Wealthy will ALWAYS have an advantage

The "folklore of Georgism" seems to be exclusively something that you are concerned about. I don't even know what you mean by it.

That's open to debate. Prof Mason Gaffney calculates that it could, and quite easily.

The thousands of vacant lots and abandoned buildings in every major city in the USA prove you wrong.

No facts, logic, economics or arguments, as expected. Check.

 

All of the crap you spew is part of the "folklore of Georgism." Are you trying to say you made up all of that stuff which was originally spewed by Henry George?

The only reason they remain vacant is there is no need for them in those cities. As our population increases they will be occupied.

Absolutely correct, you have posted no facts, nothing relative to a good economic view, and positively never have you had a reasonable argument.

What did you do R? Did you save all of the arguments you used on the other forums so you could repost it again? Your canned arguments were of no then than they are now.

 

LVT predates Henry George.

That's a better response than "Baloney!" for sure. Glad you're starting to see the light.

If there wasn't a need for them then why do they have market value?

True. As population pressure increases and the land speculator becomes satisfied with the amount of human labor he can extract from the economy for doing nothing he'll probably sell. Duress is profitable to the parasite land speculator. But, who knows, maybe it's just another land speculator that replaces him in the circle jerk of greed.

 

Another thing I found interesting is the disagreement between LVT supporters about some of the major issues. They are also issues brought to light by other economists in dismissing LVT as practical at any level. There is a lot of support among those who do support LVT that it wouldn't even replace all of what is now Property tax including land and improvements, and whether those living on improved land with limited income could even afford the limited LVT. None of them address the issue of how to convert from landowning to land occupying, and no addressed the injustice of appropriating land paid for by the current owner without re-numeration for the landowners cost of buying land or any improvements.

 

It was actually the French physiocrats who originally had the idea of raising all government revenue by LVT, several decades before Henry George was even born; and while he may perhaps have been the most eloquent proponent of LVT, modern geoist analysis goes well beyond what George envisioned.

No need?? In cities like NYC and San Francisco, where housing is grossly unaffordable? You can't be serious.

Nope. They'll only be occupied when the landowners' demands for unearned wealth have been met, as proved by the extreme population density in NYC, where both population and land value have increased and increased to by far the highest levels in the Western Hemisphere, and vacant lots and abandoned buildings still blight the city for no other reason than that their owners still aren't satisfied with the amount of unearned wealth they've been offered just to get out of the way.

What other forums? When the facts disprove a claim, the same facts disprove the same claim when it is made again. It doesn't matter who makes the claim or on what forum, or who provides the facts that disprove it.

 

Scientists disagree about major issues all the time. They just don't disagree about settled issues, of which the economic benefits of LVT are one.

I don't know of any LVT supporter who says that, as it flies in the face of economic logic. There may be places like Detroit where land value is so low and the tax burden on improvements is currently so high that switching to LVT would be a very radical change, but those are very much the exception. And while it's not clear that Detroit's current property tax revenues could be matched by a very high rate of LVT right away, once land taxation begins to work its typical economic miracle and the city becomes a magnet for development and industry again, as it was when it focused on taxing land back in the pre-war era, land rents could easily rebound enough to match current property taxes.

LVT is always affordable: just use the land productively, or let someone else do so. LVT can't exceed the land rent, and the land rent is just the market price someone is willing to pay to use the land.

Wrong. Many transition measures have been proposed.

Wrong again. It's been proposed that rent equivalent to the purchase cost of the land would be exempt from taxation, either on a declining basis or permanently (something Henry George never advocated, btw). Improvements would be sold at market to the new occupant, just as now, or if the new occupant didn't want them, the community could provide market value compensation to their owner, assuming the new occupant's higher LVT payments justified the expense.

 

Having wealth doesn't confer any advantages to your intelligence, emotional maturity, motivation or wisdom. What advantage did all those lottery winners have who lost their money within a relatively short span of time and found themselves right back where they were before?

If you aren't up to the task of managing wealth (or creating it) it will slip right out of your fingers.

 

Yeah, I read that too.

Decades before Henry George made a passionate case for the "single tax" in Progress and Poverty (published in 1879), the classical economists had recognized that, in theory, the land value tax was almost the perfect tax. Unlike other taxes, it causes no distortions in economic decision making and therefore does not lower the efficiency of a market economy in allocating resources. Also, it was obvious in the nineteenth century that a tax on the value of land would be highly progressive.​

The issue is not the high cost of housing in NYC and San Francisco, it is the myth that LVT would change that.

Just as you have been wrong on everything else, you are wrong about the "unearned wealth by the landowners." LVT is a theory which most modern economists believe is a pipe dream and will not accomplish what you want it to.

LVT will not solve that. No matter how much you whine about unoccupied buildings and abandoned lots, no one is paying tax on them because they have no value, to an occupier or as revenue. LVT will have no bearing on that problem.

The ones you have been spewing this garbage in.

There you go again, there has never been a fact disputing a claim, and there has never been proof that LVT will solve ANY OF THE PROBLEMS you cry about.

You have not provided any facts on this form or the others, all you have done is make claims which have been successfully refuted. Like the claim that it is the communities infrastructure which increases the value of the landowners land. That is not true, because it is the landowners who paid the taxes that funded the infrastructure. Communities did not simply appear with money. They got the money from taxes, and the first taxes levied are property taxes. Even if it was bare land value taxes, it was still the land owners who paid the first taxes which built the infrastructure.

In George's day there was little question that the tax could provide adequate revenue, at least in the United States where the role of government was small-no more than a tenth as important relative to gross domestic product as it today. Virtually all government services were supplied by local governments, which relied entirely on property taxes. Today, many scholars and practitioners question whether land value taxation is a serious contender as an important revenue source. But, whatever its political potential may be, economists continue to find the theoretical case for land value taxation compelling.

In January, the Lincoln Institute sponsored a conference to address these issues: "Land Value Taxation in Contemporary Societies: Can It and Will It Work?" In the opening paper, William Fischel focuses on the special nature of local government in this country, stressing its importance as an instrument of enhancing property values within communities. He argues that, in pursuing that role, local land use controls actually achieve substantial efficiency advantages by more closely matching consumer preferences to local government services and taxes. This is what economists refer to as the Tiebout-Hamilton model.

Fischel maintains that there is substantial justice in this outcome, which might be improved only marginally by land value taxation. That is, land use controls permit local governments to appropriate much of the value generated by community growth. Moreover, this system is widely used, which argues that it is more workable than land value taxation, although the latter is, in principle, more fair.​

The point is, even if LVT were more fair, which I don't believe, it was not considered practical by the LVT supporters who were in on that conference. There were many differences of opinion as to its workability.

 

No, they disagreed about its workability, and being such a small part of the economics community there was no way LVT would come about since even the proponents could not accept all of the pitfalls. The theory sounds good, especially to economist who want everyone to have basically the same slice of the pie (and socialists) but there were too many road blocks of feasibility AND acceptability from the rest of the world.

Look up the conference I posted about above. Land Value Taxation: Could It Work Today? (Land Lines Article) Author(s): Netzer, Dick publication Date: March 1998

The consensus of the economists is that they will not thus they would only be just one more tax which would not alleviate the problems that the classical economists theorized it might help, over 100 years a go. If you want to see a revolution, a real bullet flying revolution, just try to nationalize all the land without repaying the landowners their investment even if you could get the courts to authorize it, that is what you would see.

It would only be affordable as a low tax which would not be enough to satisfy the only really attractive function of LVT, that being a single tax, such that it would accomplish nothing at the expense of wholesale rebellion.

I have not seen a single suggestion which is worth a bushel of oats.

That has been said to be the only possible way, but even then, the return of the landowners investment would not occur at a reasonable pace and the take over would have to be hostile. In a country with liberties and laws and constitutional right to private property (including land) there is no way it could happen. Individual landowners would insist and the courts would back them up, that they get the value of their investment now, immediately, and don't be fooled into believing it would only require the return of the purchase price. It would have to be inclusive of the value of his investment which includes profits for the moment and the reasonable future.

The people in a constitutional republic who vote will never allow such a major change which does not have any guarantee what so ever, of replacing the current tax system painlessly. Remember, most of the voters are very small landowners, and those who want to purchase their own home, not the rich and powerful.

 

That is the primary reason I believe when we venture into the welfare assistance programs it should always be in kind. Furnish the food, the housing, the clothes and the medical care, not money. There are too many people who make bad choices about money.

 

When I posted this paragraph earlier I meant to highlight part of it.

Decades before Henry George made a passionate case for the "single tax" in Progress and Poverty (published in 1879), the classical economists had recognized that, IN THEORY, the land value tax was almost the perfect tax. Unlike other taxes, it causes no distortions in economic decision making and therefore does not lower the efficiency of a market economy in allocating resources. Also, it was obvious in the nineteenth century that a tax on the value of land would be highly progressive.​

The problem with the discussion thus far is not recognizing that all theories do not always pan out as theorized, or what may have been good in the 19th century will not be good in the 21st century, or that the conversion to even a system that is as good or better could be more painful than the improvment (if any) would be.

 

Nothing like a double negative!

The problem with the discussion thus far is a failure to recognize that not all theories pan out as theorized, or what may have been good in the 19th century will not be good in the 21st century, or that the conversion to even a system that is as good or better could be more painful than the improvment (if any) would be.

 

Your signature is incoherent, dnsmith, even if it was accurate, which it isn't. The "Nor can one get around the fact that so long as the land/property taxes are paid, land tenure exists in both systems." portion seems out of place. What systems? You haven't mentioned them in your signature. How is anybody supposed to know what you're talking about? Also, I'm not quite sure what the purpose of that sentence is supposed to be. I have never seen any LVT advocate mention that paying the LVT won't give you exclusive tenure. Make some sense, will you?

 

You're right about not giving people money for doing and contributing nothing -- but it's overwhelmingly the rich who are being given money for doing and contributing nothing, not the poor.

But most poor people do not need gifts of food, clothing or shelter anyway. What they need is their rights to liberty back, their rights to access economic opportunity without having to pay a landowner full market value for not blocking their access to it.

 

Since you answered it is obvious you knew which systems. You are wrong, my signature line is very accurate as it addressed the FACT that landowner taxes pay for the infrastructure which enhances the value of all the land near by and that landowners improve the economy and contribute to society.

But for your edification, maybe I should be more specific about how much of a scam Georgism is in my signature line.

 

I don't agree with the implications of your comment. The rich furnish most of the capital for business ventures and they do contribute by paying taxes. Maybe you are not satisfied with their contributions, but they are there.

I don't agree!

The poor need assistance and one of the reasons some people are poor is the inability to manage money. Therefore it would be better for them to get assistance in kind.

The poor don't pay the landowners unless they pay rent to occupy a space. Everyone pays to occupy space whether it is an owner occupied space or a rental space. The landowner is not the evil parasite some many LVT sympathizers claim.

I see you chose to ignore the fact that I expressed earlier, that theories do not always work as well as desired. I firmly believe that LVT, beyond simply being one more tax, is of no value to a modern large mature economy.

 

No, we already know that can't be true, because to pay any tax on the land, it has to have value, and it can't have any value unless the landowner gets more from the community by owning the land than he is asked to repay in taxes. So the landowner can't have made any net contribution, all he can have done is repay some (typically a very small fraction) of the subsidy he has been given.

 

They do like to buy up rent collection privileges, true... As to providing actual productive capital, I'm skeptical.

No, they are only asked to repay a small fraction of what they are given.

You imagine they are there, but actually they are much smaller than you think. The money you think the rich are contributing is actually only a small fraction of what they are taking.

Of course some people are just too dumb to manage their own affairs competently, but most of the poor are quite capable of managing their affairs competently. They are just being systematically robbed for the unearned profit of rich, greedy takers, especially landowners, banksters, and IP monopolists. They are also being robbed by union privilege; but union workers, while often greedy takers, are typically not rich.

I agree that those who really can't look after themselves -- can't work, can't figure out prices, can't calculate if they have been given the right change, etc. -- should not be given money but direct support of their basic needs. But most of the poor are not like that. They've just been systematically robbed of the fruits of their labor, and aren't smart or productive enough to support a privileged, parasitic overclass of rich, greedy takers as well as themselves, their families and the government.

No, they'd also have to pay to buy one. In any case, the landowner charges them the market price for everything government, the community and nature provide, including economic opportunity. He's just not the one who provides that opportunity.

Most of the Founding Fathers owned slaves. Maybe as individual human beings they weren't evil parasites, but if you consider them just in their role as slave owners, they were indeed evil parasites: they were abrogating others' rights for their own profit, and contributing nothing in return. Just like landowners.

How would that be relevant? LVT has always worked just as well as theory predicts, to the exact extent that it has been tried, whether it was in Meiji Japan, Mughal India, ancient Rome or Athens, Kiaochow, California's water districts, or Pittsburgh.

In fact, though, everywhere we look at large, mature capitalist economies, we see enormously destructive economic phenomena that would be completely eliminated by LVT: Japan's 80s land boom and 90s land bust that produced a whole generation of economic stagnation; the Great Recession (caused by land speculation) that we are only just now crawling out of; the Irish land speculation boom that wiped out their banks and impoverished the Irish middle class; the Spanish land speculation boom that has crushed their economy so thoroughly that unemployment is a towering 20%; the Russian land giveaway that saw their whole economy bought up by greedy gangsters, who now, thanks to lack of LVT, have the country in a stranglehold; the list goes on and on, and in the future will include a big chapter on the economic disaster following the current Chinese land boom caused by leaving too much land rent in leaseholders' hands (take it to the bank).

There's never been a lack of proof that LVT works just as well as economic theory predicts.

 

Actually, the land value tax is such a good tax that even if the government burned all the money collected by the land tax, the economy would still perform better than it would without the tax (everything else being the same). The higher the land value tax is levied, up to the full rental value of the land, the better the economy will do. As has been pointed out many times on the forum and even on this thread, the land value tax doesn't distort the economy, it doesn't raise consumer prices or lower wages, but it does stop detrimental land speculation. The land value tax also stops landowners who don't contribute to production from gaining a share of production, which means that it puts a stop to the subsidization of idle landowning.

 

You still have it backwards because in the beginning there was the man who settled the land, who built the trail into and area where he could trade or sell his goods. People started to settle around him so a community started to grow. For the community to grow infrastructure was needed, but the community didn't have the funds, so the people starting to make up the community, all of the landowners around the community paid taxes and the community built roads. Flash forward...the land owners now had more valuable property because of the infrastructure THEY paid for but everyone wanted more, like water systems, and sewer systems, et al. So all of the landowners paid more taxes and built more infrastructure. If there had been no landowner, there would have been no community the landowner would dig his well, built his outhouse, ie create his own infrastructure. But people like company so someone passing by thought gee, here is a farm and it is doing ok, I'll settle the next plot. Thus we start again, building a community one landowner at a time, paying the taxes and creating the infrastructure.

That is how it works.

 

The land owner started the whole thing rolling, usually with farm produce to sell or by making things or repairing things, and his excess production (back in the agrarian economy) was the capital. He invested that capital mostly to improve his land, dig a better well, enhancing his farm and making his land more valuable. As the community built up around him he and his neighbor landowners paid taxes to fund the community and the infrastructure which was needed and all of the land became more valuable. you people put the cart in front of the horse.

Not true. They paid the taxes that were needed to develop the area. There was no other way for a community to get funds to pay for infrastructure.

It is certainly a small fraction of what they earn, but earn it they do in most cases.

Except for the unions I totally disagree with you.

There are many who cannot manage their money, and they do better with assistance in kind. As to your whining and crying about parasitic overclass etc, it tends to be just a pile of bullcrap.

The land owner charges for rent or product, just like any business person and the government has given the landowner nothing, but taxes to pay.

Once you start equating land owning with slavery you have lost the debate. That is total horse pucky

There is not a shred of proof that LVT has worked for any length of time or in any mature economy and it will not work in the US. As soon as communities try to take possession of land from the landowners the revolution will start, unless the communities come up with the money to BUY THE LAND AND PAY REASONABLE FUTURE PROFITS TO THE LANDOWNER.

LVT, as one of many taxes, on land that is owned fee simple, with bonafide tenure will not earn much of the revenue needed to run the cities and states and federal governments. It is just that simple.

BTW, the recession was caused by much more than speculation.

 

Theory that will not work the way you think it will. Even the most prolific LVT backers could not agree on how well it would work or if it would work as well as property tax I have never met a landowner who did not contribute to production. Where do you find that stuff? From a book written by a man dead for years?

 

You may note that there is no total agreement about LVT improving more than the local property tax system or even the assuring that as much tax would be collected even for the city or state.

Two papers treated the efficiency characteristics of the land value tax. Edwin Mills examines the issue in the context of an urban economy, showing that the tax is indeed efficient in its effects on land use, as claimed. But he believes that this is immaterial because the land value tax cannot yield more than trivial revenues, even at rates that are so high that the courts would find them to be an unconstitutional "taking" of property. Moreover, it is so difficult to value land properly that the efficiency advantages cannot be realized.​

Some suggest that the value of land will increase significantly under LVT in order that the taxes collected would not be confiscatory.

Land Value Taxation as a Substitute for Other Taxes (Single tax)

Another pair of papers examines the land value tax as a substitute for other taxes used by sub-national governments in rich countries. In my own paper I argue that, although the empirical evidence on land values is poor, some reasonable estimates suggest that, at least in the United States, the land value tax could replace the conventional local property tax at reasonable tax rates. But the main thrust of my argument is that those rich countries in which substantial government spending is done by local governments are the most plausible candidates for the use of the land value tax . Furthermore, its use is probably most feasible in those countries familiar with the idea of valuing real property for tax purposes. The combined administrative, compliance and evasion costs of most other taxes are so large that, even if the administrative costs of land value taxation are high, land value taxation is still promising.

Friedman supposes the land tax would be useful in so far as the land cannot be moved so the assets cannot be hidden.

Andrew Reschovsky points out that the current balmy climate for state and local finance in the United States is likely to change radically, for the worse, in the not too distant future. For a variety of reasons, state governments in particular may be looking for substantial additional revenues. Is the land value tax the right, or the likely, choice for hard-pressed state governments? He concludes, first, that the economic gains from the adoption of a new land value tax would be modest, compared to increasing the rates of existing state taxes. Second, a land value tax should help improve the equity of the state tax system. Third, he believes that it would add an element of cyclical stability to state revenue systems.​

There are too many potential issues with an LVT considering that it does not change the land tenure so long as taxes are paid. And considering that it would not likely ever yield enough revenue to be used as it was envisioned, a single tax while eliminating income taxes, sales taxes et all. And there has not been enough discussion about a wealthy person paying no tax if he owns no land.

Mainstream capitalist paradigm economists do not support LVT in the manner in which it has been proposed, and the exceptions to the rule proffered so far are a very modest sample, and the examples given do not suggest it could reasonably be substituted for existing systems in a modern mature economy like the US.

 

Except when they try to get into Heaven - at least according to the Bible and the Christianity that they claim to worship.

 

The Golden Rule. Those with the Gold, Rule. The extremely wealthy have the money to manipulate legislation to their favor, and stack the deck in order to increase their wealth on the backs of those with no political power. Somehow, a lot of people think that giving these people even more power, is going to benefit them somewhere down the line.