You may be a victim of landowner privilege even if you own land

You may be a victim of landowner privilege even if you own land. First of all, you need to look up 'Henry George Theorem' and familiarize yourself with the fact that government spending on infrastructure and services increases land values. Done? Good. Let's keep it simple and just think of the income tax and not any other taxes. Let's say you pay $15,000 a year in income tax on your productive effort and the land you own has a rental value of $9,000. So the government takes $15,000 from you by force and then gives you $9,000 back through your landowning privilege. So where did those $6,000 go? Most of it lands in the wallet of some other landowner. And those with the fattest wallets then convince you that it's in your best interest to strengthen landowner privilege, like reducing property tax rates, etc. so that they can keep more of your tax money!

 

The solution is to abolish all forms of taxation and to let people occupy the land as they may. If someone is putting large amounts of land and natural resources to good public use, people will be more apt to permit the enterprise. If it becomes parasitic, the people will displace the land owner. It is the state that keeps the land owner in his position as a monopolist. Without it, they have to defend their own land with their own life and resources.

 

Here's the problem

1) privilege isn't purchased
2) landowning isn't a privilege (maybe you should look it up)
3) the entire basis of western society, the reason why it has flourished, is the strong concept of property rights, which stands in direct opposition to everything you stand for.

Really, explain to me how the rent value of property someone purchased with the income they earned should be counted against them, but their potential income isn't a 'privilege' to be counted against them?

 

The Communists thought like you do and they killed millions to carry out their plan to destroy land ownership.

 

People left for America to escape the well established landowner privilege in Europe which was robbing them blind.

 

1. A privilege can be purchased.
2. Land titles certainly are a privilege and fit into the definition.
3. At one point in time we also legitimized private property in human beings. Just because land is currently considered as being a part of property rights does not make it just or more efficient than other options.

Because the value of your land is created by the public. Just because you paid the previous landowner for the opportunity to profit from a subsidy by the public means the public should be required to subsidize you?

 

You're not going to get anywhere with this, so why are you bothering?

 

Human rights are worth bothering with.

 

The only problem is that you didn't read about the Henry George Theorem, or if you did you simply didn't understand it.

Legal privileges are sometimes gifted, but they are most often purchased.

Legal privileges allow some individuals to do what other individuals are forbidden from doing … like excluding others from the land which nature provided for free.

“From its Latin origin, a privilege is a "private law," a law with someone's name on it, a law that permits someone to do what others may not do. We should agree to eschew privilege.” – Nicolaus Tideman, Professor of Economics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Wrong. You support income taxes which are an infringement on the right to keep what you produce by labor of body or mind. It is therefor YOU who stand in direct opposition to strong property rights in the products of labor. We are simply more thoughtful about what should be taxed and what shouldn't be taxed. We want to strengthen property rights in the products of labor by abolishing taxes on production and trade, and replace those harmful taxes with taxes on government-issued privileges, like land titles.

You want to use income taxation to weaken property rights in productive labor so that landowners can get something for nothing.

Because the income from land (rent) is never earned by production and does not contribute to production. This is proved by the fact that land rent can be taxed at 100% of its value without discouraging production. Why should landowners who do not engage in production get a share of production?

"Our ideal society finds it essential to put a rent on land as a way of maximizing the total consumption available to the society. ...Pure land rent is in the nature of a 'surplus' which can be taxed heavily without distorting production incentives or efficiency. A land value tax can be called 'the useful tax on measured land surplus'." —Paul Samuelson, Nobel laureate in Economics (1970)

 

then why are you working against them?

 

So are you now claiming that Thomas Jefferson was a communist?

 

Making you look like a fool (which isn't very hard, admittedly).

 

Because we do not wish to become slaves to these guys: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-10-landowners-america-200048180.html

 

In the absence of government secured land tenure the cost of defending land claims consumes all the land rent anyway … why not just tax away the land rent, giving secure tenure in exchange, and avoid all the costly fighting.

 

they have no interest in making you a slave, unlike socialists, who will of course tell you how to lead your life at gun point.

 

Wow, so many falsehoods and half truths in the comments below the article.

 

I'm fighting for human rights and it looks like I just stumbled across another opponent.

 

Oh, the predictable and false socialist reference.

And, yes, they do. The value of their land simply represents how many $s worth of human labor they can forcefully extract from the economy without making any contribution themselves.

 

no, you stumbled across someone that isn't lazy and trying to steal what others have worked for.

 

you simply have no clue what large land holdings are worth. if no one else wants it because it has no income, it's value is $0.

 

These men want to collect publicly created land rent which they do not earn; just like the European kings did under feudalism. From a distance, rule by landowners is indistinguishable from slavery.

 

Not necessarily. If you were using a lot of land, but you were producing, say, a thousand barrels of oil a month and selling them at a competitive price to the local population, you could conceivably spend zero resources on defending the land by simply obtaining the consent of the people. Without the state, individuals have a stronger incentive to use land productively and sparingly and in the public interest precisely because of how high the potential defense costs can be if they use it otherwise. Simply put, in a stateless society, the more deleterious your land usage is on the people, the higher the cost to keep that land will become, and that's how it should be.

Additionally, land taxes are an instrument to artificially drive up prices and exclude poor people from occupying land. Theoretically, they could be set up in a just way, and I think it would be feasible on the local level so long as there was good government, but as a general principle, I am opposed to it because of the potential for corruption and avarice. Once you give someone the power to monopolize violence (which is what the state represents in its jurisdiction), you open the door for all sorts of abuses and inefficiencies. Direct popular action against unjust land occupation is the most egalitarian and sustainable remedy against exploitation.

 

i hate to burst your bubble, but the middle ages have been over for hundreds of years.

 

Yet we still live under a landed and moneyed aristocracy that is granted privileges by the state.

 

Worked to put themselves in a position to get government handouts. I oppose government handouts. You, by contrast, do not. You demand that government enriches landowners.