patrick.net

How about we just get rid of most taxes?

Tariffs anyone?

On that note it looks like we'll be doubling the size of the IRS this year after all. My dad told me that each new IRS agent will need to collect an additional $1M in tax revenue just to break even on the money they are spending in the Schumer-Manchin bill.

just_passing_through says

Patrick says

Another way to put it: you should keep 100% of the result of your own labor, but 0% of what you take from other people's labor.

That's a recipe for disaster and the entire reason we have capital gains taxes with low rates. People would invest less and be willing to risk less.

@just_passing_through

No, under Georgism capital gains would also be taxed at 0%. It would be zero because the gain on capital results from the trading of things people actually did work to create.

All capital was created by labor, and the laborer has the right to trade it for whatever he wants, and whoever buys it has the right to trade it again for whatever he wants.

Henry George was a capitalist, and claimed that capital and labor are not inherently opposed, but that both are unfairly exploited/taxed by non-productive land owners, people who create and contribute absolutely nothing, but are pure parasites in their role as landowners.

just_passing_through says

How about we just get rid of most taxes?

Tariffs anyone?

Sure, the US ran on tariffs for quite a bit of its early history, proving it is possible.

The absolute open-border free trader types object to tariffs because they say that we would all be better off on average taking advantage of lower wages in other countries, but that ignores the devastation that competition with Chinese labor caused to most of the US between the coasts. So I'm not certain about whether tariffs are good or bad.

The bigger impediment to running the government on tariffs is the 3 million or so people that work for the federal government and would probably lose their jobs if we got rid of most taxes. They have their hands on the real levers of power and are not about to play fair. They will do whatever saves their jobs, including subverting elections.

Patrick says

REpro says

We already pay Land Value Tax, regardless of it has some improvement or not.

Yes, but not nearly enough. The portion of rent which from land value alone should be taxed at 100%.

And we should not tax the improvements at all, like the buildings. Those things should be taxed at 0%, that is, not taxed at all.

Another way to put it: you should keep 100% of the result of your own labor, but 0% of what you take from other people's labor.

Many states have real estate to be taxed on 100% Market Value: Including improvement portion and Land portion.
That is including California.
For instance: Someone is buying residential property in Palo Alto. He is paying $3M. The next day he demolished old improvement for purpose to build a new house. The next year will receive a property Tax bill based on his Purchase Price, the Market Value of $3M, which in fact represent Only Land Value.

just_passing_through says

On that note it looks like we'll be doubling the size of the IRS this year after all. My dad told me that each new IRS agent will need to collect an additional $1M in tax revenue just to break even on the money they are spending in the Schumer-Manchin bill.

This is how Democrats "Invest" taxpayers' money, to receive more tax money to Save Democracy.

Note that under Georgism most of the infrastructure of the IRS would be eliminated.

All it would need is land records. There would never be any audits, because who owns what land and how much they paid in tax on that land is public record.

But like HunterTits points out, it couldn't be done Constitutionally at the federal level unless the tax was apportioned correctly among the states (by population?) which makes it more complicated.

At the state level though, we could immediately eliminate all state income taxes, sales taxes, and taxes on buildings and simply increase the land value tax instead.

Well, maybe Prop13 is in the way of that in California, which might be one of the reasons Prop13 exists. Land owners want to protect their unjust and unearned land rents. (Not the rent on buildings, just the portion derived from land value.)

REpro says

Many states have real estate to be taxed on 100% Market Value: Including improvement portion and Land portion.
That is including California.
For instance: Someone is buying residential property in Palo Alto. He is paying $3M. The next day he demolished old improvement for purpose to build a new house. The next year will receive a property Tax bill based on his Purchase Price, the Market Value of $3M, which in fact represent Only Land Value.

True that in California coastal areas, most of the price of a house is the value of the land.

The problem is that that land value is not taxed nearly enough. It should be taxed to the point that no one will speculate on land values.

I saw an interesting comment at https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty suggesting that the land value tax could be partly implemented as a capital gains tax on the sale of land.

So if you're living in a house, you wouldn't pay the land value tax, but you would pay a large capital gains tax when the land changes ownership, say at the death of the owner. That capital gains tax would take all of the increase in land value during your time of ownership.

But if you're not personally living in a house, you'd pay the land value tax annually instead.

OTOH, what if the land decreases in value during the time you own it? Does your estate get a tax rebate on that?

From the same link:

Assume for a second we move 50 years into the future. Now ~all owners of the land just inherited it. Should society's wealth really flow to them? What are the incentives? Why tax income, just to preserve their - ultimately based solely on status quo - property rights.

Good point. Income tax is really just a way to pay for the non-productive wealth extraction done by landowners.

That tax revenue should be coming from the landed aristocracy, but instead is extracted from people who work, exactly so that the aristocracy can avoid being taxed.

You pay income tax so that others can avoid being taxed on land value which they did nothing to create.

You know, calculation of land value could be done pretty easily like this:

1. What is the current market price for this property? Call that P.
2. What would be the cost to re-create the current building (or other improvements) on that land? Call that B.

The value of the land is P - B.

Patrick says

The problem is that that land value is not taxed nearly enough. It should be taxed to the point that no one will speculate on land values.

How much would you tax Farmlands? Not always are cultivated to the fulness.
Besides, government have "search and hit" hunters to find anything what is not taxed yet.

Patrick says

You know, calculation of land value could be done pretty easily like this:

1. What is the current market price for this property? Call that P.
2. What would be the cost to re-create the current building (or other improvements) on that land? Call that B.

The value of the land is P - B.

That partially works only when house burned, and insurance is paying for rebuilding. The new house will get a new assessment anyway.

REpro says

How much would you tax Farmlands? Not always are cultivated to the fulness.

You'd tax it for exactly as much as you could otherwise rent it to a farmer for.

REpro says

That partially works only when house burned, and insurance is paying for rebuilding. The new house will get a new assessment anyway.

I don't see why you say it would not work in general.

Under Georgism, the assessment on the house would be zero.

Onvacation says

Though I, personally, appreciate your finely curated pictures, porn is ubiquitous on the Internet. Free speech is not.

@HunterTits - I want to be serious with you for a second. The WHOLE PURPOSE of the Internet was to democratize information, and it wasn't democratic at all. Still, it's hard to find real actual information today, but it's possible. Maybe Ronald Reagan's son was a total crackwhore like Hunter Biden is, but you'd never know in 1980. Maybe the establishment lied is into Vietnam and lied about the war for years to keep us in there for decades (and we were) but you'd never know it without the Internet.

This device is essentially to expose corruption. The great experiment is, will people ever do anything about it?

Naked ladies? That's fucking EVERYWHERE. Here - quick demo:

https://yandex.com/images/search?from=tabbar&text=nude+beautiful+women

On one hand, I fully recognize that the ability to access pornography is what bought about widespread acceptance of the Internet, but on the other hand, I realize that our "betters" LITERALLY look upon as as animals. Not that we're merely over-sexed or overly lustful, that we are LITERALLY are animals.

Now if the population never gets get rid of this cancer and refuses to actively take it on, I guess they are right. Most of us are animals and they aren't going to treat us like a beloved pet - maybe a FEW of us, but most of us, will just be cattle.

Bill Gates is the largest farmer in the United States. I know what drives that sociopath. He'll let the land be fallow. I think a food crisis is being engineered, but if people don't realize it, they will do nothing about it. Your "news" isn't going to report it.

You need to realize what a revolutionary machine you have in front of you, and I mean revolutionary.

If you're like "well, I'm too old" - no you're not. You've finally reached maturity and can start thinking about something beyond your immediate needs and goals. I'm in Generation X, we're the first generation to have access to EVERYTHING. Wikileaks, look at that shit. That's not going to end with Julian Assange, but it might end with censorship.

Patrick says

You know, calculation of land value could be done pretty easily like this:

1. What is the current market price for this property? Call that P.
2. What would be the cost to re-create the current building (or other improvements) on that land? Call that B.

The value of the land is P - B.

This led me to another thought. Once you have the value of the land separated from that of buildings and other improvements, what should the tax on that land be?

Answer: the prevailing interest rate.

If the land were earning less than the prevailing interest rate through land rent and appreciation, the owner would presumably sell it and buy a different asset which does pay that rate.

Conversely, if land is increasing in value faster than the prevailing interest rate, you'd think that the price would get bid up to the point where the return on land is back in line with the return on other things.

richwicks says

Bill Gates is the largest farmer in the United States.

This is also a good reason for the land value tax. Bill does not farm, he rents out the land. That rent should be taxed 100%.

richwicks says

https://yandex.com/images/search?from=tabbar&text=nude+beautiful+women

Yandex consistently has the best image results of all search engines, imho.

Also interesting about Georgism:

you should always have enough money to pay the tax, since what's being taxed is the money you get in rent above and beyond your wages and the return from your capital.

And if you're not getting rent, well you could get it because you own the land. Part of the point is to disincentivize people who buy land and do nothing with it but wait for the price to rise, hoping to leech off of the increased land value created by the community around the land over time.

The real issue, IMHO, should be anti-monopoly / anti-concentration. Contrast the opening of Oklahoma Territory in the mid-19th century vs. the auctioning of Wireless spectrum nearly a century and half later: the low $5 registration fee giving land to American settlers essentially for free enabled cheap food to ship to the East Coast population centers as the farmers would naturally compete and drive price down due to the diverse ownership of the newly available free land. Whereas the high price paid by the bidders at the wireless spectrum auction ensured high price to consumers for many years to come (and the bankruptcy of some of the "winning" bidders).

What is Georgist "land" vs. what is improvement is not clear-cut: as most land anywhere accessible by roads are most likely already heavily improved in the past 500 years even in the US (2000+ years in most of Eurasia); most lots have to be leveled and/or drained before buildable, plus tree removals. If the ideal tax rate on land is the land value multiplied by the prevailing interest rate, then arguably the owner is already paying that by holding onto the land (or borrowing money to buy the land). Keeping trespassers off whatever land has its value (just look at the homeless settlement on "public land" in cities like Seattle). Owning farm land and renting it out to farmers in and of itself (in a competitive market place) is not necessarily "rent-seeking" in the Georgist sense: the owner has simply bought the capitalized value of all the historical improvements done to the farm land, such as cutting all the trees, removing all the stumps, building the irrigation network and the hundred of years preventing tree seedlings from growing into trees and preserving the fertility of the plot of land (e.g. risking Dust-bowl phenomenon). The problem with Gates type becoming the biggest farm land owner is in concentration: they should be prevented from exceeding certain market percentage so as to be able to influence price or stop farming as a way of starving people . . . just like managing houses and providing housing service to people who don't want to own/maintain their own houses is a legit business and has social value (and discrete/competitive ownership among competing small-scale efficient owners/managers is the way to provide the lowest housing cost possible under existing local building codes, contrasting with the tried and failed scheme of using tax money to build public housing) but landlords should be prevented from owning more than 1 (or 2) houses on the same street block (e.g. no more than 10% on any block unless the block has less than 10 houses in total). If someone wants to own many houses, he/the organization has to spread out to many street blocks so that they have to compete against other operators on each street block. That, IMHO, would provide a more efficient way of delivering lower cost housing service than a monopolistic government tax-farming big concentrated landlords (what a high land tax without anti-concentration would result; since we already know bureaucrats serve money and power, it would be dangerous to make bureaucrats' salaries and pensions entirely dependent on a few big landlords).

The real issue is not private ownership vs. public ownership, but competitive ownership vs. concentrated ownership. Market competition brings efficiency, choices therefore "fairness"; whereas concentrated power (regardless whether it's nominal "public" or "private") brings coercion.

Reality says

The real issue, IMHO, should be anti-monopoly / anti-concentration.

We have anti-monopoly and anti-trust.

It's not enforced.

We have a government that refuses to enforce the law. Hasn't Antifa / BLM / and the January 6th protesters shown you that? Stop being blind.

We have a president who has an unprosecuted crackwhore son:


original link

I've posted that video more than a dozen times here. We don't have a rule of law. How much more obvious can it get?

The United States is doing what it can to free Brittney Griner for bringing illegal drugs into Russia. We have people doing fucking MORE TIME THAN HER for doing EXACTLY the same thing within the United States.

We don't have a justice system equal under the law, not by FAR. Oh, but she's a black lesbian that can shoot a ball into a hoop, she's exempt. If you or I did the same thing, the exact same thing, we'd be fucked and forgotten about.

Reality says

What is Georgist "land" vs. what is improvement is not clear-cut

For recent improvement, it's pretty simple. Take the market price of the property and subtract what it would cost to make those improvements. For things that happened in remote previous generations, Georgism advocates designating that as part of nature now.

Reality says

If the ideal tax rate on land is the land value multiplied by the prevailing interest rate, then arguably the owner is already paying that by holding onto the land

I think you're missing the point there. The goal is to tax land rent, and to deposit that land rent into the public treasury. This has a lot of major benefits, such as preventing land speculation, simplicity of tax collection, reduction of urban sprawl, more efficient land usage, encouraging labor by eliminating income tax, encouraging commerce by not taxing sales, making it possible for young families to buy houses, etc.

Reality says

Keeping trespassers off whatever land has its value (just look at the homeless settlement on "public land" in cities like Seattle).

Of course, and that's why it's central to Georgism that people do have title to land and the exclusive right to it - as long as they pay the tax on the land value.

Reality says

Owning farm land and renting it out to farmers in and of itself (in a competitive market place) is not necessarily "rent-seeking" in the Georgist sense: the owner has simply bought the capitalized value of all the historical improvements done to the farm land, such as cutting all the trees, removing all the stumps, building the irrigation network and the hundred of years preventing tree seedlings from growing into trees and preserving the fertility of the plot of land (e.g. risking Dust-bowl phenomenon).

You should read the book as it addresses all of this in great detail. The owner should keep the value of all the recent improvements, but pay the tax on the non-productive rent-seeking part of the value.

Reality says

tax-farming big concentrated landlords

No, all land would have to pay the land value tax.

Reality says

it would be dangerous to make bureaucrats' salaries and pensions entirely dependent on a few big landlords)

Again, not a few, but on all the land.

I agree that concentration/monopolization is also a problem, but the arguments for replacing income tax and sales tax with a land value tax is super-compelling if you take the time to actually go through the arguments in the book.

The Land Value tax has another key benefit: it has falsifiable predictions, and can be implemented incrementally and achieve incremental benefits (as we've seen in some real life implementations).

In the places where Georgism has been partially implemented so far (Hong Kong, Australia, Pennsylvania) we do indeed see the predicted benefits, and do not see an increase in rents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax#Implementation

richwicks says

The United States is doing what it can to free Brittney Griner for bringing illegal drugs into Russia. We have people doing fucking MORE TIME THAN HER for doing EXACTLY the same thing within the United States.

Ironically, many of those were put in jail by our current VP.

I think this is a legit criticism:

Ashwin Parameswaran
Writes macro-resilience
Apr 16, 2021
Simply implementing a Land Value Tax in the manner that George suggested will almost certainly trigger a banking/financial and economic crisis as the rents that this tax seeks to eliminate have been a) capitalised into the price of land and b)the land in question has been levered up to a very high degree. The LVT will cause a significant fall in prices which will lead to defaults, bank failures and even personal bankruptcies (e.g. a middle-class family with a 90% LTV mortgage in a metropolitan city). For example, the same problem applies in removing farm subsidies where the value of subsidies has been capitalised and levered such that any removal will trigger bankruptcies and financial losses.

This is not a criticism of George as the same conditions may not have applied in his time. One possible solution is to introduce the tax in stages with a modest tax to begin with.

Randomstringofcharacters
Apr 16, 2021
No reason it has to be implemented at 100% instantly. You can implement it in gradually increasing amounts over a longer timescale, with advanced notice of the changes so people can financially adapt. That's how lots of laws are done.

So yes, the LVT would have to be implemented gradually.

Another objection, this one pretty hard to get around:

Except that it will be incredibly unpopular, your party will lose the next election, and then the tax gets rolled back...

You have to reduce income tax and sales tax the same amount.

Patrick says

unfairly exploited/taxed by non-productive land owners, people who create and contribute absolutely nothing, but are pure parasites in their role as landowners.

Or: older senior citizens who did work but can't anymore (because they're old) but were smart enough and responsible enough to save and sacrifice to buy some land to cover their expenses. They also provide a service for those who don't want to buy.

HunterTits says

richwicks says

https://yandex.com/images/search?from=tabbar&text=nude+beautiful+women

Alright! More titties!

I clicked. You can choose the orientation of the chicks. The options are horizontal, vertical, or square.

Patrick says

Well, maybe Prop13 is in the way of that in California, which might be one of the reasons Prop13 exists. Land owners want to protect their unjust and unearned land rents.

No real estate prices were rising in the 70s and the state was flush with property tax revenue that they were not returning to 'the people' and 'the people' were being thrown out of their homes b/c they couldn't afford the tax. - my understanding from oldsters anyway.

Patrick says

Note that under Georgism most of the infrastructure of the IRS would be eliminated.

Now you're speaka my language!

just_passing_through says

'the people' were being thrown out of their homes b/c they couldn't afford the tax

I read a book about Prop 13. It started as a reaction to the ruling Serrano vs Priest, which found that local property taxes paying for local schools were discriminatory because the poor school districts got less funding. So it was determined that all property tax revenue would have to go through the state and then be redistributed equally among all schools.

Parents paying a lot of property tax for their kids' schools didn't like that.

Howard Jarvis stepped in and latched on to the idea of old people being thrown out of their houses by property tax as a justification for freezing property taxes at the purchase price level plus a trivial increase per year. But evictions weren't all that common actually, and could have been solved by letting the elderly defer the property tax until they died or sold the house. And Howard had all these annoyed parents on his side too.

Howard's real motive was well hidden: to eliminate property tax increases on businesses. Most people somehow didn't notice that part, and still don't understand that that was the primary force which got Prop 13 passed. It remains a massive tax shift from California businesses to the California income tax and sales tax.

It was the very opposite of Georgism, and California has the craziest land prices and rents, and the highest state income tax and sales taxes because of it.

And California schools went from best in the nation to worst in the nation. There is a documentary about it: "From First To Worst".

https://news.stanford.edu/news/2004/january21/schools-121.html

Everyone suffered so that land owners could extract rents and price increases parasitically, doing absolutely nothing useful themselves, sucking up wealth from others.

Hmmm, Georgism is opposed to taxing improvements on land, but if you improve your own land, the value goes up, so then I think the LVT would go up as well.

If California did away with prop 13, it would have one of the highest property tax rates as well as one of the highest sales taxes and income taxes.

There is no amount of tax that will appease those fellows in Sacramento.

Patrick says

Howard's real motive was well hidden: to eliminate property tax increases on businesses. Most people somehow didn't notice that part, and still don't understand that that was the primary force which got Prop 13 passed. It remains a massive tax shift from California businesses to the California income tax and sales tax.

Morally bankrupt corrupt Prop 13 is a massive highway robbery every month since 1978. It MUST go and so does all the massive tax increases on everything else. All business and rich must start paying their fair share.

Misc says

If California did away with prop 13, it would have one of the highest property tax rates as well as one of the highest sales taxes and income taxes.

There is no amount of tax that will appease those fellows in Sacramento.

@Misc

A central point of Georgism is that income tax and sales tax are wrong, because they are unjust and they discourage work and commerce.

They are to be replaced by a tax on land values.

Blue says

Morally bankrupt corrupt Prop 13 is a massive highway robbery every month since 1978. It MUST go and so does all the massive tax increases on everything else.

Someone once told me that you could end Prop 13 overnight simply by publishing everyone's property taxes in an easily accessible place.

When they see that some people pay 20x what other people pay for the exact same size and kind of property in the same location, there would be a revolt against Prop 13.

https://unherd.com/2021/06/big-techs-threat-to-democracy/

Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon have established portals that people feel they have to pass through to conduct the business of life, and to participate in the common life of the nation. Such bottlenecks are a natural consequence of “the network effect.” It was early innovations that allowed these firms to take up their positions. But it is not innovation, it is these established positions, and the ongoing control of the data it allows them to gather, that accounts for the unprecedented rents they are able to collect, as in a classic infrastructure monopoly.

Maybe those network effects really are a kind of natural resource like land.

From a different group that wants a flat income tax, which is a horrible idea. Yet they have a good strategy which could be applied to Georgism:

1. We issue Key Vote Alerts to all Congressional offices so that Senators and Representatives know exactly how they should vote on proposed legislation.

2. We publish yearly Congressional Scorecards so that constituents know whether or not their legislators are voting in favor of tax cuts, reduced spending, and pro-growth policy.

3. We run hard-hitting independent issue ads on television and radio that expose to constituents the truth about where politicians stand on harmful bills that could raise taxes, increase regulations, and expand the role of the government. NO politician wants to be the feature of one of our ads.

A video recently posted by @richwicks called "All wars are banker's wars" claims that the 16th Amendment creating the federal income tax was never actually approved by the requisite number of states.

Seems easy to prove one way or another.