What privilege does the rich have and how do they screw the rest 99%?

The rich own the government and the private corporations. It doesn't matter either way. The government can be voted out and does have laws (somewhat) limiting their power.

 

Don't you like culture and community too?

 

But not nearly enough. As long as a landowner gets to keep even one single cent of the publicly created value of the land that constitutes a free handout from society to him.

A land title is just an over sized welfare check. Don't you oppose government handouts, Windigo? You seem like the type.

In the same sense that a former slave who bought his freedom might have ended up buying his own slaves. That's the problem with our system of land tenure. You have to choose to either be a thief or a victim.

I guess you believe that people who live off government entitlements "make something of their lives".

 

Some times I like to debate other times I realize that the person isn't even in reality.

 

Have you heard about 'focused benefits and dispersed costs'? That principle will mean that whatever powers we give to government will always be misused if it can.

Of course I do, I just found it funny that a communist would too because typically they are all about tearing down old hierarchies and hatin' on culture and people feeling some kind of nationhood etc.

 

For the most part yes.

For the most part.

For the most part, yes.

That is generally what it is.

Given your sarcasm, you actually said mostly what the truth is, in spite of your hatred and bitterness towards business.

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So, why not put the blame where it belongs? On the politicians on both sides of the aisle, instead of allowing the blame to be dropped on business.

 

Most of the value of land is because of the taxes paid which fund infrastructure, thus landowners pay reasonable taxes based on the community in which the land is located.

A land title is no more like a welfare check than a person who occupies land under LVT as both have exclusive rights and tenure in the land and so long as they pay their taxes they are contributing to the economy and creating prosperity.

Total bullcrap!

People who are unable to work do make something of themselves with government entitlements. And landowners were the first in any new community to bring value through taxation to that community and they finance all of the infrastructure with their taxes and make all of the land adjacent to them and in the community a higher value.

 

Thought experiment for you Armor for Sleep. Think about the fact that occupying land paying LVT and owning land Fee Simple both having tenure and exclusive rights to the use of the land, both paying taxes. With as you said earlier, the land owner has to pay tax on both his land AND his improvements such as a house or a commercial building, and the LVT occupier paying only the LVT which will be less than the land owner pays, which of the two funds more infrastructure? Please give me a real world answer, not some theoretical BS that we both know won't ever happen.

 

Then neither were Henry Ford, Thomas Paine, Adam Smith, and Albert Einstein, I guess, who shared some of that sentiment with regards to land ownership.

You haven't revealed all that much, but let me guess: You're one of those that complains about the peanuts of free handout given by the government to those near the bottom but look the other way when free handouts are given to the privileged, like those who own land titles (and the vast bulk of land value is owned by the rich):

"A portion, in some cases the whole, of every benefit which is laboriously acquired by the community increases the land value and finds its way automatically into the landlord's pocket. If there is a rise in wages, rents are able to move forward, because the workers can afford to pay a little more. If the opening of a new railway or new tramway, or the institution of improved services of a lowering of fares, or of a new invention, or any other public convenience affords a benefit to workers in any particular district, it becomes easier for them to live, and therefore the ground landlord is able to charge them more for the privilege of living there." - Winston Churchill

The problem with our system of land tenure is that the government levies taxes mostly on production and trade. Those taxes are then spend on infrastructure and services which make land more desirable, and thus more valuable, and thus the land owners where those are provided get to charge more for their land. Essentially, land owners pocket everyone else's taxes (which have crystallized as land value). Property taxes only pay back a small portion of that publicly created land value.

It's not a difficult relationship to notice once it's pointed out to you.

 

I suspect that everyone has made a statement that you can post out of context to suggest LVT is useful, but that doesn't make it true.

Thought experiment for you Armor for Sleep. Think about the fact that occupying land paying LVT and owning land Fee Simple both having tenure and exclusive rights to the use of the land, both paying taxes. With as you said earlier, the land owner has to pay tax on both his land AND his improvements such as a house or a commercial building, and the LVT occupier paying only the LVT which will be less than the land owner pays, which of the two funds more infrastructure? Please give me a real world answer, not some theoretical BS that we both know won't ever happen.

 

Because a somewhat wise president once said "the business of America is business". Politicians don't do anything without business say so.

 

You are quite jaded about politicians. I don't subscribe to that much negativity. As a Moderate democrat I identify with moderate politicians. I have a problem with the extremes of both parties.

 

I think a lot of the issues we are dealing with these days are yes/no, on/off issues without a lot of room for moderation. If I am extreme to the left on, say, abortion and drug use, but extreme right on guns and gays, does that make me a moderate?

 

That's a rather odd claim.

AFAIK, the usual idea of LVT is that it is supposed to replace most or even all other taxes. So the landowner under LVT would typically pay far more than the property owner now pays in property taxes, and people who would be paying the other taxes like income tax and sales tax would pay less.

Thought experiments are not usually proposed to obtain real world answers....

 

I am only extreme when it comes to the taking of INNOCENT human life. On most other extreme issues I see harm on both ends of the spectrum.

 

Not at all. After having listened to several Geoists and reading a lot about George himself and his economic ideas I came to the conclusion that LVT can never collect enough revenue to keep all levels of government funded. One big reason is the hole in the tax plans that the rich can jump through to escape paying much tax at all. Another big issue is the equality of fee simple ownership and LVT occupation of land. Both are equally exclusive and equally tenured. When taxes are based on land value the smart can make big bucks without having land on which to pay taxes. The next issue is their putting the cart before the horse. As has been the historical situation in the US (for example) settlers moved into an area and claimed land, cultivated the land, created the trails to and from markets. Then a community tended to develop in the area and the land owners paid property taxes with which the community build better and more infrastructure. Thus it is the land owner who was responsible for the increase in value of the land, and so long as he paid his taxes he had land tenure. All of the LVT supporters on this forum claim they do not believe LVT can be a single tax so that being the only value to LVT, a dubious value at best, not being a single tax causes the whole concept to lose value.

He had just given me one in which he loaded the deck with ridiculous claims, so I gave one back to him which is closer to reality. He has yet to even try to answer the questions, and if it can't be real world answers then there is no point to the thought experiment at all.

Mostly what LVP proponents have done on this (and other) forums have been to insult everyone who disagrees with them. One in particular has been permanently banned from at least 2 forums other than this one. When they start saying that land owners are predatory, exploitive, parasitic and evil people it became obvious they were not here to debate or push their system, all they wanted to do was cause trouble.

 

Nationhood is not community. Anarchist Catalonia had a vibrant and productive community. I don't want to turn people into mindless drones.

 

of course it's community. what else would it be?

 

OK, but what does that have to do with your suspicion that "everyone has made a statement that you can post out of context to suggest LVT is useful"?

The only way they could do that is by selling their land before the LVT came in, and then not using much if any good land in the course of their business dealings or lifestyles. That would mean not only not owning a mansion in a good location, but not owning any rental housing, retail operations, restaurants, office buildings, no significant amount of farmland, oil-bearing land, ranching or forestry land, etc. And not only not owning it directly, but not owning any shares in any companies that owned it. How are they going to make any money?

More to the point, you don't seem to have understood that LVT only charges what people would be willing to pay a private landowner for use of the same land. Think of spectrum auctions: the rich bid what they think the spectrum is worth, and they don't care that the money is going to the government as a "tax" rather than to a private spectrum owner. The situation would be exactly the same with LVT: the rich would pay for the land they wanted to use, just as they do now, but would pay the government for it rather than a private landowner. It's ridiculous to claim the rich would refuse to use any good land, just because they would be paying a "tax" to use it, rather than the exact same amount of money in "rent" for it.

It's weird that you think they are equivalent, but are fanatically opposed to one of them!

No, if they are smart, they will realize that LVT is a value-for-value transaction, and pay it.

And Socrates was made to drink poison for making politically unacceptable comments. Your point?

Think of the Founding Fathers who owned slaves. There weren't predatory, exploitive, parasitic and evil, but the system they participated in certainly was.

 

Everything!

Yep!

Yep! there are many other profitable investments to make without owning land.

So?

I have several investments which involve profits without investing in a landed business.

What about paying LVT is in practice no different in land tenure than fee simple?

Some will some won't. What is paid to use land is based on the productive value of the land no matter what the tax is plus costs and profit.

Its all in a name. If I live in an LVT state (which will never have LVT as the only revenue) and I pay my tax I have sole rights to that land, just as if I have purchased it and have a deed. If I stop paying the tax I lose the land under both LVT and Fee Simple.

Taxes must be paid or you lose your land. What is so strange about that?

There is no relationship between slavery and and LVT. The very mention is quite ridiculous. Slave owners may have practiced what is evil today, but it was the norm over 200 years ago. Just like taxing land is what it is today as when land was first settled there was no tax, nor was there infrastructure. The infrastructure started as a trail, maybe a horse trail, or a wagon trail. As a community started to develop landowners paid taxes to fund the infrastructure. That increased the value of the land.

Basically what I am saying is, LVT makes no sense what so ever if it is not a single tax, and as a single tax there would not be a way to fairly impose the tax to create sufficient revenue to run all levels of government.

There has never been nor will never be, and excuse to introduce LVT to an existing large economy as it serves no purpose. I will accept LVT if:

1. I am repaid with inflation adjusted price everything I paid for my land plus a reasonable profit.

2. If there is guaranteed "no other tax" involved.

3. I am allowed to make a profit on any property occupied either through production or renting it out.

 

I wonder how the excise tax rebate that will protect wealthy Caribbean rum distillery owners will help poor Americans.

 

Like what? AFAICT there's no relationship. Anybody else think they can explain what dnsmith is talking about, here?

And what do you claim would be their motive for choosing to lose money?

There aren't that many, and as soon as any significant number of people tried to switch to those investments, they would become less profitable than just paying LVT to use land.

But the market is efficient. If more people get out of land-using businesses to buy those investments, their price will rise and their yield will fall, while the price of land will fall and its yield will rise. At that point, it will be more profitable to just pay LVT in order to get the advantage of using the good land. What is the rich's motive for choosing to forego the more profitable investments? Are they just stupid? Is their hatred of LVT so strong that they will impoverish themselves to spite it?

As I said: "More to the point, you don't seem to have understood that LVT only charges what people would be willing to pay a private landowner for use of the same land." Judging by your response to that fact, above, you apparently intend never to understand it, or at least to admit it.

So you agree that the rich have no more reason to avoid paying LVT than to avoid paying for fee simple titles? That's progress.

But what is the motive of those who won't? Hatred? Spite? It certainly isn't profit, because as explained above, they would be making less profit by avoiding ownership and use of land.

No. The land user does not care about the owner's costs or profit, and will not shoulder them. He will pay only for the economic advantage use of the land gives him, and not a cent more. As the supply of land is fixed, its rental price is determined solely by demand.

So it's just the name, "LVT" that you hate? How about we call it, "location subsidy repayment" or "LSR" instead?

What indeed?

I'm still waiting for your explanation of why the rich would choose not to pay the community the exact same amount they would pay a private landowner for the exact same exclusive tenure rights. I'm waiting for you to explain why they would choose to make less than the market rate of profit and consequently let those who were willing to pay LVT make more than the market rate of profit. Do the rich similarly refuse to buy alcohol or gasoline in order not to be paying any tax? Or do they just hate the name, "LVT" too?

True. The similarity is between slavery and landowning.

No, what's really quite ridiculous is claiming that the rich would choose to avoid owning and using land and consequently lose money, rather than pay the market price to use the land and make money.

Exactly. And like landowners today, they assumed they were just making profitable investments to take advantage of a business opportunity that was quite just, moral, and righteous. And like landowners today, they said so.

Nor was there ownership of it.

No. Landowners never paid any taxes until after the community had already provided services and infrastructure that made the land valuable, and the tax was always less than the publicly created rental value the landowner was taking from the community, as that is the only way the land could have had any value to tax. So from the very outset, the landowner was the recipient of a net subsidy from the community, and that has not changed -- except that the subsidy has become astronomically larger.

But you have never provided any basis for that claim, while LVT proponents have explained very clearly why it is false.

See Gaffney, M. "The Hidden Taxable Capacity of Land: Enough and to Spare."

The facts of history prove you wrong. Japan did exactly that in the Meiji Era, and reaped the inevitable economic miracle. LVT transformed Japan from a poor, stagnant, feudal backwater to a global industrial, economic and military power in a single generation.

Why would the community want to pay you for what it is giving you??

Which you have claimed is impossible. You don't want much, do you?

Why would society want to guarantee you a profit for doing nothing?

 

Most Christians that I know are ignorant about tow subjects:A, Natural Science, B, the Bible.

Most liberals that I know are ignorant about... everything.

Tax rebate = rums could be sold at lower price. On surface level, it means blue collars can waste less on entertaining themselves, thus saving more or put money on more important issues.

To a more substantial level, cheaper products simply means more consumption, more consumption = more import. More import = more workers (rich and poor) working in rum importing business.

Oh, do I have to mention, a significant number of rum processing plant and sugar cane plantation use American made equipment?

Ignorance &#8212; 'tis the foe of all humanity.

 

And people say that I'm a 'socialist'.

 

It may just be a consequence of Capitalism, even under our form of Socialism, where those with the most money can enjoy the most privilege (and immunity).