Re: Lucas: Shame on the redistributionists

From: Grinch (oldnasty_at_mindspring.com)
Date: 06/13/04 

Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 06:07:16 GMT

On Mon, 07 Jun 2004 10:57:56 GMT, "sinister" <sinister@nospam.invalid>
wrote:

>
>"Matt Timmermans" <mt0000@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote in message
>news:x8Swc.4741$8k4.186668@news20.bellglobal.com...
>>........
>>
>> In short, while I accept Georgists' argument that rent taxes are
>> economically efficient, I don't accept their claim to the moral high ground.
>> I think that the benefits of wealth should exist, and I accept the
>> fundamental mechanism that produces them -- rent -- because it's better than
>> the alternatives, and so a lot of the hue and cry about the "evil landlords"
>> who currently have the wealth and get to collect these rents sounds like
>> petty jealousy to me.
>
>That's because you don't understand the moral force of the Georgist
>position.
>
>In the case of land, it's not just some abstract economic rent---it's
>*scarcity* rent.

Can you name *any* rent that isn't scarcity rent?

>The land you give your kids is a scarce resource

And it is just like everything else that isn't free in that regard.

>---if your kids have privileged claim to it,

"Privileged" meaning you paid for it, so if you die they get to
inherit it. Or you can just make a gift of it to them

Just as is the case with your house on your land, your car in your
driveway, your bonds in the vault, your stamp collection in the back
drawer...

(And, yes, I know the purportedly "moral" if rather strange argument
that since land was never created by anyone [overlooking all that was]
it can't morally be owned by anyone, and so initially must have come
under ownership in some immoral way, and thus must be removed from
private ownership and returned to the government for administration.
QED.

Although, being that the "someone" that indeed obtained it highly
immorally by killing off the Indians (and killing off a lot of
Mexicans who had already killed off the Indians) was the US
government, the "moral" argument for returning land *from* honest
people who never killed anyone but simply and honesty paid full market
value for it, *to* the murderous, property-stealing wrongdoing source
of this evil, seems rather bizarre to me.

Anyhow, however the US government and its predecessors got the land in
the first place, through the great chain of title since then it has
been bought and sold in fair market transactions at full market prices
repeatedly -- just like government bonds, houses, stamp collections,
and every other scarce item purchased for a full fair-market price.
So the *moral* argument for discriminating against such fair market
purchasers of land alone does indeed remain elusive to some.]

> that means someone else is *not* allowed
>any access to it.

Just the same as with your house, driveway, car, bonds, stamp
collection ....

> And that position is enforced by the threat of government
>violence.

You bet!

If anybody ponders interloping in your house or driveway or helping
himself to use of your bonds or stamp collection or any other such
scarce item to which you have the privileged claim of exclusive
ownership and use, the government shall threaten that person sternly.

As well it should!

>Your position, at least on that of land, is feudalistic.

Feudal land was purchased and sold continuously in a free market open
to all by a democratic citizenry at full fair market prices? With
mortgage financing and all?

I don't think so. Perhaps you should refresh your memory about the
nature of feudal property (and personal) rights and relationships.

> You're not
>conceding rent to "everyone else"; you're conceding it to those that already
>have title to scarce resources.
>
>As for "We should all have to play the game by the same rules, and we pretty
>much do," that's a meaningless statement from a moral perspective. The
>institution of slavery was also built on a system of rules.

Geeze, they way you guys keep invoking "slavery" and comparing others
to slave owners ... it's too amusing.

It's just like the dimwits who in political arguments can't help
comparing the other side to Nazis. Godwin's Law II.

And you can't see it. ;-)

But here's a bit of helpful clarification:

The morally noxious thing about slavery was that it involved buying
and owning and selling people *against their human will.*

Land is not bought and owned and sold *against its human will*.
Is that too difficult?

And voluntarily negotiating a fair market rent for a scarce item --
and *all* rented and purchased items are scarce -- is *nothing* like
slavery, in which the slave got to voluntarily negotiate *nothing*
about being owned.

Even if you really, really, really would rather pay a lower rent than
you can voluntarily negotiate.

Frankly, you morally demean the real tragic victims of slavery with
such sophomoric rhetorical shots -- the way 'artists' who claim they
are censored and suppressed when they don't get a government subsidy
demean the tragedy of artists who died in the gulag.

So if you were really so concerned about morality as you claim, I'd
think you'd drop such cheap and dubious rhetoric and look for
substantive economic reasoning that might support your case.

Like, maybe, proof and explanation of a market failure that causes
land to produce systematically above-market risk-adjusted returns --
so that voluntary investments in it at fair market prices have a more
deleterious effect on the income and wealth distribution than
investments in T-bills.

Something like that.

>The question is
>whether the rules are *fair*.
>
>>
>> --
>> Matt.
>>
>>
>

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Lucas: Shame on the redistributionists
    ... >private ownership and returned to the government for administration. ... Government administers possession and use of the land within its ... >people who never killed anyone but simply and honesty paid full market ... "Pure ground rent is in the nature of a 'surplus,' which can be taxed ...
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  • Re: Land, Labour and Capital Taxation....
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  • Re: Eminent Domain Abuse
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  • Re: Murray Rothbard on Georgist fallacies
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