The Single Tax - Land Value Tax (LVT)

[Roy L]

Several fallacies engaged by this idiot.

No, you are just spewing stupid, anti-economic garbage.

His first premise is that while everyone is paying taxes, and he admits freely that the wealthy pay progressively more, the landowners, he says, are more than getting this all "back" from increased land values. -- then comes nothing but false gibberish on how infrastructure was responsible for this "value increase".

He is objectively correct, and he did not say ONLY infrastructure.

Land values appreciate in the midst of any growing population with a growing economy, but that is not primarily due to "infrastructure".

Wrong. Infrastructure and services are what make a growing population and economy possible AND ECONOMICALLY ADVANTAGEOUS.

Land itself is similar to hard specie.

Wrong. Specie is a product of labor and not in fixed supply. You are just spewing stupid, anti-economic garbage again, as usual.

It is naturally rare, and therefore inflation-proof.

<sigh> Specie is not inflation-proof, as the Spanish specie inflation of the 16th C proved.

A HEDGE against a debased currency, one that is deliberately diluted, and which depreciates in value, which hits the lowest income earners, who have no hedges, the hardest.

Garbage. Inflation hits creditors hardest, and tends to benefit the lowest income earners, who are more often debtors.

He focuses on the fact that the lowest income earners tend not to be landowners (tend not have access to the same "hedging" security of landowners). One response to this could be the obvious: Homestead. Turn renters into owners.

What, through squatters' rights? ROTFL! You are just talking stupid, anti-economic nonsense again.

Remove all artificial barriers to individual land ownership.

Land ownership is itself the biggest artificial barrier to individual liberty, prosperity and home ownership.

FREE EVERYONE FROM EVIL FUCKING RENT.

That is economically impossible. All your "solution" will do is make the productive into the permanent slaves of rich, greedy, idle, privileged, parasitic landowners. Which is just pure evil.

But no, that would defeat his underlying aim and central purpose, because he also (and rightly) hates income taxes. Does he hate income taxes more than he hates rent? NO. He starts off by decrying rent, but that's really the last we hear of it.

You are talking nonsense. Rent is simply a fact of the market. It makes no more sense to hate rent than to hate wages or interest.

He's off in Georgist La-La land after that, because really - the one thing that he said hurts the poor is the very thing he wants to keep in place, and call for as the Grand Solution.

We have no more choice about the existence of rent than we do about the existence of wages or interest, and for the same reasons.

See, the poor are hit by low taxes and high rents.

No, they are hit by high taxes, high rents (which go together), and being forced to pay the former (often through burden shifting) while forcibly being deprived of the liberty to take advantage of the latter.

If they were not renters, they would just be hit by low taxes.

Nope. They need access to opportunity. Not being renters through "homesteading" and owning land off in the wilderness somewhere does them no good at all. Your proposed "solution" is just stupid, anti-economic nonsense.

The mystery here, Steven, is how you can so obviously understand that people have and need a right to use land, yet still deny it. People can't exist without using land, and you know that. But your brain has been so twisted into irrationality by landowner greed, illogic and absurdities that you think somehow people have more of a right to own land than to use it, despite the indisputable fact that ownership of land is precisely the measure of how much of people's rights to use it have been removed.

His aim is not to allow the poor to make themselves inflation-proof,

The poor, not being creditors or having much money, are already inflation-proof anyway.

and RENT FREE (free of the ONLY thing he said hits them hardest), by making them landowners, freeing them from rents,

Rent is the price of access to an economic opportunity that would otherwise be available. So “freeing” them from rents just means forcibly depriving them of their liberty to access economic opportunity by violent, aggressive, physical coercion.

and limiting (OR EVEN ABOLISHING) income taxes. Not on your life. His solution is, instead, just to make everyone renters! Rich and poor alike. Make the rich pay "their fair share" of RENT.

I.e., the value they are taking. Right. Whereas you want them to keep it, as a welfare subsidy giveaway paid for by robbing the productive.

Then all is well, and all the other taxes (magically, we promise and guaran-damn-tee it), go away.

As already proved, LVT is inherently the only possible way to make government self-financing.

Land, like any scarce and valuable commodity, really does appreciate in value in a growing economy.

Garbage. Commodities generally decline in real value in a growing economy. It is natural resources that grow in value, as they are in FIXED SUPPLY, and represent economic opportunity.

The most important reason for appreciation, which can be seen as you move away from insane metropolitan centers, which should not be held up as examples or used as models, is that land simply does not DEPRECIATE in value relative to a thoroughly and incessantly debauched currency. That's not "publicly created" value for the land, but rather "publicly AND privately DESTROYED" value for the currency itself.

Nope. That's just more false, dishonest and stupid garbage from you.

The solution is not LVT OR income tax. That's a FALSE CHOICE, as both should be abolished wherever they exist, and forbidden where they do not. Infrastructure does not require EITHER of these mechanisms as revenue streams to exist.

As private interests cannot provide efficient amounts of investment in infrastructure, it must be paid for publicly. There are only two ways to do that: by recovering the value the infrastructure itself creates, or by stealing other value from its private creators and giving it to the landowners near the infrastructure. LVT is the former choice. All other taxes are the latter choice.

The second solution (which is really the first in terms of importance): STOP DEBAUCHING THE CURRENCY.

Irrelevancy.

The third solution: STOP WITHHOLDING PUBLIC LANDS FROM LANDLESS INDIVIDUALS. MAKE HOMESTEADING FOR INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT LAND A RIGHT.

That would solve nothing. Only about 1/8 of the US land area is managed by the BLM, and most of it is effectively uninhabitable. What happens when the inhabitable part is all gone?

If you inherited land, or already have land, you're out of luck. Declare your homestead, and it's INVIOLABLE.

How special -- for those who already own all the good land...

The fourth solution: ABOLISH THE PROPERTY TAX AND THE INCOME TAX. Neither are necessary.

There's no reason to think that would solve anything.

But this nonsense of making everyone renters, paying perpetual rents on land they can NEVER own -- that notion can kiss my ass forever, along with all the collectivist, socialist fantasy-land rationale invented to support it. The solution is NOT to make everyone renters. It's the opposite - make it so that everyone can be landowners. That is the ONLY solution that is sustainable, and that I would support.

It's self-evidently not sustainable, as proved above. When all the land is owned, how does a new citizen get to be a landowner?

[Travlyr]

Land ownership is itself the biggest artificial barrier to individual liberty, prosperity and home ownership.

How so?

[Zippyjuan]

Question- it was said earlier on that the tax would be paid from gains in property values (even though a property owner does not get paid any sort of money for rising property values as long as they own it). Suppose we have a situation like in 2008 through today where property values are falling for an extended time. Does the government send rebate checks to everybody? Does the tax go negative? With money going out in the form of checks and none coming in from rising property values, how does the government continue to function? Borrowing and deficit spending?

If property values stay flat does that mean that nobody owes taxes that year since it is only the "community" "reclaiming" a portion of any apreciation in values and that apreciation was zero?

The tax would raise the costs of land ownership which would tend to concentrate land owning into the hands of the wealthier who can afford the taxes.

[PaulStandsTall]

The tax would raise the costs of land ownership which would tend to concentrate land owning into the hands of the wealthier who can afford the taxes.

The Warren Buffett Effect. Raise taxes on the small fish so the big strong money players can own the market without any real competition.

I'm surprised this tax hasn't been already implemented, seeing as how efficient the monetary system is in funneling wealth from productive people into strong money's hands.

[Roy L]

How so?

Landownership tilts the land market away from users and in favor of rent seekers and speculators, raising the cost of acquiring land. That's why working people in states with low property taxes have to sell themselves into permanent debt slavery in order to buy a house.

[heavenlyboy34]

How so?

Remember, in RoyLand, everyone is perfectly suited for homeownership (contrary to observable reality, in which only a part of the population has interest and resources to even maintain a home, much less buy one).

[Roy L]

Question- it was said earlier on that the tax would be paid from gains in property values

I don't recall who might have said that, but it's certainly not true. It's paid out of the value the landholder takes from society.

(even though a property owner does not get paid any sort of money for rising property values as long as they own it).

He is getting -- AND FORCIBLY DEPRIVING OTHERS OF -- the benefit of the economic advantage that makes the land more valuable, including being able to get a higher rent for it. If he doesn't want to take advantage of the value he is taking from others, that's his problem. When you take a loaf of bread home from the grocery store, you have to pay the market price for it, not the amount you think you should have to pay just to let it go moldy.

Suppose we have a situation like in 2008 through today where property values are falling for an extended time. Does the government send rebate checks to everybody?

LVT stops such speculative boom-bust cycles, and even if land rents declined for some reason, they'd still be positive.

Does the tax go negative? With money going out in the form of checks and none coming in from rising property values, how does the government continue to function? Borrowing and deficit spending?

Land rent is the most stable and reliable form of revenue government could have. That is why the rich buy land.

If property values stay flat does that mean that nobody owes taxes that year since it is only the "community" "reclaiming" a portion of any apreciation in values and that apreciation was zero?

The tax is on the value, not the increase in value.

The tax would raise the costs of land ownership which would tend to concentrate land owning into the hands of the wealthier who can afford the taxes.

Nope. Flat wrong. By increasing the cost of land OWNERSHIP, it equivalently reduces the cost of land ACQUISITION. As LVT stops the rich from getting something for nothing just by owning land, they lose all interest in owning it. LVT is by far the most effective way to make homeownership more affordable for ordinary people. You'd be able to buy a perfectly good house in a decent neighborhood for a typical month's wages (which would not be taxed).

[Roy L]

Remember, in RoyLand, everyone is perfectly suited for homeownership (contrary to observable reality, in which only a part of the population has interest and resources to even maintain a home, much less buy one).

Stop lying about what I have plainly written.

[Roy L]

The Warren Buffett Effect. Raise taxes on the small fish so the big strong money players can own the market without any real competition.

The fixity of land's supply means that competition is never an issue: the land market is ALWAYS inherently a monopoly market. The universal individual LVT exemption guarantees that LVT is progressive, and bears more on the big fish than the small.

I'm surprised this tax hasn't been already implemented, seeing as how efficient the monetary system is in funneling wealth from productive people into strong money's hands.

It's the system of private landowning that does that, as already proved, and as seen throughout history in societies with many different kinds of monetary systems.

[helmuth_hubener]

It's the system of private landowning that funnels wealth from productive people into strong money's hands, as already proved, and as seen throughout history in societies with many different kinds of monetary systems.

Which historical civilization had the strongest private land ownership regime:

China
Persia
Mayan
India
Middle-ages Europe

Which one was where productive people became wealthiest, since it was the first civilization in history to experience sustained long-term per-capita economic growth?