Re: Eminent Domain Abuse

royls_at_telus.net
Date: 03/06/05 

Date: Sun, 06 Mar 2005 21:01:30 GMT

On Sat, 5 Mar 2005 16:39:32 -0800, "David Schwartz"
<davids@webmaster.com> wrote:

><ruetheday@outgun.com> wrote in message
>news:1110065945.053133.327190@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
>
>> >Once you realize that the value of land is created by labor, the next
>>>step follows pretty immediately. The person or people who performed
>>>that labor have the right to contract for the value of that labor if
>>>they can. It is this right that you seek to obliterate.
>
>> I am not seeking to obliterate anything. The value of the land is
>> primarily due to the activities of the surrounding community -
>> infrastructure such as roads and bridges, utilities like electricity,
>> water, sewer, and others, the establishment of a local government
>> including police departments and fire departments, businesses coming to
>> the area to conduct commerce, etc. You will note that NONE of this is
>> due in any fashion to the activities of the landlord. The community
>> creates the value and the landlord siphons it off like a parasite
>> through the collection of rent. I merely seek to divert the flow of
>> that rent back to those who created it in the first place.
>
> It doesn't matter who creates the value, a tax on it will ultimately
>harm those who created it.

That claim is just flat false, and has been known to be false for
nearly 200 years. As long as you cling to such demonstrably false
beliefs, you will be unable to learn anything.

> A tax on car sales will hurt the steel industry.

True.

>A tax based on land value will hurt any labor or industry that raises land
>values.

False. Indeed, a known and invariable effect of increasing land
taxation is increasing investment in the labor, industries,
infrastructure, etc. that increase land value. The reason for this is
very simple: land taxation stimulates more productive use of the land,
by denying landowners profits for idle speculation.

This relationship is amply confirmed by history. The landowners of
Limoges bitterly resisted Jacques Turgot's program of land taxation to
finance government expenditures. But the end result was that the
value of their landholdings increased more in one decade of Turgot's
administration than they had in the previous 200 years.

>You are robbing Peter to pay Paul.

No, we are returning to Paul what Peter got from Politicians, who took
it from Paul.

>That's fine so long as you don't
>pretend that Peter doesn't exist and isn't important.

Paul worked and created value. Peter did not. Politicians took the
value from Paul and used it in ways that increased the value of
Peter's land. Who deserves to get the value, Peter or Paul?

-- Roy L

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