Geoists are they nuts or what?

I would just like to add, I think they definitely fall into the "left" camp.

An easy trick to shut them down. When they try and argue against capitalism, call them out on the fact that they always preach Americans are the most spoiled workers on earth. If capitalism doesn't produce the best results, how on earth can even our poorest be the most spoiled comparatively?

It will make the push up their thick rim glasses and scratch their nose faster than Captain Kirk not getting the girl.

 

All states do have property taxes, and the land value tax is part of that property tax. Since the land value tax already exists, using it to replace other taxes would only be a matter of removing those other tax schemes. In other words, a major reduction in the size and scope of the tax collection arm of governments. Here, let's compare the geoist system to the current system:

Current systems of taxation:

1) LAND VALUE TAX
2) SALES TAX
3) CAPITAL GAINS TAX
4) PERSONAL PROPERTY TAX (BUILDINGS, MACHINARY, ETC)
5) INCOME TAX
6) CORPORATION TAX
7) USE TAX
THIS LIST IS A MILE LONG SO I'M STOPPING HERE.

Geoist system of taxation:

1) LAND VALUE TAX

You see? Both the geoist tax system and the current tax systems have land value taxation in them, the only difference is that the geoist system doesn't have all the other taxes on top. The potential savings to government and individuals from scrapping all those other taxes is HUGE. Additionally, land value taxes bring down land prices, so people who want to start a business can buy the land they need without having to borrow the money from a bank. The best thing about land value taxation is that you get something for the taxes you pay. If you rent an apartment and don't own any land, then you pay no taxes at all. If you buy land, then you have to pay the tax, but you get the exclusive use of the land in return for the tax you pay. Buy even more land and pay even more tax … but the more taxes you pay, the more land you get. I think getting something valuable in return for the taxes you pay is a good idea.

 

Basically reductio ad Hitlerum.

No that's included. No matter how much differently you want to think that is, it's merely a small modification to one of them: "... slowly".

It is not just "a few" large landowners that will feel the pain, it is many. We're talking about half of the population that at least own their own home. And what you're talking about is rewarding those who have not made smart investments. The bit where you talk about the government increasing the value of the land - yeah, it happens. But such actions did not occur to the benefit of the current owners. Most had to pay for that.

 

Okay, I see your point. But I would remind you that one of the most common arguments against land value taxation is that it won't provided enough funding for government. The geoist counter argument is that the efficiency of the LVT will let a smaller revenue go further. And that the stimulative effects of the land tax on the economy will reduce the need for welfare and other aid to the poor, further reducing the amount of revenue the government needs. Some economist believe land value taxation won't provide enough revenue, others believe it would provide enough with some left over for a citizens dividend (which is what I believe).

But now let's do a little math. How much land value do you think is under the typical home? Let's say the home is valued at $200,000 and half that ($100,000) is home value while the other half ($100,000) is land value. Most homeowners don't actually have this valuable of land , but it is simple so let's go with it. If interest rates are at 5% this would make the land value tax on land that is currently valued at $100,000 around $5000 per year. Does $5k a year in taxes sound unreasonable to you, if it replaces property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, capital gains taxes, etc. I would also point out that a typical home might have two or three income earners living in it, that $5K covers everyones tax bills regardless of how many people live in the home or how much they consume. Furthermore, as the embedded tax burdens from the current tax systems are lifted from wages and consumer goods, wages will rise and consumer goods prices will fall, which is another indirect benefit to most homeowners as well as everyone else. Now, suppose you want to sell your home. With land value taxation your home is now only worth the $100,000 value of the home, all the exchange value of the land is gone … but why are you selling your home? Do you plan to buy a different home on similarly valued land? If so, that next home is going to be cheaper to buy because it lost the land exchange value too, so you haven't really lost anything; you will sell your home for less, but you will pay that much less for the home you plan to buy..


Now here is an even better scenario for you. Suppose you want to start a business and need land to place it on. This time let's say you need a building lot currently valued at $200,000. Under a land value tax system your taxes for that lot would be around $10,000 per year, regardless of what you build on it. Remember, land value taxation destroys that exchange value of land, so now you don't need the $200,000 to purchase the land, you just have to pay the $10K per year tax. If under the current system you had to borrow that money from the bank to pay the $200K for the land purchase, then right away you are giving the banker money that could have been satisfying your tax liability under the geoist system. Now, $10K in taxes for that land might sound like a lot, but now you don't have to charge your customers sales taxes, so they can afford to buy more at your store. Now you don't have to withhold income taxes from your employees, so they can work a little cheaper while also taking more home for themselves. There are now no property taxes, no corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, and you won't have to waste one minute of your day calculating any of those taxes, as that simple $10K tax payment for the land covers everything. I could go on and on about the advantages, but I'm calling it a day.

 

That was a clean and nicely applied reductio ad absurdum...

The premise of that argument could be used to justify slavery, therefore it was false.

The vast majority people who own land have less of it by value than they pay other taxes.

 

They want to avoid rent-seeking behavior. They rightly see that resource allocation is an inherently subjective notion, and want to avoid the privilege it endows on those who first develop land over those who live in the post-homesteading age. Like today: it's not possible to homestead land because every inch of the planet has already been put into production or claimed by some nation.

I agree though, what they propose is nothing more than government ownership of the land. There is no such thing as unowned property except by abstinence. That is, property is the ability to exclude others from its use, and therefore attempts to exclude all from the property (including yourself) amount to an assertion of a property right. That's the main issue I take with Geoists. That and they don't really answer the question of who should get this monopoly power, and how this acquisition is any different to the arbitrary resource allocation proposed by the homesteaders. At least the latter is individual rather than collective based.

 

And there's the rub. This really is just the quintessential redistribution of wealth plan, isn't it?

 

I think you're missing the point. The problem, the injustice, isn't about the inability of someone who owns a home to pay the taxes, it's about the theft of the principal on their investment. If I worked all my life saving up for a nice piece of waterfront property, then a time comes along when the land value is taxed, most of what I - the intelligent and responsible adult - saved up for my home will be stolen, and the program will reward the irresponsible adult who rents all their life. And the only way that geoists have of fixing this problem is to tax others which, again, is reduced to making the landowners pay tax so that the landowners can have their land forcefully retaken. There really is no way to mitigate this, it is a gross injustice that is inescapable in the implementation of an LVT system at this point. Which is why I've said I'm fine with the idea being implemented with currently publicly held lands, but not private lands.

I'm really interested to see how this would work if they tried implementing it in a state or local area. I know most local area pay for their government through a property tax which assesses land+improvement value, so it shouldn't be hard to see it work on that level, but I wonder if a state financed it's budget on this if it'd work.

 

Okay, but if we don't steal it from rich landowners, then we have to steal it from poor wage earners – either through wage or trade taxes. Whatever government taxes is going to be worth less, and your favored system punishes wage earners – by increasing the cost of consumer goods – even more than the geoist system punishes landowners. You want to coddle landowners and take a giant steaming dump on wage earners, end of story.

First, I don't agree with your definition of “responsible”. Some renters are very responsible, and far more intelligent than you, while some home owners are completely irresponsible … perhaps you are just making things up now? That is strike one!

Second, the exact same argument could by used to justify slavery, which I already pointed out in a previous post:

&#8220;If I worked all my life saving up for a nice strong slave, then a time comes along when the slavery is abolished, most of what I - the intelligent and responsible adult - saved up for my slave will be <i>stolen</i>, and the program will reward the irresponsible adult who didn't buy a slave.&#8221;

You see, the pro slavery club used your argument to justify slavery, so the argument is already known to be false. That is strike two!!

Third, it is not the government doing the stealing, it is the person who sold you the land who made off with the money &#8230; you paid him for the land but it is government which created the land value that you were actually paying for. Nature provided waterfront land for free. The exchange value of land comes from government services and infrastructure. Absent a government-issued and enforced land title the land has no exchange value anyway, people just kill each other to gain possession. How can government steal land value when it is government that creates the land value in the first place? Strike three!!! Looks like you struck out with that argument.

The gross injustice is the current system which taxes wages, capital and trade to fund government infrastructure and services, the value of which is pocketed by landowners.

As government gets bigger and bigger, real middle class wages are drifting down, but land rents just keep going up &#8230; that is because government spending (supplied by taxes on wages and trade) is nothing but a gigantic welfare subsidy give-away to landowners. The taxation (of wages and trade) make taxpayers poorer, but the government spending makes landowners richer &#8230; this is not fair, nor is it efficient.

The founding fathers tried to fund government with a land value tax, from the very beginning, because they knew that it was fair and efficient &#8230; but rich, greedy, privileged landowners, driven by the desire to get richer without work, threatened to destroy the newly created United States of America -- with privately hired armies -- if it tried to tax them. These greedy, privileged landowners then had a new Constitution drafted, one which would ensure that they would stay rich without work, and that the landless would be forever enslaved to do their desires.

 

Never heard of a geoist. Google was not particularly helpful either.

This isn't one of those rigth wing ginned up things is it? A blog called Op Ed News seems to spend a lot of time on it.

 

Geoism is covered under the Georgism article at wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

 

But when the land was put into production and taken private, then the rest of society suffered a loss of opportunity. The land was naturally productive before it was &#8220;put into production&#8221; perhaps with fruit trees, grasses, lumber trees, critters that could be hunted for food.

When the farmer puts a plow to the land or fenced in the grass and claims the land as his property, all those natural opportunities that existed before his actions are now gone; which represents a loss to all those excluded from that land in the future.

The geoist position on the matter is that when one individuals actions interfere with the freedom of others, then compensation to those who are harmed is in order. Even if others were not using the land directly before the appropriation, the opportunities were open, and this allowed them leverage in wage negotiations. When the land was appropriated, those natural opportunities disappeared, and so did the leverage of individuals in the negotiation of wages &#8230; hence the term &#8220;wage slaves&#8221;.

 

Yes, I can explain. Geoists were created by liberals who fear Libertarianism more than death. NO Libertarians are Geoists. It is simply another straw man created by liberals who fear the idea of actually working for a living.

 

This is simple. Look at any neighborhood. Notice the difference in pride of the homes when they at rented vs owned. Exceptions exist but a renter will generally not care about the state of the home because they have no investment and the owner will only do the minimal amount to keep it nice because they don't live there. Now extrapolate that on a global scale.

Rest my case.

 

Here is a list of libertarians who support the geoist system of financing government:

And Milton Friedman:

"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."

“I share your view that taxes would be best placed on the land, and not on improvements...”

"Yes, there are taxes I like. For example, the gasoline tax, which pays for highways. You have a user tax. The property tax is one of the least bad taxes, because it's levied on something that cannot be produced — that part that is levied on the land.

— Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in Economics (1976)

- - - Updated - - -

Under the geoist system homes are privately owned, and not taxed at all; only the land under the home is taxed. So your argument here does not apply to the geoist system. The best examples of the geoist system are Hong Kong and Singapore, both relatively clean and well maintained communities.

 

Basically their argument is that there is a limited amount of space on the planet, so the land needs to be collectively owned so that no one can be shut out of benefitting from owning land. Practically however, the limits of livable land limit the number of people there will be, so its not like we'll just keep expanding until all the land is owned and everyone else is a slave to those that got their hands on land.

 

So no different than now. Tax the house or tax the property the house sits on. Its all the same. Stop paying taxes and what happens? I assume someone takes the land which your privately owned house sits on, which means you lose the house or else why bother paying taxes?

 

No, it is different from the current system because it does not penalize construction with taxation. If you have two nearly identical building lots setting side-by-side, one with a home built on it, the other empty, the taxes that the owners would pay would be the same under the geoist system. Under the current system the guy who owns a home would generally pay much more taxes than the guy who owns the empty lot, which is an outcome that geoists are against.

If you don't pay your taxes under the geoist system the government will sell the land and improvements in the open market and give the entire proceeds of the sale to the owner of the improvements. So, suppose you own a home worth $200,000 but don't pay your land taxes, the government will sell the property and give the home owner the $200,000 that the home sold for. The geoist ethics are that government should never take nor tax the products of labor, and a home is the product of labor.

 

Yes and no. Under the geoist system everyone would be a landholder (via the individual land tax exemption), but just because every individual citizen would hold some land for their private use, does not translate into collective ownership. Under a system of true collective ownership, a farmer would have to plant what the collective said he could plant. But under the geoist system the farmer can plant whatever he pleases, so long as his actions do not interfere with the freedom of others. In other words, if I can build what I want to build, plant what I want to plant, on land that I hold privately, then this does not fall under the category of collective ownership.

 

If I remember correctly, I read &#8211; you can check it out if you want -- that every human in the world (8 billion +) could live within the state of Texas, with each individual getting around 1000 sq. ft. of space to live within. Now, Texas is a large state, but when compared to the entire globe, it is just a speck. So there is plenty of room in the world for everyone to have some of it for their private enjoyment &#8211; if we make that a priority.

I believe that if everyone had a stake in the world, a part to call their own, then I believe people would take better care of the world, and there would be more prosperity.

 

Texas is 268,820 square miles.
268,820 miles = 1419369600 feet

There are about 7,500,000,000 on earth.
7,500,000,000 divded by 1419369600 = 5.28

Your math is way off.

 

According to google: 1 Square Mile = 27878400 Square Feet

268,820 * 27878400 = 7.494271488×10¹²

7.494271488×10¹² sq. ft. / 7,500,000,000 population = 999.236 sq. ft. of Texas land per person

Your conversion of square miles into square foot is not correct.

 

I could care less about what a few confused individuals think. The fact is that liberty is tied directly to property ownership and it is impossible to own land which is taxed. That is why the only power to tax recognized by the Constitution are taxes tied to trade.

The only place a man can exercise his true extent of liberty is on his own land where he is master. You cannot dictate much of anything on other peoples land, you must abide by their rules.

The second fact is that land which is taxed, is not your land. The very act of taxation changes the title of land from allodia to feudal and transfers real ownership of the land from the owner to the State.

Geoists are nothing more than socialist liberals trying to derail the principals of Libertarianism.

 

Tell me sweetheart, what kind of work did you put into creating the Earth? How did you manage such an incredible feat as the creation of land?

The basic reality is that you did not create the Earth, none of us did. The land on this Earth predates us, all humans, by millions of years. Thus, nobody has an explicit and exclusive claim to any of the land on this planet They can certainly claim any improvements such as buildings or farms, but the land itself is held in common. By nature of common freaking sense. So, as such, since we need to use possess land to live on and run our businesses on, each person owes a ground rent to society for the use of said commonly held land. Which would be collected by a government and put back into the community in the form of schools, infrastructure, social safety nets, and so on. In fact, the land value "tax" shouldn't even be considered a tax at all. It is payment for services rendered. You are paying for what you use.

 

Tell that to the Cubans and soviets.