there is no longer a frontier.

Lie. All land is free up to the universal individual exemption. Stop lying.

It's no longer a question of who is a slave to which rent-seeking private monopolist.

Right, because no one is a slave to any rent seeker.

That monopoly on land rents question is finally settled.

Right: rents are devoted to the purposes and benefit of the public that creates them.

The only question that remains is which Plantation Commune-ity a slave "chooses" to belong, and to what extent he wants to actually serve as a slave for that community. He is free to choose which master he serves, but he is not free to choose none.

Stupid lie. No one is a slave, stop lying, because the UIE ensures no one can be compelled to labor for another's benefit, stop lying. He doesn't serve any master, because no one is privileged to take the value of his labor from him, stop lying. He has his right to liberty restored, stop lying, the right that you want to strip him of without just -- or any -- compensation.

STOP LYING.

Your nasty Socialist Lite human enslavement experiment

Despicable, dishonest, deceitful filth.

is ripe for corruption from the onset:
Zoning laws and land and resource preservation schemes that cause artificial scarcity (rent-seeking by the state)

Already proved a lie. If ALL land rent is being recovered for public purposes and benefit, the state can't get more revenue by holding land out of use any more than a private landowner could, because SUPPLY IS FIXED (cue stupid attempts not to know that fact). You just don't know any economics.

Renaissance and Enterprise "partnership" Zones whereby the state can pick winners and losers, giving the wealthy and politically well-connected decided economic advantages.

That is a phenomenon utterly unrelated to LVT. You are just spewing stupid lies and claiming LVT is something else entirely. It doesn't even matter what: socialism, fascism, communism, feudalism, Marxism, crony capitalism -- any idiotic lie will do when your whole life is devoted to hatred of liberty, justice and truth.

Rent-seeking crony capitalists would be the real winners, the ultimate "Licensed Plantation Renters" in all this, just like in Hong Kong, like so many mafia bosses buying up territories, so long as they give proper tribute to the ultimate mafia Don.

You again have no arguments, so you again just tell lies about what LVT is.

But that's OK with you, because whomever wins the bidding war is presumed, not just to have the most money, but also to be "the most productive hands".

It's not an assumption. It's a clear fact of the market.

And fuck Granny with her unproductive hands in her unproductive "good enough land to live on" promise while she waits in living coffin.

Evil, deceitful vomitus unrelated to fact. The UIE is sufficient to obtain secure tenure on enough good land to live on. If Granny wants to take more than that from others, she can pay them for it. You just lie and lie and lie and lie and lie.

Go roll on the floor laughing in your Hong Kong coffin, Roy, and pray for the state to place you on a short-list that will save you from a slumlord, because LVT sure in the fuck hasn't - and won't.

It has, everywhere it has been tried.

And speaking of Hong Kong, this just in:

Notice the salient point:

Public discontent in Hong Kong may draw as many as 100,000 protesters at the start of Leung’s term to push the government to address rising living costs and hold China to its promise to allow direct leadership elections in Hong Kong by 2017.

HK is not a democracy, and hasn't been for 15 years -- during which time corruption has greatly worsened its problems, including poverty, inequality, landholder privilege, and artificial land scarcity.

Scary religion you believe in, Roy.

<yawn> Scary amount of lying you do, Steven. Scary hatred of liberty, justice and truth you indulge in, Steven. Scary god you believe in, who demands millions of human sacrifices be laid on his altar EVERY YEAR, Steven.

[Steven Douglas]

Stupid, dishonest, deceitful filth.

Why is it that I picture you as an old nun spitting bits of morning egg out of her angry mouth when she says that.

No, that's just more of your stupid, dishonest, deceitful filth.

See? Did you get the visual?

Evil, deceitful vomitus...You just lie and lie and lie and lie and lie. Scary god you believe in, who demands millions of human sacrifices be laid on his altar EVERY YEAR, Steven.

Can we just get on with the excommunication, burning at the stake, or whatever it is you people do with blasphemers and heretics?

[EcoWarrier]

That is a lie. HK does not and cannot use LVT because the land is not privately owned. I cite HK as proof that private landowning is entirely unnecessary to prosperity and economic freedom.

Letchworth Garden City in England has all land leased out as per HK - although some 99 year leases when expired were sold as freehold which should never have occurred.

The land in HK is owned by the HK government, the people, the state. In Letchworth the land is owned by a charitable status "foundation" and leases the land. Homeowners are just that, they own the home on the land - the bricks. The income from the leases funds infrastructure in the town. There are no vacant plots as there is no speculation on "land".

If the UK had full LVT enshrined in a constitution, then land could be sold off, as it would make little difference.

[Roy L]

Why is it that I picture you as an old nun spitting bits of morning egg out of her angry mouth when she says that.

Because you are looking in a mirror?

Can we just get on with the excommunication, burning at the stake, or whatever it is you people do with blasphemers and heretics?

The worst punishment I could visit on you would be realization of the true magnitude and nature of the evil you serve.