out of the box thought on taxes

Not hindering productive use of land in return for payment is not a good or service that is beneficial to society. Remove the landowner and the land is just as valuable, just as useful, and just as there as it's always been without him. Simply put, his legal privilege, the land title, allows him to make economic gain from others without reciprocating any benefits back to society through wealth creation. Ding, ding, ding. That's rent seeking according to the definition dnsmith provided.

Your attempt to confuse readers about the different meanings of 'rent' and accuse us of not understanding the terms is pathetic. It was dnsmith, btw, who started talking about rental properties when 'rent seeking' was mentioned. Roy and I have explained several times already why it is rent seeking and have yet to be refuted on that.

As Henry George once stated, it's not really land that's being sold, it's the labor of people that's being sold. That's the power which ownership of valuable land gives you. Just like ownership of slaves.

A land title is definitely a privilege. Use a dictionary. You're embarrassing yourself.

"The most comfortable, but also the most unproductive way for a capitalist to increase his fortune, is to put all monies in sites and await that point in time when a society, hungering for land, has to pay his price." — Andrew Carnegie (1835 - 1919)

 

2 things:

1. Capital gains should be taxed AFTER adjusting for inflation relative to the time of the capital investment.

2. The Buzz, swat, splat was not aimed at you. It was one of those unfortunate combination of 2 posts into one. SAT!

A sales tax, on the other hand, taxes neither American businesses nor American income, but rather taxes the sale of products, meaning there will no built-in tax-related costs that hurt American businesses relative to foreign ones competing in America. Abroad? It'd make it easier.[/QUOTE]

 

Most land is managed for the highest use by the state. LVT won't do it any better.

If you want to live in socialism, I don't. Nationalization of land is one of the 1st steps of socialism, which is evil on the surface and under the surface.

Rents collected do go back into the economy for the benefit of society. To suggest it doesn't requires opaque blinders. The definition of rent seeking relates to ANY capital looking for special considerations without reciprocating. Few land owners are guilty of this as the land baron issue has faded into history. There are very few oppressive and greedy landowners left in America. Most landowners are managing their land to the advantage of society. That old evil landowner sthick is a dog which won't hunt.

Wrong answer! It was dnsmith (me) who started talking about rental properties when some idiot suggested tax cannot be passed on to tenants. I have consistently tried to educate you geoists that rent-seeking is not necessarily specifically relevant to land owners.

Henry George is of the age when capital was the excess production of labor. Gone are those days and we will never see them return. You and your fellow geoists are stuck back 100 years when greedy land ownership was common. LVT is a valid way to collect taxes but the circumstances have to be right for it to work the way it was intended. IE, in a new economy before land is divided, sold, claimed or otherwise distributed to owners. Once an an economy matures the cost to the state for PROPER utilization to occur is too expensive for the state. To simply nationalize land is socialistic.

I am not the least embarrassed and land title in the US is a right, not a privilege. Private property is one of the most important issues in a capitalist society and economy.

Like I said, old news!

 

Troianii, sales taxes are regressive. Even if you eliminate sales taxes on those who make the least it is still regressive. When a man who makes 50K pays the same as a man who makes 20K or the man who makes 500k pays the same taxes for the same priced product that tax is regressive and should be eliminated.

 

What? Another bug buzzes by? Swat, splat!

 

Amen Brother!

 

That is not Keynesianism. That is incompetency without adjectives.

 

Jesus.

Read it again.

"Kenyanesianism".

Keynesianism is incompetence and government takeover. There's a reason the Great Depression lasted so long. Keynes is why.

 

Of course it wouldn't After all, who'd want to repeat what King Obama, Fascist, Traitor, and Liar, calls the Mistakes of the past....times in which the marginal tax RATES were lowered...and tax revenue increased....as well as the number of jobs, as well as the GDP. JFK, Reagan, and Bush....all created jobs while todays Marxist traitor is doing everything possible to destroy job growth, and it's the only thing he can point to as a success on his record.

 

[/QUOTE]

Capital gains should NEVER be taxed. EVER.

Unless you like to punish people for making good decisions.

Capital losses should never be deductible. Why make other taxpayers share the burden of the investors bad judgement.

 

Keynesianism is an economic theory, nothing more, nothing less. The Great Depression lasted so long for many reasons. One, FDR increased taxes to unprecedented levels, exactly the opposite of what Keynes prescribes as a taxation policy during a recessionary gap. Two, FDR allowed federal expenditures to fluctuate up and down throughout the Great Depression, as opposed to allow federal expenditures to constantly increase until real output returned to potential output. Three, the Federal Reserve was not aggressive enough in its expansionary monetary policies. In other words, FDR and his administration enacted policies severely counterintuitive to combatting recessionary gaps. Warren Harding was more aggressive of a Keynesian in combatting recession during the 1920-21 Decession than FDR was in combatting the Great Depression. Guess what he did? He cut taxes (a correct fiscal policy), created local job creation committees consisting of labor, business, and banking leaders that received direct funding and assistance from the federal government, and allowed the federal government to engage in monetary easing. These factors, combined with an increase in the US labor force post-WWI, made the recovery from the 1920-1921 depression very successful.

 

Capital gains should NEVER be taxed. EVER.

Unless you like to punish people for making good decisions.

Capital losses should never be deductible. Why make other taxpayers share the burden of the investors bad judgement.[/QUOTE]

Of capital gains should never be taxed there is no reason to tax capital losses.

Consider this, all economic growth in the US for the past decade has been entirely realized as capital gains and this trend is not likely to change anytime soon.
In other words, not taxing capital gains makes it impossible for the government to maintain revenues let alone increase them to meet population and economic growth needs without raising taxes on sectors of the economy that are not gaining income from economic growth.

Also consider that the vast majority of capital gains are the result of gambling in speculative markets with only a tiny percentage the result of new activity in the economy outside of the speculative markets. By some economic studies the ratio of capital gains made from speculation to capital gains made from economic advance is that about 5 cents of every $100 of capital gains actually advances the whole economy. From this perspective it is quite easy to arrive at the conclusion that capital gains could be taxed quite heavily with no consequences to the rest of the economy. History provides evidence that widespread economic advance was not impeded by high capital gains taxes while the lowering of capital gains taxes can be correlated with a narrowing of recipients of economic gains.

It is a matter of basic economic principles. If consumer consumption drives economic growth, concentrating economic growth income will lead to reductions in consumption growth over the medium to long term. That is now. Median income is declining and consumption growth has stagnated. Over the last few years the economy has lost 59million jobs and gained 69million but the net loss of consumer income from these job changes averages $20,000. The economy cannot grow until consumers have more money to spend and that will not come when middle class jobs are being replaced by low wage service jobs on a wholesale basis.

Cry all you want but until the "investor class" realizes that the rest of the economy needs to grow too if their gains are to be not just a dream fever fuelled by the Fed.

 

Why tax people at all? We don't want to punish them. Wars are expensive, so let's just borrow!

Protect the Fed!

 

After adjusting for inflation, capital gains should be taxed as regular income, and all income sources should pay FICA and MC premiums without a cap. That will stabilize SS and Medicare. Taxes are not punishment, they are a means to support the government. Anyone who does not want to support the government has the option to leave.

 

Nope. Governments typically just limit what uses are permitted to ensure that nuisance uses don't interfere with productive use of neighboring land.

It will definitely do it better, as proved by both economic law and every jurisdiction that has ever tried it.

One can always count on some ninny to claim that recovering publicly created land value for public purposes and benefit is socialism.

It's also not what we propose. So you are just lying about what we have plainly written. That will always happen whenever you presume to dispute with us.

No, they don't. They are taken and pocketed by the rent seeker, in this case landowner. Society would benefit if the rents were used to pay for the services and infrastructure that create them, but that currently doesn't happen except to a derisory extent.

I see. So, in what you are no doubt pleased to call your "mind," the money a thief takes from his victims "goes back into the economy for the benefit of society," and "to suggest it doesn't requires opaque blinders."

All landowners in all places and all times are guilty of it by definition, because the land was already there, ready to use, with no help from them, and their land titles are special considerations without reciprocation.

All landowners are oppressive and greedy by definition, as they abrogate others' rights without making just compensation, and seek to profit thereby.

No, virtually all are abrogating the rights of those who would use it most productively, preventing them from using it to the advantage of society.

It hunts just fine. The inherent evil of landowning is an indisputable fact of objective physical reality. You can deny it, but you cannot adduce any facts or logic to dispute it.

No, you hilariously exposed your own total ignorance of economics by talking about rental properties when I mentioned the problem of rent seeking.

No, you have not. That is a lie. What you have consistently done is IGNORE the fact that we never claimed rent seeking was necessarily specific to landowning, and dishonestly tried to pretend that the fact not all rent seeking is landowning means not all landowning is rent seeking.

Nope. That's just you makin' $#!+ up again.

That is one of the most common and to me baffling anti-geoist fallacies: "Henry George is dead!" As if that fact had any relevance whatsoever.

It is still common. In fact, it is even more common, as the GFC proved.

Garbage. It is always a valid way to collect taxes.

Garbage lacking any factual or logical basis.

Nope. If that were true, Hong Kong would be socialist.

See how easily I always prove you flat, outright wrong as a matter of objective physical fact?

There can be no such thing as a right to abrogate others' rights without making just compensation.

Of course. Private property in slaves was also one of the most important issues in a capitalist society and economy. Old news indeed.

 

Why is that?

Oh, that's right.

It's because the government is busy getting involved in everything, so companies are holding onto their assets. The Senate raked the CEO of Apple over the coals for....OBEYING the US TAX CODE.

That's normal for a looter government. The victims start to avoid taxes. What a shame, that.

Perhaps the governemnt should 1) stop spending money on programs that aren't Constitutional, and 2) stop viewing productive Americans as criminals to be punished. The politicians should certainly stop pretending to be surprised when businesses take precautions to protect their earnings just like the Senators do.

Earnings from speculative markets is only "gambling" when you lose. It's also called "gambling" when someone else's predictions come true and you want a peice of a pie you had no hand in making. After all, if you called them what they were, earnings, you would find it harder to find people's support for stealing them.

One thing is crystal clear: Hillary Benghazi Clinton's $100,000 "earnings" in the cattle futures market had no resemblance whatsoever to "gambling". Taking bribes is a sure thing, until they're caught.

The basic economic principle here is that when you beat the goose severely, she craps and won't lay any more golden eggs.

Tax the economy at the most basic level, retail sales. If a national retail sales tax was the government only source of revenue, the government would be bending over backwards figuring out ways to increase consumer purchasing power, and hence consumer purchases. As it is, the government has got a diverting valve plumbed into the econony far far upstream of the consumer, and the government can take as much of the economic flow as it wishes, before it gets to the consumer, and thus has minimal need to improve the economy.

Why are middle class jobs disappearing? MessiahCare, federal regulations, federal taxation, state regulations, state taxation, and job-displacement encouraged by traitors in Washington to bring in even more illegal alien invaders to compete for work in the US, thereby depressing wages for the benefit of corporate donors to politiicans, with the side benefit of illegal alien voting for DemocRATS.

The "investor class" has theirs. They're going to hang on to it. They've got millions, they're living well, they're secure. They'd be more than happy to resume investing in the economy, growing businesses, making even more money....but why the (*)(*)(*)(*) should they now, when King Obama, Fascists and Traitor, and his happy band of socialists in the government are punishing them for just existing? They don't care about the middle class or the stupid turds that vote for King Obama, and why should they? They're not those people's mothers. King Obama, is, according to the socialists.

No, as usual, the socialists have it backwards, and deliberately so, because the socialists need both a victim group to play mother hen to, and they need culprits to blame. It's part of their religion. If it wasn't, some of them would, by this time, have figured out that the problem isn't the peopel with money stalling the economy, it's the cat in front of the mousehole that won't let anyone get the cheese.

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Why should they be taxed at all?

Why tax income, when that gives the IRS amazing powers of intimidation over each and every person in the country?

Right now, taxes are used to punish. Otherwise, useful people who earn money in large amounts would pay the same rate as the useless.

 

Jesus.

Read it again, again.

"Kenyanesianism".

Christ, everyone else figured it out already.

Oh, and Keynesianism was a whacked theory that didn't work. As one can see from both the Great Depression and King Obama's Permanent Slush-Fund "Recovery", Keynesianism is a flat failure if the goal is a rapid climb out from an economic depression.

 

Buzz buzz, swat!

 

Correct: yours.

Calling known and indisputable facts of economics, history, and objective physical reality "theology" cannot delete them, however much you wish it could, sorry.

 

Buzz, buzz, swat!

 

By exactly the same evil, dishonest, rent seeker "logic," the owner of a taxi medallion claims to deserve and see nothing wrong with the additional income he pockets courtesy of government stopping others from competing with him because HE PAID FOR THE TAXI MEDALLION THAT STOPS OTHERS FROM COMPETING WITH HIM, the slave owner claims to deserve and see nothing wrong with taking the wages his slave earns because HE PAID FOR THE SLAVE HE COMPELS TO WORK, and the operator of a protection racket claims to deserve and see nothing wrong with pocketing the money he extorts from local businesses because HE PAID THE THUGS WHO THREATEN THE BUSINESSMEN'S LIVELIHOOD.

No, it isn't, as Hong Kong proves, and as you know very well. OTC, taking land as private property in the first place is the first step to feudalism.

No, you have merely again proved that you have no knowledge of economics and, contrary to your hilarious claim, have never learned let alone taught it at any level, let alone university. It is called "nationalization," and is not what we propose anyway. Nationalism is a form of patriotic fervor applied to public issues. Your ignorance of the basic vocabulary of economics -- first rent seeking, now nationalization -- is just flat-out proof that you have no knowledge of the subject, and have probably never read an introductory textbook on it.

It is fact.

That is false. Its value is the same even when it is vacant and unused.

All governments administer possession and use of ("control") land. That's what government IS: the sovereign authority over a specific area of land.

I have demolished and humiliated both you and Murray Rothbard. You know this.

<yawn> My combined verbal and quantitative GRE score is 338/340. Yours appears unlikely to break double digits.

Total absence of factual and logical content noted.

 

Buzz, buzz, swat! Please, keep talking. I always yawn when I am interested.

 

That is exactly what he said.

No, he did not. All he did was pay another rent seeker for the privilege of taking from the economy without putting anything into it. You could with equally stupid, evil, and dishonest "logic" claim that thugs buying guns from each other with which to rob their victims are "putting the purchase of the guns into the economy."

I see. So, if a thug takes your wallet and then gives you back $10 for cab fare home, you reckon he has contributed your cab fare?

LOL!

True, as the landowner qua landowner contributes nothing in either case. Under LVT, he just doesn't get PAID for contributing nothing.

OTC, the only difference between owning land and owning a slave is that when you own a slave, you remove all of one person's rights, while when you own land, you remove one of all persons' rights.

Landowners definitely rob people. In fact, there is no meaningful distinction between a landowner and a bandit. Observe:

THE BANDIT

Suppose there is a bandit who lurks in the mountain pass between two countries. He robs the merchant caravans as they pass through, but is careful to take only as much as the merchants can afford to lose, so that they will keep using the pass and he will keep getting the loot.

A thief, right?

Now, suppose he has a license to charge tolls of those who use the pass, a license issued by the government of one of the countries -- or even both of them. The tolls are by coincidence equal to what he formerly took by force. How has the nature of his enterprise changed, simply through being made legal? He is still just a thief. He is still just demanding payment from those who use what nature provided, and not contributing anything in return. How can the mere existence of that piece of paper entitling him to rob the caravans alter the fact that what he is doing is in fact robbing them?

But now suppose instead of a license to steal, he has a land title to the pass. He now charges the caravans the exact same amount in "rent" for using the pass, and has become quite a respectable gentleman. But how has the nature of his business really changed? It's all legal now, but he is still just taking money from those who use what nature provided for free, and contributing nothing whatever in return, just as he did when he was a lowly bandit. How is he any different now that he is a landowner?

And how is any other landowner charging rent for what nature provided for free any different?

Do the merchants, by using the pass when they know the bandit is there, agree to be robbed?

If there were two, or three, or 300 passes, each with its own bandit, would the merchants' being at liberty to choose which bandit robs them makes the bandits' enterprise a competitive industry in a free market?

Like the merchants paying the bandit in the pass....?

He is just ignorant, because it definitely happens now. I have cousins who share-crop (they also farm land they own). The land where they farm isn't that good, so they only pay 1/3 of the crop, but where the land is better the rent is 1/2 the crop.

I have destroyed and humiliated you. Simple.

 

Way to go brother!

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dnsmith, pardon my copy!

Roy, buzz buzz swat.

 

Cal, you don't look too destroyed or humiliated. The dude is still shooting blanks.

A sharp tongue does not mean he has a keen mind.