Wealthy will ALWAYS have an advantage

That's Obama's line isn't it? I mean he's sold you down the river to health insurance corporations, banks etc.

 

How do you determine the value of your labor?

 

If you need an example of the lefts love for big corp. just look at Monsanto. Obama loves these polluters. Places them on the FDA and USDA to make rules to govern Monsanto. Lol. The person Obama put in charge to regulate one of the worlds largest polluters is a lawyer for Monsanto. Really? That's corp. love. Or how about Hillary going to Africa to push Monsanto on the poor farmers there. Not understanding that you are ruining the land by putting thousands of gallons a year of pollutants on it and be tied to the large corp for years. That's corp love.
How about Obama signing a bill to protect Monsanto from lawsuits right at the time a large field of illegal GMO was found. What great timing. Good thing Obama was there to save them. How the left love this polluting corporation.
The Rose law firm Hillary worked for was a consultant for Monsanto.
Bill Clinton also put high ranking Monsanto people on the FDA and USDA.
How the left loves GMO and pesticides in our drinking water.
How the left loves big corporations like Monsanto.

 

Its about time. You sure are a slow learner left wing extremist..

 

I attribute most of what you mentioned to the right, and their lust for supersonic wealth.

 

You make that sort of claim quite often, but never seem to provide any evidence for it. I'm guessing that won't be changing.

Evidence? Of course not.

Already proved false -- and absurd -- by all the communities where there are no landowners.

Already proved false, as above.

Proved false. There are no landowners in Hong Kong, one of the most prosperous societies on earth, and haven't been for over 160 years.

That fact of objective physical reality proves you wrong.

Why can't you ever remember that Hong Kong proves all your claims are false?

Oh, really? Like Nobel laureate in economics and libertarian property rights icon Milton Friedman, perhaps....?

 

That depends on ones skill level. It could be anywhere from below minimum wage to $50 an hour.

- - - Updated - - -

Then you would be wrong. Both extremes, left and right are equally guilty for the issues. I am a democrat so I get to see both sides of an issue.

 

Unfortunately you recognize very little, and that is not sarcasm.

 

I make the claim because it is fact. Anyone with a brain knows that landowners pay property taxes and anyone with a brain knows that before there were property taxes there was no infrastructure.

You have never proved anything, not in this forum or the other 2 or 3 you have posted your nonsense in.

Nope! You haven't even proved you exist.

There are no landowners in Hong Kong, one of the most prosperous societies on earth, and haven't been for over 160 years.[/quote]Sure, with automatically renewable lease agreements which guarantee tenure and exclusive occupation of the land, it works just like fee simple in the US. Just like I proved you wrong in the last forum you claimed your BS in.

Nothing you or anyone else has ever proved me wrong about the scam of LVT RL, and you know it.

Nope! And it doesn't prove you know anything about economics either.

Yep! Like you know anything which says he believes LVT as a single tax is taken out of contest. No R, you have never proved there is a single point of LVT which is better than what we have now. You lost that argument many times over the years.

 

I recognize enough to realize when somebody is BSing, and when they sincerely believe what they profess. You can't possibly be democrat. I say, Republican, all the way. Too many 'canned quotes' praising corporate profiteering, tyranny and other right wing popular 'entertainment'. Sarcasm? Might be. Might not be.

Allow me to imitate your general demeanor.

"Corporations are wonderful caring entities, who strive only to make the world a better place for everyone else".

Smell any BS there?

 

I doubt that

I am a democrat.

I abhor right wing politics. But I abhor left wing extremism as well.

I doubt if you do understand sarcasm as none of your post suggest you do.

Give it a try, but I doubt it.

I have never said anything like that. I have said, and I believe that MOST Corporations are good corporate citizens. You inference that I believe all Corporations are good and caring is totally off base.

I smell a lot of BS in your post. Like I said, you understand very little about anything but bitterness and hatred of corporations.

 

Then why do you never offer any evidence for it?

In some places. Some places have no property taxes.

But in any case, property taxes are almost never more than the landowner is taking from society, as the very existence of the land's value proves. Land value is based on the economic advantage the community gives the landowner net of any property taxes. So the fact that there is any land value to tax proves that the landowner qua landowner is not paying taxes or making any net contribution to the community, but only taking from it.

I know that claim is baldly false. There are lots of places that have never had any property taxes, but do have infrastructure. Everywhere else, some infrastructure was always in place before there were any property taxes, because that infrastructure is what made it possible for the land to have any value to tax.

I have proved most of your claims false.

The inevitable descent into absurdity.

No, it does not, as the leases are not automatically renewable at the same lease amount.

I don't believe you can provide any evidence that any such event has occurred.

At least I know enough economics to understand why Nobel laureates in economics like Milton Friedman, William Vickrey, Paul Samuelson, etc. are right when they say LVT is the most economically benign type of tax.

You have to repeat the single tax strawman over and over again because you have no facts, no logic, and no economics to offer in its place.

Sad, really.

How embarrassing it must be for you to have nothing better than this kind of blank denial to offer.

 

It is self evident to anyone but an idiot.

Maybe, but the landowners pay other taxes and have always been the ones who paid the taxes which funded the infrastructure.

The landlord gives to society, they don't take. They add to the economy, they don't subtract from it.

Yep, the very value the landowners contributions in taxes and in improvements gives the land value.

The community value is based on the improved value BECAUSE OF THE LAND OWNERS CONTRIBUTIONS.

What is proved is, the landowner created the value by paying taxes to fund the infrastructure which helped develop the community and everyone in the community gained because of the original and subsequent landowners.

Yes, your claim is false.

Absolute bullcrap! Until there were taxes on the original landowners there was no community, and never would be a community. We have gone through this crap many many times and you have lost the discussion because your "facts" are bullcrap.

You have proved nothing but how little you know about society and the economy.

Yes, you certainly have made the inevitable descent into absurdity.

The lease hold agreements in Hong Kong are automatically renewable, but maybe like taxes, the leases go up because the value of property goes up. Without assurance that they land tenure would be solid the investors would never have spent those big bucks to build the improvements, and that R, is self evident.

It is self evident to everyone but the ignorant.

Only if the government could survive on LVT with no other tax and only if you take their words out of context. Your claims about what those people said are absurd. You throw out a lot of names but not in any of the forums you tout this crap have you ever linked us to the context in which they said LVT was a benign type of tax.

All of the facts are on my side of the issue, and what is worst is, YOU KNOW you are wrong and have been proved wrong every time you make your claims.

Yes it is sad that you make such a spectacle of yourself in your lack of understanding of reality.

It will take someone with a whole lot more intelligence than you to embarrass me for being right and saying it.

 

"Our ideal society finds it essential to put a rent on land as a way of maximizing the total consumption available to the society. ...Pure land rent is in the nature of a 'surplus' which can be taxed heavily without distorting production incentives or efficiency.” – Paul Samuelson, Nobel laureate in Economics (1970)

Paul Samuelson seems to think the LVT is benign.

"In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago."

“I share your view that taxes would be best placed on the land, and not on improvements...” — Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in Economics (1976)

Milton Friedman certainly believes that taxing land is more benign than taxes on improvements.

"Economists are almost unanimous in conceding that the land tax has no adverse side effects.” – William Vickrey, Nobel laureate in Economics (1996)

Hmm, a tax with “no adverse side effects” sounds pretty benign to me.

"Not only was Henry George correct that a tax on land is non-distortionary, but in an equilibrium society ... tax on land raises just enough revenue to finance the (optimally chosen) level of government expenditure." – Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in Economics (2001)

Again, LVT is described as “non-distortionary” which seems like another way of saying the tax is benign.

 

In every single situation in which land tax is considered a good/benign tax, it is based on it being a single tax and it is based on a very small government foot print. LVT CANNOT WORK IN A MATURE AND LARGE ECONOMY SUCH AS IN THE US AND FURNISH SUFFICIENT REVENUE TO KEEP ALL LEVEL OF GOVERNMENTS (federal, state, municipal) functioning at the same level. So you can take your stupid supporting comments WHICH DO NOT SUPPORT WHAT GEORGISTS OR ANY OF THE LVT SUPPORTERS ON THIS OR ANY FORUM AND PUT THEM WHERE THE SUN DON'T SHINE.

I would support smaller government, but I realistically know that the progressive extreme of my own party will never allow anything which will reduce revenue which supports the social programs they want. (many of which I support.)

You people have no idea how negatively LVT will affect our our economy either as a single tax or as just one more way to raise even more revenue than we do not. LVT WILL NOT COLLECT ENOUGH REVENUE, PERIOD, and our government will never shrink to a size of which LVT can support.

The next and probably a more insidious result of LVT is the similarity to one of the definitions of SOCIALISM. When government owns the land and simply "allow" people to occupy it and pay taxes on it, it gives government too much control. All of us with a modicum of intelligence recognize that even using LVT and the semi-Geogists on the forum is not practical or useful as if accomplished in the classical form as presented by Henry George, occupation of the land would be tenured and will function as if it were a fee simple title to the land giving the occupier sole decision making about the property. BUT, this is the kicker, government changes, then changes, then changes again, making it easy to push the current occupier off the land and turn it over to their buddies (likely the rich paying to keep that government in office). Government control beyond simple small regulatory functions of big business to keep competition fair and stop fraud against consumers, is beyond the scope of reason. That is another reason why LVT is a scam. I darn sure trust government to ensure I get a fair shake in my occupation of land. The current fee simple is not perfect in that my land can be "condemned" through eminent domain, but fee simple makes it harder to throw someone off his land because private property is etched in our culture and laws.

Basically LVT is an archaic idea dreamed up by a man dead for many years who tried to change things such that existing land would be removed from the current landowners with out just compensation such that others could come in and occupy it to the "government's preference." LVT is a pipe dream whose time came and went over 100 years ago. Though the semi Georgists on the forum don't want to admit it, even in some municipalities in which there is a form of LVT in place, IT DOES NOT TAKE THE PLACE OF ALL THE OTHER TAXES PAID, THUS IT IS EITHER A SUBSTITUTE FOR PROPERTY TAX OR IN ADDITION TO PROPERTY TAX.

Just like in Hong Kong in which the people occupying the land only have lease hold rights, those leases are automatically renewed so long as the taxes/lease payments are made such that they have sufficient land tenure to justify spending big bucks to build improvements.

 

That would be hard for me since I am a moderate with more liberal positions than conservative ones, and because I don't like right wing or left wing and I abhor profiteers. No matter how much you try, you cannot make me a right winger, though after reading the crap you post makes me want to act like an extremist, an extremist anti-garbage spewer

 

You keep saying that but all of your posts indicate to me that you're a solid right winger. Anti liberal and pro corporate 'business' all the way.

 

I look like a solid right winger only to a left wing extreme fanatic. To a right winger I look like a left wing extremer. Your problem is, you have never understood where I am coming from because you are such a left wing fanatic everything to right of you is right wing. Your absolutism is your problem as when you actually list things you don't like such as corporate profiteering, corporate monopolies, corporations taking advantage of people, I agree with you. What I don't agree with is your broad brush attitude toward all corporations and your understanding of basic economics about companies like Walmart. You may not like what they do in so far as your personal situation may be, but Walmart has a work force of 1.2 million, all of whom will make no more in any other job than Walmart pays, and whose skills prevent them from getting a better job. When you talk about a Walmart situation you are effectively wanting to cause millions to be unemployed, and as I have clearly explained to you, a couple making minimum wage at Walmart are making a living wage in most economies. Maybe not in NYC, or Chicago, but the Walmart type stores pay more in those areas. It is your expressed hatred of corporations and your bitterness toward corporations which skews your opinion and probably has kept you from any more success than you have actually had.

Your last criticism about me was because I posted a total argument against LVT. Do you realize that if we had LVT if it is not a single tax it would actually do NOTHING to change our situation? You wouldn't be able to tell the difference, period. Do you realize if LVT WAS A SINGLE TAX, it would require government at all levels to scale back their expenditures to the point of doing nothing to help those who need help? Regulate business to keep them from being monopolies and tyrannical? That one of the definitions of government ownership of land with people simply occupying it is one of the definitions of socialism? That socialism has always been a dismal failure which in very short order makes more people poor than we have now? Do you understand those things at all? Certainly not from what you post.

 

You rail against anything that impedes the quick and steady acquisition of wealth. Period (and not by the average working class...by the big dogs). Walmart is the biggest and broadest example of corporate America running wild, whose monopolistic effects downgrade and further impoverish the working class, and so I reference them often. You embrace anything and everything corporate America does, that is perpetuated by the wealthiest of the wealthy, and I reject it. Apparently, YOU, don't understand the dilapidation of society when it's stuck there, right in front of you, nor do you recognize who or what does the biggest damage collectively, to our once decent, workable society. To you, it's a collection of fat cats, basking in the sun, and all is fair in achieving that arrogance, no matter who you effect.

 

No I don't. I rail against putting unreasonable barriers to people trying to acquire wealth, whether that person is already wealthy or not.

No they are not. They are a business, albeit a very large one, and they pay their employees as well as similar businesses and many other types of businesses pay their employees.

No I do not. There are many things about Corporate America I do not embrace, but I don't believe that most corporations are guilty of doing those things. That is the big difference between your opinions and my opinions. I recognize some to bad things. I do not believe they all do.

In my opinion, I am more aware of who has done damage to our society and economy than you do, and I blame the ones who cost society and our economy, not the ones who don't.

Not at all. As far as you are concerned you seem to believe that anyone who gets wealthy is a fat cat, and that they all are arrogant and unfeeling. I do not believe that. I believe there are some "fat cats" who arrogantly flaunt their wealth and do harm to those who are less wealthy, but I do not believe that most wealthy people do that. Some of the best examples are Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. They are both very wealth, but both do lots of good with their wealth and they are not fat cats arrogantly looking down their noses at the less fortunate.

It all goes back to your absolutism, your hatred of any corporate entity and your bitterness at the perceived (or real) negative treatment you have gotten in your limited business experience. Very little of what you think I am or believe is factual.

 

No, that's false. LVT is a benign tax because the supply of land is fixed, it therefore does not reduce production, and that advantage is the same no matter what the context.

It wouldn't need to, because most government spending on things like poverty relief would become unnecessary.

Again, that's just false. The advantage of LVT that Nobel laureates in economics understand but you do not -- its lack of excess burden -- very much supports what LVT advocates of any stripe are saying.

It would have very salutary effects on the economy, as the Nobel laureates in economics have tried to explain to you.

It can't shrink to that size without LVT, that's for sure.

That is one of the standard objections to LVT: that some other method of land allocation will be used instead of LVT.

But that is an objection to the other method, not to LVT. Hello?

Just compensation would be nothing, as the land's value is a gift from the community in the first place.

LVT is the future, as Hong Kong proved and China is now proving.

LVT is definitely a substitute for property tax, and for as many other unfair and destructive taxes as possible.

And it works very well, except that too much land rent is left in the leaseholders' hands, with the result that HK now has a land bubble.

 

Baloney!

Double Baloney!

Isn't it nice to take out of context what some economists say to try to prove your point? You are full of baloney.

Not a single Nobel laureate tried to explain anything to me and so far all you have done is throw names around. No links to the context of their comments. Until you do that all you are doing is blowing more smoke.

It can't shrink to that size with or without LVT.

Government can more easily change occupiers without fee simple title.

Except when land was free to settle on land is not a gift. That is another pipe dream of the Semi-georgists. Even if you are occupying land and paying LVT, if I want to occupy that land instead of you I have to pay you to move. I have to "buy" the right to occupy the land. Just compensation is what the land value is after it is purchased, improved and the value goes up. Unless you buy the land at market price you are stealing the land.

You are getting funnier as you go along.

Sure it works well in Hong Kong. To "buy" a lease from the current lease holder is hugely expensive. The selling leaseholder makes a bundle and the buying leaseholder will make a bundle. There is absolutely not a single scenario which would allow an LVT to be a single tax, and that there is not a single scenario in which LVT would raise enough taxes to run the government, and there is not a single scenario in which the government will shrink such that LVT would collect enough tax to satisfy the needed revenues.

Georgism in any form is a scam against society and the economy and it will not work in a large mature economy, especially not in one which makes the efforts to take care of the needy.

BTW, Murray Rothbard, one of our more prominent Capitalist Paradigm economists tears Georgism a new excremental orifice as useless crap from a long dead idealist whose thoughts never produced fruit.

 

I decline to dignify that with a response.

The market can, you mean.

Who dispossessed and/or exterminated the previous occupants to make it "free to settle on"?

No, the community pays me, and it only pays me the market value of my fixed improvements that will be removed by the new occupant, and only when he is going to be paying enough more rent than me to make it worthwhile.

No, to keep others off it.

The community has to pay the landowner for value the community gave him? Don't think so....

Close enough, as the market price would be near zero.

In both cases, for doing and contributing nothing. But when someone gets something for nothing, someone else is getting nothing for something. THAT is stealing.

These claims have already been disproved.

Why are they needy? As Dom Helder Camara observed,

"When I fed the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor had no food, they called me a communist."

Rothbard embarrassed himself.

 

Translated - "you don't have an argument." You lose by default, because when taken in context Milton Friedman was talking about the Land Tax being benign and the least bad it had to do with the immovability of land as an asset, ie it cannot be moved out of the taxing jurisdiction. The very idea that he endorsed LVT in the manner in which you semi-Georists want it to be is absolute nonsense.

BTW, it is not the land tax in and of it self that is the scam, or bad thing. The devil is in all of the details that you suggest go along with it, and that failing to think, is what Friedman meant.

No, the government can more easily take land away if there is no fee simple ownership. You see, it is not the tax part which is bad about LVT, it is the government control, the ability to assess value such that it dislodges honest occupiers and allows for Crony socialism.

Mostly a bunch of Englishmen who came to America, expanded into land hitherto occupied by Native Americans, and effectively "nationalized" the land in favor of the immigrants. As a person with Native American heritage, effectively those migrants stole the land from my ancestors, because they (the native Americans) did not have valid "title" (in the eyes of the immigrants) to the land so it was taken from them.[/quote]No, the community pays me, and it only pays me the market value of my fixed improvements that will be removed by the new occupant, and only when he is going to be paying enough more rent than me to make it worthwhile.[/quote]Hogwash! The "community" won't pay you a nickel to move any more than you propose to pay the original occupier for the right to allow you to occupy the land..

So you are trying to say that it is "keeping others off" the land as opposed to being your occupying the land? You get funnier the longer you try to present details of a system you actually know very little about while taking the word of a long dead economist that it is the right thing to do and will satisfy the revenue needs of the government at all levels. You haven't even got the details worked out if we somehow adopted LVT.

If the community gave the landowner any value there could be some minor points of interest, but the facts are, the community has some value only because the land owner created the community to begin with and the taxes the landowners paid funded the infrastructure. You keep forgetting that pesky little detail.

That is one of the theoretical pipe dreams of the Georgist concept of LVT. The market price of land will always be what the advantage of occupying that particular plot of land and the current occupier will not give it up without extracting what that price (value).

We know for a fact that the land owner contributes to the community and society so we know for a fact he is not getting something without contributing. Now if the community takes the land from the owner, that is stealing, UNLESS the community pays the market price for the land it would be acceptable. Land always increases in value relative to the infrastructure paid for by the landowner and by the increase of individuals (population growth) who will need to occupy some part of the total land.

No, they have been not been disproved. You have never proved a single thing in all your rants. You just make yourself appear more ignorant with every comment you make.

There are needy because no matter what society has, there will always be the relative poor who are poor only by virtue of their being less wealthy than those with more wealth. In addition, there are people who for what ever reason are not capable of contributing to the economy and society sufficiently to EARN their keep.

How Profound?

Rothbard can stand his own against the likes of you. The profound ignorance of those who accept Georgism is, well, profound.

 

To reiterate, if LVT is no more than a way to tax land as opposed to being a single tax and usurping landowners rights to fee simple title, is in and of itself OK. The details are in the folklore of Georgism. LVT as a single tax is impractical as it will not supply sufficient revenue to provide for all the needs of government at all levels. It is poppy (*)(*)(*)(*) to believe it is needed to better manage land as that is already available even with fee simple title. Effectively the details claimed by the Georgists or semi-Georgists on the forum are simply not of sufficient value to even consider the change.