Could Georgism come back into the Political Spectrum? - Basically fuck Land Owners!

[Cardenio]

Georgism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I came across Georgism today as I was lost in Wikipedia hyperlinks, I consider myself grounded Libertarian but a lot of Georgism feels sensible to me. Basically instead of relying on our labor being taxed as it is now there would be a "Land Value Tax." Here's a nice snippet Wikipedia includes by the inspiration of "Georgism" Henry George.

"The tax upon land values is, therefore, the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive. It is the taking by the community, for the use of the community, of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by Nature be attained. No citizen will have an advantage over any other citizen save as is given by his industry, skill, and intelligence; and each will obtain what he fairly earns. Then, but not till then, will labor get its full reward, and capital its natural return." — Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Book VIII, Chapter 3

Frankly the one thing I agree with the far left on is that no one can truly "own" land, how can you say part of the Earth is yours? Now I'm definitely not for the full redistribution of land like a communist would, because there's no way we can ever fairly redistribute land. And if you have land which you're using to take resources out of it well part of it should go back to rest of the public because while you may have made that business you did not literally make that oil. No the right to control it has to be bought and sold. But to have taxes be based more around the ownership of land feels fair to me. According to an old WaPo article 100 wealthy families now own nearly as much land as that of New England, and good for them but in my humble opinion you should pay up if you want to horde so much property. I think it's better to tax on this then tax one's wages which really hurts the working & middle class and taxing capital results in people being discouraged from saving money & also finding loopholes to hide it.

Over in California it's the total reverse of Georgism, the well-intentioned but poorly designed Proposition 13 made it so that families can hold onto their houses but only pay a fraction of property tax. It has made it so that you have assholes now just renting out their nice houses and just not selling so the housing market is ridiculously high. Keep in mind it's the 3rd Largest State with plenty of livable land. It should not be so expensive to live in the Golden State.

I feel if this political theory was employed it could be very beneficial to the United States. A lot of smart people were Georgists, most notable includes Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Leo Tolstoy, and Frank Lloyd Wright. It's sad to me that it seems no one argues anymore to tax land. Especially when we have massive conglomerates just buying up land because it simply holds few drawbacks.

 

[MediocreMilt]

"I'm a libertarian but I don't think you can own stuff."

Wanting to legalize weed and hookers isn't equivalent to libertarianism.

 

[Cardenio]

"I'm a libertarian but I don't think you can own stuff."

Wanting to legalize weed and hookers isn't equivalent to libertarianism.

If you had complete ownership of land you would have the right to destroy the land.

I can go and smash my car to pieces and I have full right to because ultimately it is my car. You fuck up the land and damage the environment then you're violating the NAP.

This is why I'm not against the EPA even though passionate libertarians hate it.

 

[Harvey Danger]

No. The public doesn't have an interest in land, you can't measure it in any sane way, and this absolutely does not scale.

If you're a libertarian, you should be familiar with homesteading as the basis for private property. There is no "rent" without labor. Georgism inserts a communal demand on your personal sovereignty, i.e. your labor. We already have a name for that: communism. And it's unworkable.

Spoiler: it doesn't even survive a basic toy economy

Let's say I live on an acre of land adjoining a river. I have a neighbor living on either side. I till the land, use river water for irrigation, grow some crops, and reap the harvest. I now have wealth: my crops. The neighbors have no crops because they did no labor. They also have no communal interest in anything I did (with 1 exception, below).

While you might construct a moral reason to take away my wealth and distribute it to my neighbors, what you don't have is a sane, sustainable way to measure their interest in my labor. You can't do it on a "profit" basis, because I will eventually only produce only enough to feed 1 person, and distributing it away from me will cause all 3 of us to starve. (This is a recurring problem under, you guessed it, communism.)

The "exception" is if my actions degrade the quality of their land, or somehow harm them. I may "own" land, but I can't own the river, and there could very well be communal interest in the river. You could then apply Georgism on a limited scale, and say "everyone who draws water from the river owes a tax to the other people on the river it affects". Fine; it's a convoluted way to implement a use tax, but whatever.

What you can't do is show how people across the town from me have a communal interest in my actions. If you live half a mile away from me, not on the river, then nothing I do on local land affects you. You have no interest in resources you never see, and you have no claim on the rents I am producing. Georgism can not be used to benefit anyone but the smallest, most tightly knit, physically integrated communities. It doesn't just break down at the city level, it breaks down at the street-by-street level.

If you want to work through the problem itself, ask yourself what the Georgist tax would be on an apartment building filled with families. Now ask who would pay that. Then figure out why anyone would build and operate an apartment building under a Georgist system.

If you want to start knocking down entire cities' worth of towers, then sack the wealthy so you can give all the downtown dwellers 40 acres and a mule, well, good luck to you.

 

[HeyItsHarveyMacClout]

The problem with Californian real estate prices isn't land or anyone hording properties, its the state's building codes and restrictive policies that are hindering development of houses and apartments, In San Francisco there are two major policies limiting the development of housing. 1) Each building needs to have an absurd amount of parking. I think the policy is 1.5 spaces for every unit. This takes up a huge amount of land, incentives people to own cars and instead of taking public transport, and uses the urban space extremely inefficiently. 2) The government has an overly restrictive, bureaucratic policy that hinders high development housing. Investors will purchase properties to convert them into high density housing and it will take years for them to get the proper permits/licenses because the city wants to restrict development. They'll demand they include low income spaces be included in the building which decreases profitability and increases the other tenants rents, and God forbid the developer find themselves being accused of gentrification. Economists across the entire country agree that California's housing crisis is caused by an overly restrictive government who won't allow the markets to respond to demand instead of simply letting people build and have supply drive down demand.

This is all for the benefit of the ruling elite mind you. If your house is one of the 10,000 thousand available units in a city, and a developer comes in and says that they want to put in 1,000 new units, that's going to drastically drive down your houses value. These people restrict the housing prices for their own benefit and they manipulate the masses into supporting them by accusing the development firms of gentrification

 

[Y2K Baby]

No. Furries would make porn of the cat.

 

[Tealeaf]

Real estate in the West is fucked and just applying a land value tax won’t fix it. Major land use policy revamps such as adopting a variation of Japanese zoning is also needed.

But it wouldn’t make it worse. All it does is change the calculations using components already used for property tax. It’s exactly as practical as property tax to assess and collect. And has the same philosophical implications to freedom and property ownership as property tax.

 

[Irrelevant]

I only know about this because it's apparently Muse's politics, or at least was during the financial crisis. Americans always assume British bands are left wing like Hollywood which is why they can't cope when they find out about Morrissey, Bryan Ferry, Roger Daltrey, etc.

My problem with Georgism is if you don't own your land where do you safely store you stuff, so in essence you can't fully own anything. The UK doesn't even have a property tax because it's considered the most commie of all taxes but somehow the US does.

 

[Cardenio]

No. The public doesn't have an interest in land, you can't measure it in any sane way, and this absolutely does not scale.

If you're a libertarian, you should be familiar with homesteading as the basis for private property. There is no "rent" without labor. Georgism inserts a communal demand on your personal sovereignty, i.e. your labor. We already have a name for that: communism. And it's unworkable.

Spoiler: it doesn't even survive a basic toy economy

Let's say I live on an acre of land adjoining a river. I have a neighbor living on either side. I till the land, use river water for irrigation, grow some crops, and reap the harvest. I now have wealth: my crops. The neighbors have no crops because they did no labor. They also have no communal interest in anything I did (with 1 exception, below).

While you might construct a moral reason to take away my wealth and distribute it to my neighbors, what you don't have is a sane, sustainable way to measure their interest in my labor. You can't do it on a "profit" basis, because I will eventually only produce only enough to feed 1 person, and distributing it away from me will cause all 3 of us to starve. (This is a recurring problem under, you guessed it, communism.)

The "exception" is if my actions degrade the quality of their land, or somehow harm them. I may "own" land, but I can't own the river, and there could very well be communal interest in the river. You could then apply Georgism on a limited scale, and say "everyone who draws water from the river owes a tax to the other people on the river it affects". Fine; it's a convoluted way to implement a use tax, but whatever.

What you can't do is show how people across the town from me have a communal interest in my actions. If you live half a mile away from me, not on the river, then nothing I do on local land affects you. You have no interest in resources you never see, and you have no claim on the rents I am producing. Georgism can not be used to benefit anyone but the smallest, most tightly knit, physically integrated communities. It doesn't just break down at the city level, it breaks down at the street-by-street level.

If you want to work through the problem itself, ask yourself what the Georgist tax would be on an apartment building filled with families. Now ask who would pay that. Then figure out why anyone would build and operate an apartment building under a Georgist system.

If you want to start knocking down entire cities' worth of towers, then sack the wealthy so you can give all the downtown dwellers 40 acres and a mule, well, good luck to you.

You raise good points but I do question your anecdote. The whole point (from my albeit limited understanding) in a Georgist economy would be that you would keep profits from your labor. If anything it would punish the neighbor who didn't produce anything, he would either have to continue eating taxes or sell his property to people who better manage the land.

Ultimately I just really want the government to tax more money from the rich assholes who own absurd properties. If you can afford to own and maintain mansions you should pay more than a family that just lives in a quaint two-story house. The Rich stay rich because they just reinvest money, but I don't want them taxed on that as saving money is good for the economy and in the event of a Comrade Sanders revolution they would most certainly flee with their billions. Frankly I say take all the rich yuppie fucks living in Santa Monica to the cleaners. Make companies like Apple and Amazon (who infamously dodge taxes) pay up for their massive compounds.

 

[Y2K Baby]

The UK doesn't even have a property tax because it's considered the most commie of all taxes but somehow the US does

The U.K is fucking tiny is why. It's not equivocal.

Ultimately I just really want the government to tax more money from the rich assholes who own absurd properties. If you can afford to own and maintain mansions you should pay more than a family that just lives in a quaint two-story house. The Rich stay rich because they just reinvest money, but I don't want them taxed on that as saving money is good for the economy and in the event of a Comrade Sanders revolution they would most certainly flee with their billions. Frankly I say take all the rich yuppie fucks living in Santa Monica to the cleaners. Make companies like Apple and Amazon (who infamously dodge taxes) pay up for their massive compounds.

OK, """""libertarian""""""
Dirty damn red.

 

[Gustav Schuchardt]

Sun Yat Sen was influenced by Georgism and Taiwan has a Land Value Tax to this day

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_ideology_of_the_Kuomintang#History

One of the Three Principles of the People of the Kuomintang, Minsheng, was defined as socialism by Sun Yat-sen. The concept may be understood as social welfare as well. Sun understood it as an industrial economy and equality of land holdings for the Chinese peasant farmers. Here he was influenced by the American thinker Henry George (see Georgism) and British thinker Bertrand Russell; the land value tax in Taiwan is a legacy thereof. He divided livelihood into four areas: food, clothing, housing, and transportation; and planned out how an ideal Chinese government can take care of these for its people.

 

[Cardenio]

The U.K is fucking tiny is why. It's not equivocal.


OK, """""libertarian""""""
Dirty damn red.

I just don't see how else to keep taxes fair. And yes we unfortunately need taxes.

Income Tax - Punishes the hard worker
Sales Tax - Obviously would hurt the businesses if it went past the current nearly negligible levels.
Capital Gains Tax - Effectively communicates to people there's no point in saving money. Last thing America needs as this country is horrible at saving money.

And that just leaves us with property tax. No one forces you to hold onto property if it's not within your self interest. You can generally sell property if you need to. Government has already effectively said it can take your property if it's in the public's good (Eminent Domain).

 

[JULAY]

How about Georgeson instead? @Shiversblood

 

[Y2K Baby]

we unfortunately need taxes

OK, libtard.

 

[Sexy Senior Citizen]

Say I bought forty acres in Arizona. This land is a desert with no natural resources and no reason to build anything there, ever (no, not even Trump's wall.) I would still be taxed for owning that land, despite the fact that the land is completely worthless. Land on its own is a liability. The reason anyone buys land is to develop it (for agricultural, industrial, commercial, or residential reasons.)

 

[Y2K Baby]

This land is a desert with no natural resources and no reason to build anything there, ever

Underground construction. Especially military.

 

[ditto]

I hope so. Property taxes should reflect the value of the land relative to the area.

 

[Harvey Danger]

The whole point (from my albeit limited understanding) in a Georgist economy would be that you would keep profits from your labor. If anything it would punish the neighbor who didn't produce anything, he would either have to continue eating taxes or sell his property to people who better manage the land.

Then you're either going for serfdom, authoritarian central planning, or straight up communism, with the unnecessary middle step of taxing people for a while to figure out who would "naturally" become wealthy. It sounds like the world's most ruthless application process for becoming a middle manager.

Think through the basic problem: those people who sell their property because they can't manage their land--where would they go? How would they generate value, wealth, or rent? Who would wind up being put in charge of them?

Ultimately I just really want the government to tax more money from the rich assholes who own absurd properties.

Well then, you're not a libertarian, you're just an envious proletarian.

If you can afford to own and maintain mansions you should pay more than a family that just lives in a quaint two-story house.

They already do. The top 1% pays 39% of all income taxes. (Property taxes percentages are harder to calculate because they're done at the local level.)

And why should that quaint 2 story house get special consideration? They're still using the land! Extract the rent! Why are you sympathizing with the kulaks when they have appropriated an unfair share of society's wealth, comrade?

Frankly I say take all the rich yuppie fucks living in Santa Monica to the cleaners. Make companies like Apple and Amazon (who infamously dodge taxes) pay up for their massive compounds.

I'm on board with having companies pay more for their compounds, but the reason they are on that property in the first place was because the local government cut them a sweet tax break to get them there. If you alter the deal, the companies will alter their behavior.

It's easy for people like AOC to say, "no tax breaks for big corporations!" when one is considering putting a headquarters in their city. It's harder to keep them interested in the move once you declare your intent to squeeze them for taxes.

Spoiler: Edited to reduce tangential sperging

You raise good points but I do question your anecdote.

It wasn't an anecdote, it was a "toy economy" example, the simplest model of a theoretical economy used as a thought experiment to work out what would happen. It was illustrating that Georgists can't properly calculate a land-based tax that balances production with social welfare at the most basic level, so scaling it up to a macro level will just magnify the errors.

Also, I mixed it in with the libertarian model of rights to show they're incompatible.

The Rich stay rich because they just reinvest money, but I don't want them taxed on that as saving money is good for the economy and in the event of a Comrade Sanders revolution they would most certainly flee with their billions.

There's a hardcore truth here, but you left it incomplete. The very nature of wealth insures that it's easier to retain wealth just by having more wealth. You can't break this without basically outlawing money itself, but that's a whole other argument.

 

[GreenJacket]

Georgism is a centrist and Neoliberal cope.

So yes it could be memed back into relevancy as another distraction for mid-wits to get caught up in.

 

[Y2K Baby]

Neoliberal cope

Pinko detected.