Georgism/Geoism and the Land Value Tax

cunicula

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Quote from: FirstAscent on December 12, 2012, 11:53:37 PM

Quote from: myrkul on December 12, 2012, 10:23:27 PM

Quote from: Topazan on December 12, 2012, 10:16:04 PM

@myrkul - No, I don't see it, and I didn't the last five times you said it either.

As far as I'm concerned, one mandate to use force in imposing one's will over those inhabiting a certain area of land is like another. Maybe you should continue to repeat the same points without adding anything new. Tongue

Really? You don't see the difference between "Pay us or we'll toss you in a cage or kill you," and, "Pay me, like you agreed to, or leave?" You really think those are the same thing?

I don't see the difference, frankly.

Landlord: get out, or pay, or I'll have someone point a gun at your face.

Government: go somewhere else and stop using our infrastructure, or pay up, or I'll have someone point a gun at your face.

Yeah, government is just like a big landlord. Dictatorship is like having one big landowner. Democracy is like having one big condo association.

Topazan

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Quote

Except to live rent-free, you just have to buy your own land. To live tax-free, you must move to Somalia, and not paying rent will only get you evicted. Might land you an overnight stay in county, if you're belligerent about leaving, but that's in the current system, isn't it? And at any rate you get locked up for taking a swing at a cop or some such, not for not paying the rent.

You need to judge the nature of the act itself, not the circumstances of its victim. Is stabbing someone who has good health insurance less of a crime than stabbing someone who doesn't?

If the evicted tenant has an alternative place to work or live, that's not because of anything the landlord did. If the tenant does not have another place, the landlord would consider it not-his-problem. Therefore, it's not the government's problem if you don't have anywhere to go. Why is it the government's fault you don't want to go to Somalia?

Besides, buying land isn't living rent-free. At best, it's paying your rent in one lump sum (and possibly later collecting some from innocent third parties). More often it means you're making a bank your landlord.

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Just that? No heated debates? No argumentation? No meaningless myrkulistic memes? No nuanced discussion? Fair enough, I suppose.

Heh, well you seem to be a single-issue voter. You obviously know much more about ecology than I do, so I just have to take your word concerning the environmental implications.

FirstAscent

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Quote from: Topazan on December 12, 2012, 09:39:34 PM

@FirstAscent - Thanks for the opinion.

Just that? No heated debates? No argumentation? No meaningless myrkulistic memes? No nuanced discussion? Fair enough, I suppose.

FirstAscent

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Quote from: myrkul on December 12, 2012, 10:23:27 PM

Quote from: Topazan on December 12, 2012, 10:16:04 PM

@myrkul - No, I don't see it, and I didn't the last five times you said it either.

As far as I'm concerned, one mandate to use force in imposing one's will over those inhabiting a certain area of land is like another. Maybe you should continue to repeat the same points without adding anything new. Tongue

Really? You don't see the difference between "Pay us or we'll toss you in a cage or kill you," and, "Pay me, like you agreed to, or leave?" You really think those are the same thing?

I don't see the difference, frankly.

Landlord: get out, or pay, or I'll have someone point a gun at your face.

Government: go somewhere else and stop using our infrastructure, or pay up, or I'll have someone point a gun at your face.

myrkul

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Quote from: Topazan on December 12, 2012, 10:27:25 PM

It's more like "Pay us, or leave, or we'll toss you in a cage or kill you." for both of them.

Except to live rent-free, you just have to buy your own land. To live tax-free, you must move to Somalia, and not paying rent will only get you evicted. Might land you an overnight stay in county, if you're belligerent about leaving, but that's in the current system, isn't it? And at any rate you get locked up for taking a swing at a cop or some such, not for not paying the rent.

cunicula

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Quote from: myrkul on December 12, 2012, 10:23:27 PM

Quote from: Topazan on December 12, 2012, 10:16:04 PM

@myrkul - No, I don't see it, and I didn't the last five times you said it either.

As far as I'm concerned, one mandate to use force in imposing one's will over those inhabiting a certain area of land is like another. Maybe you should continue to repeat the same points without adding anything new. Tongue

Really? You don't see the difference between "Pay us or we'll toss you in a cage or kill you," and, "Pay me, like you agreed to, or leave?" You really think those are the same thing?

I thought we just went over the fact that you can often leave in both cases.

Topazan

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It's more like "Pay us, or leave, or we'll toss you in a cage or kill you." for both of them.

myrkul

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Quote from: Topazan on December 12, 2012, 10:16:04 PM

@myrkul - No, I don't see it, and I didn't the last five times you said it either.

As far as I'm concerned, one mandate to use force in imposing one's will over those inhabiting a certain area of land is like another. Maybe you should continue to repeat the same points without adding anything new. Tongue

Really? You don't see the difference between "Pay us or we'll toss you in a cage or kill you," and, "Pay me, like you agreed to, or leave?" You really think those are the same thing?

Topazan

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@myrkul - No, I don't see it, and I didn't the last five times you said it either.

As far as I'm concerned, one mandate to use force in imposing one's will over those inhabiting a certain area of land is like another. Maybe you should continue to repeat the same points without adding anything new. Tongue

Quote

I apologize for my use of the word 'collection', either that was too broad or not what I meant. I'm less worried about the actually payment of the tax than I am determining who owes what and why they owe that specific amount. Many states already have a property tax, how does that compare? (To be honest, I don't know how property taxes are calculated, either.)

As I understand it, property tax includes the value of improvements made to the land. If you build a house on an empty lot, you're suddenly going to be paying a lot more in taxes than you were. This goes against both the philosophical and practical goals of Georgism.

A few places have a land value tax, and generally it works out pretty well, but generally it's only a small portion of the rent the owners can collect, so it's only a partial solution to the problem.

Yeah, I still can't tell you exactly how it would be done, but it would have to be based on demand for that particular land and not include the value of improvements. The practical goal is to create an incentive to use land to its fullest productivity, so ideally it should be high enough to price out inefficient users, low enough that it's still profitable for its best use.

cunicula

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Quote from: myrkul on December 12, 2012, 09:47:16 PM

Quote from: Topazan on December 12, 2012, 09:39:34 PM

Quote

Same way all taxes are collected:

Cute. Incidentally, that's the way rent is collected, too.

Not quite. It's more like:

Pay or...

See the difference? One is a mugging, the other an eviction.

You can always renounce your citizenship. We have plenty of foreigners who become Singaporean in order to evade taxes. Eduardo Saverin of Facebook fame is one example.
The highest marginal tax rate (effective at $320k income or more) is 20%.

If you earn 32,000 USD per year in income then you pay 450 USD in income taxes.
If you earn 66,000 USD per year in income then you pay 2900 USD in income taxes.
If you earn 131,000 USD per year in income then you pay 11400 USD in income taxes.

If you don't like paying big taxes in your country, then why don't you just renounce your citizenship and move here? It is just like switching landlords. If you are not a US citizen, then you don't even have to renounce your citizenship. You can just move.

grantbdev

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Quote from: Topazan on December 12, 2012, 09:39:34 PM

Collection would, as myrkul said, work the same was as taxes.

I apologize for my use of the word 'collection', either that was too broad or not what I meant. I'm less worried about the actually payment of the tax than I am determining who owes what and why they owe that specific amount. Many states already have a property tax, how does that compare? (To be honest, I don't know how property taxes are calculated, either.)

myrkul

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Quote from: Topazan on December 12, 2012, 09:39:34 PM

Quote

Same way all taxes are collected:

Cute. Incidentally, that's the way rent is collected, too.

Not quite. It's more like:

Pay or...

See the difference? One is a mugging, the other an eviction.

Topazan

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Quote

Same way all taxes are collected:

Cute. Incidentally, that's the way rent is collected, too.

@FirstAscent - Thanks for the opinion.

Quote

Less philosophy, I want to hear a debate on how the tax wold actually work, especially collection.

Good call. I'm going to make a note to ask someone who's more learned in Georgism when I get the chance about how the valuation would work.

Collection would, as myrkul said, work the same was as taxes. The only penalty for not paying would be the loss of title to the land. Ideally, I think a stable currency, maybe even a cryptocurrency, should be declared official for this purpose only, leaving people free to use other currencies in commerce.

You could probably decentralize the process quite a bit if you used a cryptocurrency. Register an address for each site, and then there could be a number of private agencies that will pay in exchange for some physical goods. "Landcoins for gold" and so on. Once collected, the currency would be redistributed either as a citizen's dividend or as payment for services.

cunicula

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Quote from: myrkul on December 12, 2012, 06:35:15 PM

Quote from: grantbdev on December 12, 2012, 06:07:39 PM

Less philosophy, I want to hear a debate on how the tax wold actually work, especially collection.

Same way all taxes are collected:

We only take those out when there is a lack of certainty about who the winner would be. As long as the state has all the guns, the citizens are safe.

myrkul

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Quote from: grantbdev on December 12, 2012, 06:07:39 PM

Less philosophy, I want to hear a debate on how the tax wold actually work, especially collection.

Same way all taxes are collected:

grantbdev

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Less philosophy, I want to hear a debate on how the tax wold actually work, especially collection.

FirstAscent

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Quote from: Topazan on December 12, 2012, 12:59:45 AM

This is the best I can find after several minutes of googling. What do you think of that, and what I've said so far in this thread?

I see pros and cons. It sounds reasonable on the surface. But I haven't followed it before, and so I can't yet render a deeply thought out response. On the one hand, it encourages efficient use of land, which decreases sprawl and waste. But on the other hand, it encourages maximizing profit potential from the land, which can be counter to preserving the ecosystem services it would provide unmolested. In the article you posted, I also wasn't particularly enthusiastic to discover that the sham organization known as the Heartland Institute supports it, given their history of supporting property rights above the health of the planet, and their employment of deceptive propaganda in the process.

In some ways, it almost aligns with the philosophies of Herman Daly, who advocates a steady state economy, where taxes would be levied on that which we don't want: pollution, natural resource extraction, and waste. Geoism, in a sense, is like this, in that it taxes land usage. Use less land, pay less taxes.

The economy is really an organism which takes in raw materials, and through digestion, outputs products and waste. The key is to only take in renewable resources as input, output products, and eliminate the waste output.

myrkul

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Quote from: Topazan on December 12, 2012, 02:52:16 AM

When did I ever say people don't buy and sell land? The closest thing I said was that there's very little downward pressure on the price compared to man-made goods.

When people sell land for a higher price they bought it for, without making any improvements, that's a form of rent in the Georgist sense. There's more than one way to collect rent. Whatever the method, it's a burden on the producers.

So, instead, you would have a coercive system forcing that burden upon each and every person who has the audacity to own land? Even if he has no intention of selling, or of offering others jobs on that land? Some dude, out in the middle of nowhere in a log cabin owes everyone for the privilege of sleeping under a roof? Fuck that.

Topazan

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When did I ever say people don't buy and sell land? The closest thing I said was that there's very little downward pressure on the price compared to man-made goods.

When people sell land for a higher price they bought it for, without making any improvements, that's a form of rent in the Georgist sense. There's more than one way to collect rent. Whatever the method, it's a burden on the producers.

myrkul

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Quote from: Topazan on December 12, 2012, 01:42:00 AM

If, like the first generation, the second generation had the choice between working for themselves or working for someone else, they would be in a much stronger position to demand wages that actually reflect the value of their work rather than their desperate circumstances.

Ahh, but they do. They can simply buy land. Then they're working for themselves. They may have debt to pay off (or may not, second generation also means inheritance), but they're working for themselves. And anyway, you're arguing a lost cause. right now is way past second generation, and people buy and sell land, and still do just fine. Capitalism, it works, bitches.

Face it, what you propose is Socialism under a new guise, and that never works. It won't work if you add computers, it won't work if you change it from stealing productivity directly to stealing the fruits of that productivity, it won't work no matter what you do to it, because it's a flawed system.

Topic: Georgism/Geoism and the Land Value Tax (Read 11898 times)