Wealth Tax >>>MOD WARNING<<<

Explain what to Roy? I agree with him that landownership naturally piece by piece leads to human enslavement (to what degree depends on how much good land is available, the tax system, other government involvement, etc.). With your "freeing land" comment I assumed you referred to literally abolishing exclusive tenure etc. which I think would be unworkable in our economy. I just think we need to significantly change the system to not make a land title a license to have wealth others created transferred to you for doing nothing. Both for justice and the economy. That's all.

 

True. And shooting a man in the head is not the same as stabbing him through the heart. Telling him he has to pay you $1K for protection or suffer a fire is not the same as fraudulently removing $1K from his bank account without his consent. Putting him in iron fetters to force him to work for your profit is not the same as holding his kids hostage to force him to work for your profit.

GET IT???

It also isn't landownership. So, why do you feel you have to change the subject?

You are free to not know facts you find unpalatable. You don't have to go through this disgraceful song and dance of "landowning is not black people in chains so it's nothing like slavery" to find ways to keep the facts out of your head.

 

No, I have identified the relevant facts of objective physical reality that prove my statements are correct. Calling the fact that land is not a product of human labor my opinion does not alter the fact that it is an objective fact. Calling the fact that appropriation of land as private property removes people's liberty to use it my opinion does not alter the fact that it is an objective fact. Etc. If you think you can actually dispute any of the facts I have identified that prove my statements are correct, then you are welcome to do so. But you can't. The facts are self-evident and indisputable. All you can do is shriek that you refuse to know them, that I haven't stated them, that no one can make you believe them, blah, blah, blah.

It is highly analogous, as I have already proved to you, because they are both methods of removing people's rights in order to obtain unearned wealth in return for no contribution. The only difference is in the approach to removing people's rights. Slavery removes people's rights one person at a time, landowning removes them one right at a time. The owner of a slave removes all of one person's rights, the owner of land removes one of all people's rights. The big difference is that slave owners don't get to pocket everyone else's taxes.

Even the rationalizations are equivalent: dnsmith claims landowners pay for infrastructure in order to rationalize their thieving and parasitism, employing exactly the same absurd, grotesque, and dishonest "logic" that slave owners employed when they claimed they paid their slaves fair wages by paying for their food, clothing and shelter. Your refusal to know the fact that landowning is an evil fully analogous to -- and in fact far more harmful than -- slavery cannot alter the fact that it is.

 

And on some other planet, that might even have been relevant to my proof that your claim was absurd. Just not on this planet.

Oh, and FYI, you are correct that occupation isn't the only way to acquire lands. Forcible appropriation is.

 

Yes, well, calling people "enemy combatants" doesn't make them enemy combatants, any more than calling the facts I identify "just your opinions" makes them just opinions.

While the 9/11 hijackers obligingly killed themselves. So what? There's still no resemblance between that and a man washing up on a desert island and being enslaved by the island's soi-disant owner through the forcible removal of his right to liberty by landowning.

What enemy combatants? The USA is not at war with Saudi Arabia, which supplied most of the 9/11 hijackers, nor Afghanistan, nor Pakistan, nor any other country AFAIK.

No, I wouldn't want to, because 9/11 was merely your attempt to change the subject when you realized you had been proved wrong and had no answers.

 

Which might be why I didn't do so, and you made it up.

Shocker!

Few of the rich would. I read somewhere that something like 90% of people with more than $10M in net worth call themselves middle class.

The main thing is, do you own land that other people are paying you rent for? That's the clincher that would make you a rent-seeking parasite.

What do you think landowners do? You might want to consider the price of land, and why it might be so expensive. Just sayin'.

I'm not a Georgist, and the price of land just flat-out PROVES that landowner rent seeking is far from a minor issue.

Maybe at some point you could address the facts and their logical implications, instead of just sneering at a belief system no one here has been espousing.

Naaaahhhhhh....

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

It's true that economic relations have changed radically: much larger governments mean much larger welfare subsidies given to greedy, idle, parasitic landowners in return for nothing.

And if that were relevant to the six-figure salaries paid to glorified security guards, you might have a point. But it's not, so you don't.

True. It would be union members who are rent seekers.

Successful at rent seeking. Right.

Feel free to rant against Georgists all you like. Feel free to pretend that union rent seeking and landowner rent seeking are interdependent issues, and interest in one implies interest in the other.

But when you are a landowner, there is obviously a point in denying the importance of land...

Which is a really inadequate substitute for knowing the Law of Rent, but one has to have SOME way of rationalizing one's refusal to know it.

But to ignore land won't....?

Somehow, I kinda figured it'd be something like that....

In order to avoid having to know the Law of Rent.

 

The 9/11 hijackers were supplied by Al-Qaeda.


​

 

You continue to have trouble understanding what proof is, or what it means to prove something. Your declarations are not proof, they are your opinion.

Owning land is in no way analogous to slavery, and it's idiotic to keep claiming it is.

 

Get ready for irony:

Irony, thy name is Rahl.

 

Did you have some point you wished to make?

 

The idea is that people have a natural right to access all of the earth and use its natural resources. Thus exclusive land tenure (including exclusive rights to natural resources) necessarily violates people's natural rights.

Yes.

The difference is that he now pays in full for the deprivation he imposes on the community and for the advantages he gets from the community, and, most importantly, to the right party as every cent he paid in LVT comes right off the purchase price of the land until it falls to near zero.

Land value comes from three sources: Community, government, and nature. Since the landowner in his capacity as a landowner produces nothing and provides nothing, as the land was already there, he essentially enriches himself by breaking other people's windows i.e. he doesn't increase the total wealth of society he just has wealth shoveled from actually productive people into his own pocket, and more often than not is actually a net drain on the economy.

I disagree. They deserve the return they get for their investment in improvements. They don't deserve the return they get for their rent seeking in publicly created value.

I'm not going to pretend I'm very knowledgeable about the stock market, but a lot of it seems to be rent seeking. I guess it depends on what stocks you buy too. If you make money from Wal Mart stocks, you make money from the location subsidies (I like that term, thanks Roy) they get. If you invested in pharmaceutical companies you'd also profit from economic rent. Profit from Microsoft or Apple? Also economic rent. I think you'll be hard pressed to find stocks that made people a lot of money that weren't mostly economic rent.

And yet, his land would be just as valuable if it was a vacant lot. In fact, if you exempted the owner of that vacant lot from his property tax burden, the land's exchange value would rise. So, you're just wrong.

1. Neither Roy L, geofree, or I have promoted LVT as a single tax or single solution which would make the economy more just and efficient. However, I think we'd agree that it's the most important reform.

2. The rich getting away without paying taxes would an incredible improvement over the current system where the rich profit from other people's taxes as they're shoveled into their pockets via land value (Taxes on income, consumption, etc. are used by the government to provide infrastructure and services which then increases the demand for land in locations where those are offered). It's the most common way to get rich in the first place: owning land.

3. Do the rich not live in the the most expensive locations and have business in the most expensive locations now? There is no reason they will no longer pay market value for those locations just because a different entity gets the money. Remember, anything paid in LVT reduces the purchase price of land. It simply goes to a different entity, periodically instead of all at once upfront. If they pay rent in those locations, the land portion of the rent simply gets taken from their landlords.

 

The point is, it would be nice to get some content from you instead of just making bald declarations and ignoring arguments.

 

Your answer of yes, that under LVT the person who pays the tax on the land has exclusive rights to the land. How is that different from a person holding a deed fee simple to the land paying the tax on the land. Both are tenured rights. The only difference is, the landowner has to pay property tax on the land value AND the improvement value, most likely a greater amount, yet you claim his is violating others rights to use the land. What a contradictory explanation.

Since the land occupier does not really buy the land, he only pays someone the right to occupy it what do you mean by "purchase price?" And how does the price (value) of the land ever fall to near zero? After all, he can sell his right to someone else to occupy the land so long as the tax is paid.

You continue to ignore that the landowner pays taxes, likely more than with LVT because he pays on the improvements as well. And since the taxes he pays purchases infrastructure he has in fact increased the total wealth of society by virtue of the tax paid, the infrastructure he funded, and if he produces something on that land or collects rents from apartments he builds and receives income he also pays income tax. So I believe that claim is completely in error.

Rent seeking is trying to get privilege from the government or society. Charging rent for apartments is not rent seeking. Charging rent for someone to build a business is not rent seeking as the landowner still paid the price to buy the land and either pays the tax on the land or reduces the rent to accommodate a net lease.

Buying stock from mutual funds like many retirement programs and many people buy has nothing to do with whose stock it is. Stock is stock, and it has nothing to do with location subsidies. Stock in individual companies like GNC or Ford or Geico are no different. You buy stock as an investment. Sometimes you make money sometimes you lose money. The same is true of buying land. Sometimes you make money, sometimes you lose money. There is really nothing more sacred about land than stock, and just like owning land becomes exclusive to the owner so does the shares of stock become exclusive to the owner. This business of attributing some holy attachment to land is ridiculous.

I vehemently disagree. Funding infrastructure makes the land adjacent to that infrastructure makes that land more desirable, so in the sense that landowning taxes fund infrastructure the landowner is contributing to the value of adjacent land, and is fact, not conjecture.

If LVT is not a single tax as George deduced there is no point to having it.

I disagree. Our tax system is designed to tax high incomes at a higher marginal rate making our income taxes progressive. No one has money shoveled into his pockets via land value unless he invests in business which is what produces the money. Higher demand for land means higher taxes paid on the land AND the improvements built on the land.

Some do, and some don't. I think you are mistaken about the more taxes paid the lower the land value gets. No matter how you cut it, buying the rights to occupy choice land will generate high acquisition prices whether one pays land value taxes or property taxes.

Effectively the very concept of buying the exclusive rights to occupy land whether one pays LVT or property tax on the land or both the land and improvements amount to the same thing in the final analysis. I don't believe having land tenure or exclusive rights to occupy land violates anyone's human rights be it owned or leased or simply occupied and taxed because the community tends to tax what the market will bear to finance the costs of governance and the building and maintenance of the infrastructure.

 

I am surprised that you object to Rahl doing exactly the same thing you are doing, making "bald declarations" and ignoring arguments. That is all you or your buddy ever do, make bald declarations claiming it is fact when all it is is your opinion. There has never been an iota of proof to back up your assertions. We have the "proof" of history showing land owners pay property taxes which fund building and maintaining infrastructure.

 

I gave you content. You guys are comparing owning land to owning people, and it's (*)(*)(*)(*)ing idiotic. We can't even begin to,have a rational discussion until you guys can come up with something that isn't so retarded.

 

Control of land has been used for a very long time as a means to enslave people whether by conquerors or fellow countrymen. I mean, the concept is rather obvious. You have been given several examples in threads which you refuse to address.

- In the post civil war South a lot of former slaves still ended up working for plantation owners in slave like conditions because because all the good land was taken.
- During the times of the Irish famine the Irish had to pay nearly all the food they produced above mere subsistence in rent to their British private landlords and thus starved to death en masse when their potato crops failed and they couldn't even get subsistence any more.

There are a lot of examples in history and even in the world today that neatly demonstrate that private landownership necessarily leads to human enslavement if there is no good rent free land available, other government intervention etc. Piece by piece landownership enslaves humans to landowners.

Try this, it's much more eloquent than me: http://schalkenbach.org/library/henry-george/social-problems/sp15.html

Excerpt:

 

The key word there is 'history'. In a land of peasants its easy to refer to the importance of land. Georgism is simply irrelevant because of how economic relations have changed

 

Then why is land so expensive? Clearly, because it's such a convenient means to take out of the economy without contributing. i.e. you get to partially enslave your fellow human beings.

 

Because of supply & demand. Simple reference to neoclassical economics. But the source of rent seeking? Industrialisation changed all of that. There is a reason Georgists are ignored in economics!

 

Simple reference to neoclassical economics tells us that since supply of land is fixed its value is nothing but pure unadulterated economic rent, and thus ownership of land is highly significant when it comes to the subject of rent seeking.

Your rants of denial notwithstanding, it's a bit obvious really!

 

This is simply untrue. We can't even assume fixed supply in the neoclassical approach as land is used in numerous activities (so we will have substitution effects, as shown by shifts in 'green land' to housing). The rent seeking stuff is Georgism, nothing more. And we're back to the reality: industrialisation has ensured Georgist irrelevance.

 

And...? Is that supposed to show why Crusoe is not enslaving Friday when he points his musket at him and tells him to either get to work or get back in the water....?

My nomination for "Non Sequitur of the Month"...

 

This is really strange logic? Whether it's land, or baseball cards, or public stock, or your marble collection, in all cases there is a finite supply of those items...however this does not prevent people from demanding and trading and buying/selling of those items to the point where the current value of those items has little to do with their finite supply...

 

Goodness gracious, the rants of denial are getting rather silly here, dear chap! Buying a Picasso instead of a Van Gogh doesn't mean supply isn't fixed. It's a bit obvious really!

 

It is definitely true.

We don't need to assume it. It's self-evidently and indisputably true as a matter of objective physical fact.

So is everything else that is in fixed supply. The paintings of a dead artist may be hung in museums, in galleries, in private homes, in corporate boardrooms, or in bathrooms, but that does not in any way argue that their supply is not fixed. You are just objectively wrong. That will continue to be the case as long as you persist in denying the self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality.

Substitution effects do not alter supply. Land that is shifted to housing is merely shifted away from something else, leaving its supply unaltered. That is a self-evident and indisputable fact of objective physical reality.

That is a contentless sneer, nothing more.

The astronomical price of land proves, repeat, PROVES that landowner rent seeking is a central fact of the post-industrial economy, just as it was of the industrial and pre-industrial economies. That fact can be denied by those who do not wish its implications to be true, but it cannot be disputed.