There is a saying: "Pay for what you take, not for what you make" The meaning behind this saying is that we should NOT be taxed for contributing to society, but that we should be taxed in accordance to how much land (opportunity) we take from society, for our private use. The U.S. Government is sovereign over an area of land, so it is only logical that government should be financed by the rent of that land. We should stop using income taxes that penalize productive effort. We should start taxing the ownership of land, which encourages efficient land use. Government(s) should receive the part of land rent that its activities create. The people should receive equitable part of land rent that is contributed by nature. The U.S. economy cannot reach its full potential, nor can institutionalized poverty be ended, until we stop penalizing productive effort with unjust taxes on income and trade. We should end these taxes and replace them with taxes on privileges, especially taxes on the privilege of owning land. Economists are almost unanimous in conceding that the land tax has no adverse side effects. William Vickrey, Nobel laureate in Economics (1996)
I am surprised at how many messages on this forum are open hatred of farmers, ranchers and people who aren't street people in some bizarre worshiping of the communist doctrine regarding land ownership. Land already is taxed anyway - and is reaching the level of driving people - particularly the elderly and low income out of their homes. Land ownership is not a "privilege" granted by the government. Not in this county anyway.
So you want to abolish private property, bow down and worship environmentalism, and punish producers. Everytime one of these "tax the land" OPs comes up it is more foolish than the last.
I don't hate farmers, I want to stop taxing them for their effort. Farming and landowning are not the same thing. Many farmers have to forfeit half their crop to the parasitic landowner, getting nothing in return. Land value taxation would remove all tax burdens from farmers and ranchers. Land is not taxed nearly as much as it could be, that is why land prices are so high. Taxing land will bring land prices down which will actually allow more people to buy land and become landowners. High land taxes would put an end to tenant farming, because the high taxes would make land so affordable that farmers would simply buy the land which they desired to farm. Land value taxation would allow farmers to tell the landowners to f*%#-off. To put is simply, landownership is just the name we give to an agreement whereby the government undertakes the burden of protecting an individuals exclusive use of land, to the exclusion of other citizens … it is a privilege provided by government, pure and simple.
I want to tax the land because nature, community and government provide that value, so taxing land values cannot harm producers. Land taxes help producers by eliminating all taxation currently levied against them. "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." —Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in Economics (1976)
That is correct. Landownership is an arrangement whereby (b) and (c) are forced to protect (a) from (d). That is an arrangement that only governments can create. If (a) has to provide his own protection, that is not ownership, that is occupation by force; much like a wolf protecting his territory. The wolf cannot force others to protect his territory in his absence, and that is the difference between ownership and forceful occupation. Ownership of land is created by government and cannot exist in the absence of government. Landownership is a government created privilege, a privilege that has costs to society, and those costs to society should be compensated by the privileged, in order to negate the privilege. Privilege should be abolished from society.
Land value taxation brings competition to the land market. It is up to the market to decide the best use of land, whatever that use might be. You don't like competition, you are afraid of it, that much is obvious.
Uh. That's bull(*)(*)(*)(*), right there. In some areas the Federal Government is sovereign, in some areas the States are sovereign, and in some areas the people are sovereign. The Framers advanced into practice several centers of power to prevent the formation of an authority vortex that would swallow all authority establishing the world’s first viable system of disassociated sovereignty. Your desire to eliminate private land ownership demonstrates that you have very little understanding of what it means to be an AMERICAN. Sad!
That is total ignorance of history, and a complete lake of any understanding of human psychology and sociology, and no understanding of government. Of course land was owned before government - the guy with the biggest stick took the best land and kept it for himself. The role of a government based on natural rights is to protect private property, to create the rule of law so that the guy with the biggest stick did not steal the best land, not to take land and redistribute it.
No, that is false. Sharecropping has been illegal for many decades. Most farmers do own their land and much of it is passed down generation after generation. You claim that farmers pay landowners is just outright false. About the only farmers and ranchers who lease their land is for land leased from the government. The government pays no taxes on their land so all you wrote is irrelevant to anything and detached from reality. IF taxing land brings down land prices, then the amount of taxes for the land decreases with the decline. Since most land is under mortgages - both residential and commercial - dramatically depreciating the value would result is massive foreclosures and bankruptcies. In addition, land of itself has no value whatsoever but rather only what is done with or built upon it. That is the "product." That also is the basis of MOST land valuation for taxes. Since you would not tax that "product" the value of just the land is minimal, meaning virtual no taxes could be levied. A growing reality in response to escalating property taxes is increasing numbers of people who are moving into mobile trailers, motor homes and live-aboard boats - thereby paying no property taxes whatsoever. There are virtual boat cities in both California and Florida due to the friendly climate and by which zero property taxes are collected. Why buy a $500,000 house on land for massive taxes of tens of thousands a year, when you can buy a $250,000 houseboat of the same square footage and pay no taxes? If you can show examples where your version of communism or socialism in which land ownership is a "privilege" present it. You can't. Am I correct that you own no real estate and therefore think you have a clever way to not pay any taxes?
In the internet age land isn't needed to create wealth. Does your plan mean super rich internet companies won't have to pay much in taxes because they require very little land?
The message of the OP is incredible detached from reality and seems to believe people by land the way a person buys a candy bar – paying in full for it. Virtually all land – farmland, ranchland, houses, commercial and and raw land is purchased by loans and mortgages – usually for nearly the full value of the land. However, only stupid people obtain variable interest rate loans – means nearly all loans require the same monthly payment year after year – usually for 20 to 30 years. Since the mortgage does not escalate with inflation, relatively speaking the amount of the mortgage payment declines each year in relation to inflation, while staying at the same monthly rate. In this way, a person accumulates equity in the property after a few years and ultimately owns the property – as an old age security, a fashion of savings account, or a way for the business to become profitable. If massive taxes significantly reduced the property value, none of such people could even sell their property as their existing remaining balance on the property vastly excesses the property value – ie is upside down on financing – and therefore could not be sold at all. The exception is property taxes and virtually all mortgage and property loans include the property taxes. Since taxes rates can change every year, as can property valuation. If there was no possible way to pay off property (impossible with massive annual taxes) nor anyway to know what future property taxes would be – anyone wanting to buy property would be doing so in the dark as to how much they will have to pay each year – and with this any mortgage company would find it virtually impossible to calculate if the person could be able to pay all future massive and changing property taxes or not. Since the foundation of this country at its core was the goal of having as many people OWNING their homes as possible – including for long term financial security and safe retirement – and to encourage people to develop land for commercial purposes as well. The driving incentive is to gain the economic advantages of owning land you have finally paid off, with it taking years or even decades to reap the benefits of that virtually lifelong effort. The OP message has the effective goal of making homeownership, landownership, and developing land highly punished and undesirable. Essentially, he wants everyone to be a tenant of the government – and to be evicted – particularly in old age – when unable to continue to pay their every increasing tax-rent. Increasing taxes while reducing value does not reduce mortgage or loan payments one penny. It just makes the person pay more and makes the land impossible to sell as more is owned on it than it is worth, plus the inflationary factor of taxes makes improving land highly undesirable overall. It is fair prediction that the author of the OP is not a property owner and in his messages is then is explaining how he wants farmers, ranchers, homeowners and commercial landowners to pay 100% of taxes and why he should pay zero taxes. He also wants it so investors, bankers, lawyers, stockbrokers and everyone else without a land-based business should pay no income taxes either. His primary targets are farmers, ranchers and the elderly who own their homes. His plan essentially is designed to evict and destroy them.
I can agree with half of the OP's message; taxing income punishes productivity. We should be taxing consumption, not income OR land owners, instead.
so if you buy yourself a home you should be taxed..so you buy your first home and the bank wants 20% down..the house cost 300,000..so 60,000 down payment..and now you want the government to tax you//let say 15%..so you owe them another 45,000...you have that much laying around?..don't think so...i bet you had to get a loan just to buy a car...so you will never own a home...dumb idea..try again..and don;t forget the state income tax due..so add another 8% or more...24'000..more for your first house..
So, no one owned land prior to there being a government? That's pretty well true... ... the Native America didn't consider land ownable... ... the Europeans introduced that concept.
Land value taxation already exists; the market already decides what is the best use for the land. I don't dislike competition at all. It is how we determine winners and losers and Georgists lost pretty much for good 100 years ago.
This is an economics forum not a forum for what is best for you or I. Economics doesn't care about the two of us, it only cares about maximizing production. The facts are, taxes on trade (consumption taxes) or taxes on production (income taxes) reduce those beneficial activities. Income taxes and trade taxes result in less of those beneficial activities, which in turn results in a reduction of the production of wealth. On the other hand, land taxes do not reduce the amount of land. Even if you tax land values as heavily as possible, the exact same amount of land still exists as before the taxes were enacted. Landowners do not contribute to production, so taxing landowners heavily cannot discourage production. So, if income and trade taxes reduce the production of wealth but land taxes do not reduce the production of wealth, then as far as economics is concerned, land taxes are better. If you want to talk about what type of tax is best for you personally, then you should request a separate sub-forum for that topic. As far as economics is concerned, land taxes do not penalize production and they therefore result in a maximization of production, which makes land value taxation superior to all other forms of taxation as far as any discussion of economics is concerned.
what you are failing to understand is that it would be out of reach of the normal person to afford the land..so us that do own land now would pass the cost onto you people..so if i am charging you 1500 a month rent now and i have to pay the tax every year to the fed and state your rent will now be about 8000 a month..can't afford that?..too bad live on the street or have like six or so families move in with you..
I couldn't possibly disagree more. A free human should be able to purchase outright, and own outright, their own property. Paying perpetual rent to the state (which, sadly, is how it currently works) means you owe a vig to the state, even if they don't deserve it. I can purchase a home. Put solar panels on the roof, and not pay a vig to the energy companies. Drill a well, and not pay a vig to the water companies. Put in a septic tank, and not pay a vig to the sewer companies. Grow my own food, and not pay a vig to the food companies. And, by doing so, I can live the rest of my life without needing money at all. But by taxing property, and requiring "rent" to "own" the property you actually OWN, that means you don't actually own it. So (*)(*)(*)(*) them.
When it comes to buying land usage rights you should be paying the community for that privilege, not some previous landowner who provides nothing. The community, along with the communities infrastructure and amenities, is what makes the land valuable, so it is the community that should receive the rent. It is a well known fact of economics that governments beneficial activities increase land values, so it is absolutely vital to a free economy that governments receive their funding via that increased land value that their activities create. Funding governments any other way leads to distortions and corruption. When governments are funded primarily by land value taxation, those governments have the incentive to spend the funding only in ways that increase the land values within their jurisdiction, which lays the groundwork for a prosperous community. [video=youtube;ok2uR3btMrE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok2uR3btMrE[/video]
All you did is repeat yourself. And your video made me want to vomit. A person, at the very least an owner occupied dwelling should be afforded the opportunity to actually own their property. Property ownership, REAL ownership means no future passive (i.e. money for nothing) financial obligations to anyone in order to maintain ownership of that property. My own property was built more than a decade before I was born, and all public infrastructure associated with was paid for a LONG time ago.
I find that remark a bit exaggerated. Property taxes are the primary source of revenue for neither the state nor national governments.
