LVT, more arguments against---again

"Similarly, do you think slaveowners should be compensated for emancipation?
Your logic says they must be."

Well, some of the antebellum Free Soil candidates did propose compensated
emancipation. Which probably would have been cheaper than the Civil War was.

In the particular case of American slavery, one could argue that
confiscation of slave "property" was a government-imposed penalty for
rebellion.

In any event, I think you have to distinguish between a claimed property
right in human beings and property rights in everything else. Human autonomy
is one of the few "categorical imperatives"; a property claim over another
person infringes fundamental ethical concerns in a way that no other
property right does.

"So what?

"(1) Land rent was close to zero at the beginning. Hence at the time it
would be reasonable not to tax land, since there was no rent to tax. Why
does that bind the government not to tax away rent in the future? Title to
land is never absolute---and that includes the right of government to levy
higher land taxes in the future."

Government has the power to tax, but not to confiscate without paying just
compensation. I would argue that the government, having once granted title
to land in exchange for consideration, may not justly raise taxes so high as
to amount to a re-taking of the entire rent that was part of the land's
bundle of rights.

I disagree that land's future rent was discounted entirely by the sovereigns
who granted title to land. Often, land was granted with the expectation that
it would be made productive and command rent. That consideration was
factored into the sovereign's decision to grant title.

Now, you may argue that it's illogical for the present government to be
bound by transactions in which the long-ago consideration consisted of King
Charles of Spain getting some soldiers to settle Alta California and
discourage Russian incursions from Alaska. But how far back do you go, in
repudiating the debts a government owes to its predecessors in interest?
Could President Bush's administration disavow debts incurred by the Clinton
administration?


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Property rights nutjobs
    ... The Flip Side of Takings ... If the public were compensated for the increase in land value that results from ... arguing that compensating the victims of government action will cost ... courts interpreted those words to mean that compensation was due only if the ...
    (sci.econ)
  • 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 ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: Lucas: Shame on the redistributionists
    ... Can you name *any* rent that isn't scarcity rent? ... Just as is the case with your house on your land, ... private ownership and returned to the government for administration. ... So the *moral* argument for discriminating against such fair market ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: Land, Labour and Capital Taxation....
    ... >put pressure on the Government to not fund project that didn't have ... spending and land rent, a _huge_ amount of current wasteful government ... sense to distribute any surplus revenue from land rent equally among ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: Eminent Domain Abuse
    ... >> Well, you can't eliminate the rent, so then the choice is either using ... >> appropriate it and funding the functions of government with taxes on ... >working land one does not own, you create a system where nobody can ever be ... >free from that yoke. ...
    (sci.econ)