Income Inequality in America

I'm not falling for that switch.

I pointed out that government spending increases land rents and enriches those who own land at the expensive of others. You claimed that property taxes pay for it.

Now when its pointed out that property taxes get only a portion of the land rent created by government spending it you change your argument to "well it's their risk and their property".

Any more excuses for such government handouts???

 

I agree with the points expressed in that link.

I had forgotten about that thread, but I stand by it. LVT as a single tax will not collect enough taxes to cover all governmental expenses at all levels of government and I disagree that land owners are enriched at the expense of others in most cases. We have gone through this garbage once before. I don't indent to bet wrapped around the LVT again. I don't believe it is useful and there is no way in hades you will come up with justification to change my mind. In my opinion all taxes should be on income, period. Answer this if you must, but I consider all pro LVT messages to be spam. LVT is little more than a form of socialism, government control of land resources. I don't buy it.

 

Why not? You are getting it all back? Your rent and loss of enjoyment over those years is worth nothing, you said so yourself.

What others are losing? What do landholders taxes go to then, if they don't go to what you dont want them to pay for?

Can I use your land? Your backyard? I will like to just lay about on it and chillax. I dont plan on paying you, after all, it is my taxes that paid for the land, you are just some government handout charity case. Dont come on my backyard portion of your land though. That would be a violation of my rental rights. You are no allowed to enjoy it, that isn't a real cost to you though is it?

 

No, it's perfectly valid. Your claim was that taking risks is inherently valuable. But thanks for admitting in this post that is isn't. Risk is irrelevant. What matters is whether something is productive or not, or even destructive. So how about you use that as a basis for determining what's valuable rather than risk. Producing vs rent seeking.

 

Rents are valuable though.

 

No. Risk from a business standpoint is completely different from a standpoint of breaking the law. Your dishonesty in trying to compare the 2 to make a point is absurd. If risk is irrelevant then why do I have a job as a Risk Analyst? And how about the other 450 risk analysts that work for my company? The fact that the people I named took a risk and built their fortune the way they wanted to is what is admirable. The fact that a brave group of men took a risk and founded a country is admirable, if not for this, there would be no America.

 

What about copyrights and patents, this "government created wealth " is one of the biggest sources of income inequality in the country?

 

Both are excellent systems. Without patents and copyright why invest so much time creating those IP works?

 

What are you referring to? The land value tax? It wasn't very clear for some reason. If so, the answer is yes, with an ad valorem tax the amount of tax collected goes up if value goes up even if the tax rate is the same.

I don't think you know what land rent is.

I'm talking about rent in the economic sense, in this case the rent of land specifically.

"In political economy including physiocracy, classical economics, and other schools of economic thought, land is recognized as an inelastic factor of production. Rent is the distribution paid to freeholders for "allowing" production on the land they control."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent#Land_rent

 

HA HA HA. What Reaganist sources have you been listening to ? Look at the graph V shape from 1980 to 2000.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth

Notice the downward slope of the 1980s compared to the upward slope of the 1990s. Massive growth during the Reagan years ? Where did you get that poppycock ? Massive growth of illegal aliens in America maybe.

Try the US Dept of Labor Statistics and the US Dept of Economic Analysis & Tax Policy Center

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/jobsvtaxeschart0628.jpg

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/taxratesgrowth.jpg

As the government charts clearly show, when tax tares were high, so was GDP growth and job growth. When they were at the pathetic 28-31% of the Reagan-Bush(41) years, growth was minimal. (1.2% job growth and 2.6% GDP growth).

Also, these rates are of the individual taxes, not corporate. So what does it matter if the super rich non-business sector's taxes go up. They don't have a business to reinvest in (or really anything to invest in) When you're taking in hundreds of millions of dollars, you're already making your big money. No need to invest. So I've answered your next questions before you ask them.

 

So, you refuse to address the content of my post: That government spending increases land rents and enriches those who own land at the expense of others.

 

Work on your graph reading availability. Your source has growth above 5% a few years, above average for the term AND he corrected inflation.

The leftist socialist source you quoted failed to mention what happened to federal revenue after the tax cuts. It went up.

 

"Rents" in that sense don't even exist. Even empty land held has value. If only because of delayed gratification. In any event, a LVT tax isn't feasible. Would you allow Romney to live tax free if he stayed on a yacht?

- - - Updated - - -

"Rents" in that sense don't even exist. Even empty land held has value. If only because of delayed gratification. In any event, a LVT tax isn't feasible. Would you allow Romney to live tax free if he stayed on a yacht?

 

Evaluating risks is good if you want to make money, but it's not the same as the claim that risk is inherently valuable, or even that the risk they take adds anything valuable to the economy.

And risk is only admirably if the supposed outcome is admirable. By itself it's meaningless in determining that.

 

So you approve of a strong government presence in the marketplace...with the government deciding who can sell something, and who can't?

 

The purpose of your job is to minimize risk. Get over yourself.

 

Wow...so what I do makes me full of myself? Interesting. Is clear your favorite color too?

 

Yes, they do.

Because it yields rent which you just claimed doesn't exist. It's why land in the desert would be cheap while land which can be used more productively near economic centers would not be cheap. You get paid for allowing production. The better the location, the more rent it yields and the more valuable it is.

Yes, I would. Land value tax free, at least (there should also be taxes on others sources of economic rents). If he's not benefiting in such a way that others benefit less. He just needs to pay for what he's taking. Then again, I assume he has to put his yacht somewhere, in which case he'd also pay.

What you don't seem to get is that guys like Mitt Romney are rich precisely because government allows them, and even helps them, to extract such economic rents (land rent being the biggest, which the land value tax would address)

 

And most of what you espouse here wouldnt work on a mass scale either. After all. SOMEONE has to be the janitor right?


If every single person in America started to take calculated risks with their income for greater income, most would fail even if they made the RIGHT choices. Capitalism doesnt allow for too many cooks in the kitchen. It only allows for a few cooks, and a lot of helpers.

Could you imagine what would happen in a restraunt if every single person there decided they were the cook? It would be a disaster. 95% of them would get fired, and end up on the public dole anyways. If the conservatives leave a public dole for them to have anyways.


And what about some professions that are vital? Should firefighters, teachers, policemen, and the like, be relegated to a life of mediocrity?

 

We'd still be trying to figure out a way to make fire if it wasn't for IP.

Wait, IP didn't even exist back then.

 

It did when they made the zippo(tm) lighter. Without that, a fire doesn't even count.

But seriously, people were bag of rocks stupid before IP laws and we have seen an explosion of technology since then. It is the only thing republicans and democrats can agree on.

IP laws and the Corporation are 2 of the greatest inventions in mans history.

 

As I correctly said, the graph shows a DOWNWARD SLOPE "for the term", as opposed to the upward slope of the 90s when higher taxation was restored.

There is not a leftist socialist source. Think Progress is a website, not a source. You were told what the source was, so stop lying (US Dept of Labor Statistics and the US Dept of Economic Analysis & Tax Policy Center)

And stop trying to wiggle out of it. Clearly, Reagan's low 28-31% rates were contemporary with terrible GDP growth and job growth, but since you lied coming into this discussion, why should we really expect anything better from you now ? (even after the facts were presented). Maybe we all could just let you slide, and assume by "massive growth" you meant the influx of illegal aliens after Reagan's outrageous amnesty in 1986.

 

Nobody produced land.
Nobody produced natural resources.
Yet mere ownership of those makes people wealthy.

 

Please list the GDP growth for the Reagan years. Please explain why you think these numbers are low, bearing in mind he had to even overcome an inflation issue for a few of those years.

Please list personal median income prior and after Reagan. In numbers, not narratives about illegals and all that. Lets see the numbers.

Then let me know if PPP improved over this time frame.

If all these things happened, what are you complaining about Reagan for? Did you see where unemployment was when reagan started? As bad as it is today. He didn't leave it there though. Let me know here unemployment stood when he left.

 

I'd say IP laws had a dampening effect, and still have a dampening effect, on what should be a nuclear blast of technology.

IP laws delayed the industrial revolution for starters.