A lot of people focus on the fairness of the Land Value Tax, but the consequences of using one are just as interesting if not more. This tax has been put into practice in some cities in Pennsylvania, and there's evidence that it has a whole bunch of positive effects on the city, due to the way that it incentivises improving your property and making the most of your land (since you're going to be taxed on it pretty much the same either way).<p><a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/6/non-glamorous-gains-the-pennsylvania-land-tax-experiment" rel="nofollow">https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/6/non-glamorous-g...</a><p>I think we should be replacing property taxes with land value taxes pretty much everywhere. Aside from the benefits mentioned in the Strong Towns article linked above, putting the right incentives in place to build more densely in high-demand (aka high land value) areas would be a boon to making cities and towns more walkable and more amenable to public transit, and therefore reducing sprawl and pollution. It wouldn't get us all of the way, but it would help.
Back in a different life, I worked on the Lyons Inquiry which looked at English Local Government finances. Final report was issued in 2007[1]. As part of the work we had to look into Land Value Taxes as a supplement/alternative to Council Tax and Business Rates.<p>There's nothing wrong with the idea. The big issues were mainly around introducing a new tax system and the massive upheavals and uncertainties businesses and people would face as part of the change. Winners and losers, etc. Given the uproar surrounding the later introduction of Universal Credit I'm glad Sir Michael chose not to recommend LVT in his report.<p>Anyway - anecdote time. One of the big questions we asked at the start of the Inquiry was: "Why tax property?" After long consultations with the most senior Experts and Gurus across Government and Academia the answer came back: "Because it's there."<p>[1] <a href="https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/en/archive/20070411120000/http://www.lyonsinquiry.org.uk/index8a20.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/en/archive/20070411120...</a><p>(I'm mainly commenting because it's an opportunity to show off the Inquiry's website. I built that! I had to do it in my "spare time" because we didn't have a budget for the work. This version is from 2007, but the original code was written in 2004 in PHP and after that most of the work was adapting the site to add events, display responses received, etc. Simpler times!)
I've yet to see a single valid objection as to why LVT (Land Value Tax) should not be the primary tax, yet it's nowhere to be found in the political dialogue. Such a shame that the majority of the tax burden instead falls on the working class while the landowners get a free ride.
The founding father of the Republic of China, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, was heavily influenced by Georgism. He believed all income derived from land, including appreciation of the land, should be heavily taxed. He incorporated it into three principle of the people, which is the cornerstone Kuomintang ideology.<p>But nobody would argue Taiwan is a Georgism heaven right now. Why? Rich and political powerful people own the land. Georgism as a practical matter is very difficult to push through.
The problem with georgism is that “unimproved value” is a non-market price. It’s just made up by whoever is appointed assessor.<p>Georgism conflates made up “value” with market “value”. Ultimately some person has to assess the value of the unimproved land, meaning someone anointed to write down whatever number they want.<p>Value is subjective. There is no such thing as “unimproved land value”, unless you’re talking about the last sale price of a particular unimproved lot. Property taxes in general have this problem, but it’s very acute with unimproved land. Unimproved land is one of the most non-fungible goods there is.
I think commons like fish in the ocean and air quality in cities should be priced. If of you fish its not free you pay to the country whos fish you fish. If the fish is extinct or heavily MSC on the red list the price is sky high in the millions this is to protest the species and our eco system so future generations can enjoy that fish.<p>By pricing eco systems and sustainable common resources. We avoid tragedy of the commons where few extract all value from common resources for free.<p>Ie such a new economic system would price the rain forest at its true value to humans and earth eco systems.<p>Carbo emissions would also be priced differently.<p>Tradegy of the commons
<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons</a>
There was a time - for over half a century - when Progress and Poverty was the best known economics book in the world. If you buy one, it has a who’s who of people endorsing it, from famous economists to writers to presidents.<p>And somehow, in the last 50 years, we have all forgotten it, and some people only remember the land tax. Not only that, but the same debates rage today, about why there is still so much poverty even while there has been so much progress. Libertarian people know Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard before they know Henri George, about whom Milton Friedman had a lot of good things to say.
A great essay on Georgism:<p>“Georgism is an accelerationism, as it attempts to unchain capital—not from the restraints of humanity, but those of land, which eats cake in the stands as it watches capital and labor fight over crumbs.”<p><a href="https://gravitylobby.club/trashcan.html" rel="nofollow">https://gravitylobby.club/trashcan.html</a>
> The main Georgist policy recommendation is a tax assessed on land value. Georgists argue that revenues from a land value tax (LVT) can be used to reduce or eliminate existing taxes (for example, on income, trade, or purchases) that are unfair and inefficient.<p>Fine in theory, the reality is that you get nailed for property taxes AND income taxes AND sales taxes AND everything else. If a government CAN tax it, it will and will not restrain itself.
Monopoly was based on, or one might say perverted from, a game created to inculcate Georgist ideas in children: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game</a> .
This part about Georgist economics is quite startling.<p>You have an economical theory following in the footsteps of classical economists at the beginning of industrial revolution like Adam Smith and David Ricardo. It becomes incredibly popular with massive amount of followers. You were not an intellectual back then unless you knew about this school.<p>Somehow it offered a way out of the societal mess, but costing great fortunes to the economical parazites - monopolies (neo-aristocracy).<p>Some people in the school argue it was strategically removed from the society by funding a competing economical theory which removed land from the 3 factors of production and kept only 2 - labor and capital. Thus divert the attention from the real parazite (monopolist, rentier and landlord - someone who monopolizes land) to the conflict between employer and employee as depicted in the Marxist view on societal problems - which actually never existed.<p>So the new aristocracy (Rockefellers, Carneggies and others) decided to fund and found universities with the main purpose of destroying Georgism and promoting red herring economical theories instead - such as Marxism and neoclassical economics, both of which remove the parasitic monopolist and landlord out of the picture.<p>By not fighting with their enemy directly and thus making the georgist theory indirectly more popular it was a smart move for them to silence it down by promoting other theories instead, which is exactly what happened - from the most popular theory of economics to nonexistent to this day. No mention of it in economics curricula around the world - which suggests economics as taught in universities today is a fraudulent wannabe science or form of propaganda or both.<p><a href="http://dollarsandsense.org/blog/2017/04/the-dissing-of-henry-george.html" rel="nofollow">http://dollarsandsense.org/blog/2017/04/the-dissing-of-henry...</a><p>Mason Gaffney (famous Georgist) wrote a lengthy piece on this topic - Neoclassical Economics As a Stratagem against Henry George<p><a href="http://masongaffney.org/publications/K1Neo-classical_Stratagem.CV.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://masongaffney.org/publications/K1Neo-classical_Stratag...</a>
May I suggest that if you've not read Henry George's thought yourself yet, you take some time with them? There are two sections of the Schalkenbach site devoted to them -- first, the books, articles and speeches themselves, and then an introduction to HG's thought, with perspectives from a number of writers, mostly recent. With the latter group is a short version of Progress and Poverty entitled "Significant Paragraphs."<p>His vision and clarity are remarkable and inspiring. 120 years ago, his ideas were widely understood throughout the English speaking world. (There were also a lot of hilarious misinterpretations by people who hadn't read, as is often the case.)<p>And if you explore a bit, you'll find some good websites and blogs devoted to his thought.
All income should be taxed the same.<p>We should move to a a progressive tax system with zero deductions, eliminate capital gains, and inheritance taxes. Make the top tax rate of over $5M be 54%.<p>We already know the effective tax rate for each bracket. Once we factor in the additional tax revenue from the top bracket we can adjust the other rates.<p>I would consider a true capital gain exception. For the investment in new and private busines investment that generates revenue. This horseshit of buying stock and holding it for a period of time is NOT capital investment. The company does not benefit from the purchase of stock once they go public. It’s a scam to allow the rich to avoid taxes.
Why should only bigger communities together own something? If I want to fuck out in the middle of nowhere and do my own thing, why should others be allowed to harass me there?<p>Additionally the government printing money, giving it to us and then requiring us to give it back does not create value, it creates a loop that causes work for nothing.
Allegedly, Karl Marx called Georgism "capitalism's last ditch ". I can't find a source, but this was an interesting collection of historical thoughts: <a href="https://merionwest.com/2019/06/02/through-letters-the-gap-between-henry-george-and-karl-marx/" rel="nofollow">https://merionwest.com/2019/06/02/through-letters-the-gap-be...</a>
An interesting and derived point of view is geolibertarianism : <a href="http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html" rel="nofollow">http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html</a>
For a libertarian take on Georgism, see Geolibertarianism:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism</a>