Do you have the right to say that a “rich” person isn’t paying enough taxes?

I feel I can say the do not NEED the Bush tax cuts for the rich, we can't afford them and they don't need them

 

Neoclassicalists! They ain't labour economists, they're microeconomists on a holiday!

Its all of them. The Austrians just bother to ignore the theory of the firm in a scholarly manner!

 

All production still requires land, and in an economy dominated by services, location is more important than ever. That is why a vacant lot near the center of any major city is worth millions. Please watch this video and try to find a willingness to know the facts it identifies:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yltJHY6g5I&feature=related"]TheIU.org - Land and Economic Rent - YouTube[/ame]

The great numbers of people living on small amounts of land just mean the land is worth that much more per unit area. For example, it has been calculated that the Jubilee Line extension in London has increased land value around the stations by 10G pounds, about triple what it cost to build the line. Do you know what a "teardown" is? Try to find a willingness to understand what that term says about the value of land absent the improvements on it.

 

Right: it's an obvious non sequitur. Consider the medieval serf who had partial control of the means of production -- a legal right to use a particular parcel of land -- but was also legally bound to that land and couldn't go elsewhere. It is obvious to everyone reading this, including Reiver, that the serf's partial control of the means of production also implied his exploitation. Reiver will just choose deliberately to lie about it.

 

You'll need to post some evidence for that claim, Reiver. Don't forget the references to papers published in peer-reviewed research journals. And don't imagine that the paper by Munch et al supports it. It doesn't.

 

I stopped right there. You need to be on a history forum; that's where your Georgism suits! Back to modern life: home ownership increases economic rents for employers, making your comment nonsensical and advertising the uselessness of the land rant for modern economics

 

Its a well known phenomenon, compare the home ownership rates in UK and Spain with the likes of Germany. The only debate is the cause. We've already seen the Oswald hypothesis, which we can apply to analysis into unemployment and working poverty. In contrast, Kemeny would use sociology to link home ownership and the welfare state. Its been confirmed empirically by Frank Castles

 

True, but are there not some highly productive activities that require very little physical space and even less so when we build vertically, rather than horizontally.

Ok, so at first I empathized with the guy buying the land for the factory, until I realized that once built, he's now in a better position than the Floridian land owner, not only does he now own a valuable piece of real-estate but he's developed it and added value. When he's done with it he'll reap the same rents/benefits that the previous owner did.

As I understand it, it's when older homes/communities are torn down and replaced, typically to vacant or condemned properties. I understand real estate has intrinsic value, it's a good that there will never be any more of, scarcity at it's finest.

I'm open minded, but skeptical. If land is so valuable, how come the world richest aren't all landlords, the list is chocked full of financiers and technologists, the latter of which has very small demands on land and location is irrelevant for server farms.

 

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAA!!!

The logic is blindingly obvious to anyone who hasn't made a career of apologies for landowner privilege: the homeowner owns land and consequently isn't desperate for a job. He has options. Unlike the landless worker who must work or throw himself on the mercy of state charity, the landowner has already bought himself a right to life -- i.e., a right to space in which to exist. He can just choose a job he enjoys, at lower wages, or working only part time, rather than having to maximize his wages just to avoid poverty. In many jurisdictions he can just go on welfare and retire. Far from being "exploited," he is himself the exploiter, because he is pocketing other people's taxes. Some people have just decided to be too stupid and dishonest to understand that being willing to accept lower wages can be a sign of being comfortable, not just of being exploited.

 

Germany is quite anomalous in Europe. Compare home ownership rates in places like Ireland, Spain and Italy with the US rate. Do you really claim US workers are less exploited than European workers? REALLY?

So you have no evidence for your claim. Thought not.

 

You've merely gone into your land script rant to hide from reply. Can you deny that labour economics predicts that economic rents or unemployment is created through home ownership? Can you deny that the empirical evidence confirms that both occurs, but with greater focus on the former? (I know you will but wont actually offer anything but further emotive blubbering)

 

Sure. So what? Financial firms that could do their work electronically from almost anywhere nevertheless still choose to pay an astronomical amount for land in NYC, London, Tokyo, etc. They are not paying that money for something worthless. It only makes sense to build vertically when the location is so valuable that it justifies the extra construction cost.

Of course. That is the privilege he paid for. But whether he rents or buys the land, he is still, as a producer, paying for government twice -- once in taxes to fund government services and infrastructure, and then again in land rent to a landowner for access to the same services and infrastructure his taxes just paid for -- in order to enable the landowner to pocket one of the payments in return for exactly nothing.

Right. The point is that teardowns often cost almost as much as houses people buy to live in (look at the real estate listings for almost any large market to confirm this fact), and their value is ENTIRELY land value.

Most are; you just don't hear about them. Oil sheiks, for example, get all their money by owning land. The Russian resource mafia all became billionaires by buying up the land and resources at fire-sale prices when the XSSR privatized state-owned assets. Almost all rich people in poor countries got rich by owning land.

The banksters need land value to lend for and against. Surely the recent and ongoing global financial crisis has made that obvious enough. It's obvious to the banksters even if it isn't obvious to you: that's why Fannie Mae has been spending hundreds of billions of taxpayers' money to prop up land prices and pull the banksters' chestmuts out of the fire.

<sigh> Think about where your own money goes. How much do you pay each year for software? How much to server farms? How much in rent (most of which is for land)?

GET IT?

 

I.e., you were conclusively refuted and you know it.

History is indeed replete with the proofs that landowner privilege is always the central economic problem.

Observe the absurdity of "modern economics": a cloud-cuckoo land where employers collect rents, but landowners don't.

 

Referring to medieval serfs gave the game away somewhat! It shows you're stuck in a time warp and you have no means to refer to the modern economy.

It just happens to bother with reality! Your stuff is dead, move on. Your ridiculous comments over home ownership, inconsistent with theory and empirical evidence, neatly advertised it

 

You've merely gone into your "land script" script to hide from reply.

Does a taxpayer-funded subsidy to homeowners' leisure increase "unemployment"? Certainly! If the government gave all the redheads $1000/month for doing nothing, that would increase "unemployment" among redheads, too. As for "rents," that depends on what you call rent. I am unpersuaded by an "economics" that claims skilled workers collect rent for their labor but landowners don't collect rent by owning land.

 

That doesn't work does it? I'm referring to current economic relations, adopting economic analysis correctly to explain empirical phenomenon. You're just talking about people longer dead than long dead George

Here its a real phenomena (unlike your ridiculous nonsense about home ownership): compensation below productivity levels. Your "partial control of the means of production" is stupid as you are referring to a housing tenure result associated with higher working poverty

 

No, it proved you wrong by the simplest and most obvious means, and you have no answers.

BWAHAHAHAHHAAAA! A look at any of its peer-reviewed journals packed with silly "equilibrium proofs" will show just how bothered with reality it is.

Georgist economists predicted the GFC years in advance, and explained how to prevent it. Mainstream economics did not predict it, let alone prevent it, and still can't explain it.

<yawn> I proved you wrong and you have no answers (also no evidence for your claims), so now you have no choice but to bloviate. Simple.

 

Yes: we hate each other because I hate lies, and Reiver hates the truth.

 

I'd be wrong if referring to medieval times was relevant to today and the housing tenure decision. Guess what? It aint

Back to the reality of the internet Georgists. Their intellectualism rivals David Icke

The current problems were predicted by anyone referring to the phenomenon of neo-liberalism. Georgism is irrelevant, but good to see you admitting your Georgist prance so openly (you usually, quite rationally mind you, try and hide it)

You proved you don't care about economics and evidence. Why does the evidence confirm the validity of my argument? Are we back to your "all of the economists are part of a global conspiracy to ignore George the God" 'argument'?

 

Not true. I don't hate you. I do hate the Georgist cult that corrupts the gullible though

 

No, your script script self-refutes, obviously.

I am unable rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could prompt such a comment. The time elapsed since a person's death does not affect the facts about their lives, nor does it affect the logical validity of anything they said.

IOW, as I already observed, not rent at all.

LOL!! Yes, well, speaking of stupid, how do those poverty-stricken working people who just happen to own valuable real estate ever survive being so exploited?

ROTFL!!

 

That the modern economy is just a little different to the medieval one is obvious to most folk. Not all though! Admittedly

Underpayment is the most important source of economic rents. It guarantees working poverty, hinders human capital investment and maximises economic inefficiency (as we link it to the boundaries of the firm and inefficient hierarchy)

Home ownership is used as 'self-insurance' given the severity of old age poverty risk. Again, you show your contempt for economic reality!

 

Was there any reason for Newton to quibble over the difference between weight and mass?

 

I gave you one. You simply claimed that because the people involved are dead, it somehow doesn't count. You always have to contrive some pretext for refusing to know facts.

 

In your mind you did. In the history forum you might have something (even then I'd still be laughing). Here? Your prance is David Icke like, nothing more. Again, the empirical evidence and modern economics (both orthodox and heterodox!) laughs at your position