Re: LVT Hong Kong hokum (Re: What the LVT is, and what its advantages are - must read

On Thu, 18 Jan 2007 15:27:11 -0500, S. Doo <none@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, 18 Jan 2007 01:03:49 +0100, peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Peter
Bjørn Perlsø) wrote:

S. Doo <none@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

A amusing postscript.

On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 08:06:41 GMT, royls@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

??? ROTFL!! Lie. HK and Taiwan, because they recover so much land
rent for public purposes, were barely affected by the Asian financial
crisis of 1997....

You are just makin' $#!+ up again.

Time Magazine, 2/15/99

Hong Kong's fixation on property is an obstacle to economic recovery
By SIN-MING SHAW

The Hong Kong economy is in deep trouble. GDP fell about 5.6% last
year, the worst decline on record...

[see prior post]
~~~

And that is as about as close to reality as Single Taxers ever get.

Property is more than land. Could it be real estate the article is
discussing?

~~ quote ~~

"One of the main drives of Government policy is to keep LAND prices
high so that the yield from the various LAND taxes remains high"

?? Somebody tells you that HK's government refuses to lease out
public land in order to get more land tax money, and you swallow it
whole, despite the self-evident facts that

1. The government is thereby _giving_up_ land lease income to allow
_private_landholders_ to pocket more rent for doing nothing as a
result of the artificial shortage of land, and

2. If government wanted more land tax income, all it would have to do
is _increase_the_rate_ of the land tax, not force up land prices.

For HK's government to force up land prices by withholding land in
order to increase its land tax income therefore makes exactly as much
sense as for a private landlord to withhold land from users to
increase market rents, and consequently watch his competitors all make
more money as a result, while he makes less.

Do you understand how ridiculous that is? The notion that such an
absurd policy is driven by government self-interest is so stupid, so
completely asinine, so 180 degrees away from the truth, that only an
experienced anti-LVT hate propagandist of the first water could
possibly have thought of it, or believed anyone with a functioning
brain would buy it.

I've said it before, S. Doo, and I'll say it again, now: your claims
are just patently false, and can only be the result of stupidity
and/or dishonesty.

"Generally, LAND prices are higher and less LAND (or accommodation
space)

Land is of course NOT "accommodation space."

is available for people and business in Hong Kong under the
policy than would be the case without it. The social and economic
effects of this policy are very significant....

They are indeed. You just refuse to know what they self-evidently
are.

That's what's called an "incentive effect" of the land tax system,
friend.

Yep. Private landholders have a HUGE incentive to pay off corrupt
government officials to sacrifice government revenue in the interest
of increasing the private landholders' unearned incomes.

The religious bedrock of the Georgist belief system is that the supply
of usable land is immutably fixed, so nothing can change market rents
for it.

Lie. All Georgists know that designated land use is controlled by
government, and all Georgists know that rent is determined by
differential productivity.

So the second-to-last thing they ever want you to think about is the
big political incentive that land tax gives to politicians to take
usable land *off the market*

Idiocy demolished above. Land that is off the market yields no
revenue. Total land rents are maximized when all super-marginal land
is put to its most productive use.

by gov't ownershi, and restrictive
zoning rules on privately owned land --- to *reduce* the supply of
usable land, and thus drive up rents and eceipts from the land taxes
that appropriate them.

As proved above, that is utter bollocks. If government wanted more
land tax revenue, it could simply increase the land tax rate. The
only beneficiaries of government keeping land unused are the private
landholders whose unearned rent incomes are thus massively increased
at the expense of the landless.

If you have X number of people living on Y amount of land in a free
market for land, rents will be $Z.

Now say the politicians restrict the supply of land, so X number of
people must live on a *smaller* area of land. There is less usable
land for the citizenry. Rents must go up *over* the free market price
to $Z++.

That claim is flat false, and rather cruelly exposes you as an
economic illiterate. _TOTAL_ land rent will be _LESS_ with the
reduced amount of land in use, because the resulting inefficient use
of land and crowding onto the worst land in use will reduce the
productivity differential between the best and worst land in use.

You are destroyed.

So taxes go up, and the politicians give themselves more
money to spend

Yeah, well, that would certainly explain how the practice of keeping
land off the market has been accompanied by a _decline_ in total land
revenue (land lease revenue + land tax revenue) as a fraction of GDP
in HK, even as the rents pocketed by private landholders have
skyrocketed....

What happened to the immutable and unchangeable supply of land?

It's still there. But the private landholders found out they could
get government to shovel money out of its own pockets and into theirs
by getting people like S. Doo to lie about the economic effects of
keeping land unused.

Land is taken out of the market by the government to boost leases
above market rates, and thus it's income.

Lie refuted above.

"The root cause of Hong Kong's problems is its LAND policy..."

True: the abandonment of land leasing as its main source of revenue.

"Developers sit on an inventory of LAND sufficient for at least five
years of private production of space..."

How could they possibly afford to do that if HK still had effectively
an LVT-like system?

The answer is obvious, self-evident, and indisputable: they couldn't.

"... 71% profits for Henderson LAND ..."

Etc. etc. Get it?

Oh, yes. I get it. But you don't.

Is it really true that you can't even read the word "LAND" in that
article, but are so mesmerized by the Georgist dream that when your
eyes see it your brain reads it as: "other kinds of property"????

The "land" tax does fall on improvements as well.

Well, that will certainly keep you from submitting this as a drawback
of land taxes on a Wiki page!

Because it's simply no longer much of an LVT-like system.

If the thought that politicians can increase tax revenue for
themselves from a land tax by artificially **reducing the supply of
available land** has finally managed to sink in,

The fact that I have proved it false might be an issue, there....

then we can progress
to the very first thing that Georgists never want you to think about.

You are a liar. Georgists _always_ want you to think about _all_ the
facts regarding land.

This is:

The price of an item in the market is *not* determined on the supply
side by the immutably-fixed amount of it that exists in the physical
universe, but rather by the amount of it that owners can and actually
do bring for sale IN THE MARKET -- that's why they call it a "market
price", after all -- and that amount can change all the time, and this
is as true for LAND as for everything else.

Because you are dishonest, you are trying to make your readers forget
the fact that the landholder who withholds his own land from use only
reduces his own income, while increasing the incomes of other
landholders. _That's_ why the supply of land is fixed: no landholder
can make more money for _himself_ by keeping his _own_ land off the
market. But as HK shows, a landholder who can somehow persuade
_some_other_ landholder to keep land off the market can effectively
transfer rent income from that other, foolish landholder to himself.
And that is precisely what private landholders in HK are doing to the
foolish public landholder.

The sand of belief upon which the Georgist/Single Taxers' Church is
built is that because the supply of an item -- say, "land" -- in the
*physical universe* doesn't change in response to a tax on it,

You are lying again. The supply of _produced_ items _will_ change in
response to a tax on them.

the
supply that will be brought for sale IN THE MARKET can't change after
the gov't imposes a confiscatory tax on it that destroys its owners'
incentives to offer it in the market.

???? ROTFLMAO!!

You are just soooo stupid, S. Doo.

With no land tax, if the owner just sits on the land he pays no money.

With a land tax, if the owner just sits on the land, he pays for the
privilege. The higher the land tax, the more money he bleeds for
keeping the land idle.

Hello?

Which system do you think is more likely to get him to either use the
land productively or sell it to someone who will?

Is it really soooo hard for you to figure out such a self-evident and
indisputable fact of objective reality?

Or does your anti-LVT religion erase all such logic functions from
your brain's repertoire?

Well, the amount of rental housing that physically exists in a big
city doesn't change at all when a tax is imposed on rental income it
earns.

Huh? Please try not to be any stupider than you are naturally. A tax
on rental income will at a minimum stimulate condo conversions,
reducing the rental housing inventory.

But because you are deeply stupid and dishonest, you refuse to know
all such facts.

And as Milton Friedman has pointed out (on a Georgist web site, no
less)

Let's see the URL for the page whose contents you are lying about this
time.

even the supply of LABOR doesn't change at all when a tax is
imposed in labor income. Do people suddenly keel over and die when
the labor tax rate goes up?

No, but they decide to do other things with their time -- raise kids,
go back to school, etc., thus reducing the supply of labor.

But nobody -- including you, I dare say -- will deny that when big fat
taxes are imposed on the income from rental housing , and on labor,
then rental housing *immediately* goes OFF THE MARKET into the
underworld of hoarding ("It's not worth renting now so I'll keep it
myself"), the grey market, and the black market .... and labor
*immediately* drops OUT OF THE FREE MARKET and into the underworld of
off-the-books work, grey-and black-market job arrangements, and
sitting at home doing nothing because it doesn't pay enough after
taxes to work.

Right. Which is why LVT advocates are dead set against all such
taxes.

I'm just trying to figure out why _you_ are so fanatically opposed to
the only type of tax that does _NOT_ have such effects.

And nobody -- including you, I dare say -- will deny that if
confiscation-level taxes are dropped on rental income from housing and
labor income, then the rental housing and labor markets would be
*destroyed*, immediately!

This in spite of the fact that the supply of them that exists in the
physical world doesn't change a bit in response to tax! Just like
land!!!!

False and stupid claim demolished above.

Even the Georgists/Single Taxers say that *of course* the amount of
rental housing and labor brought to the market *is* driven down by
taxes imposed on them, immediately, *in spite* of the fact that the
amount of them that exists in the physical world doesn't change a bit
as a result of the tax.

<sigh> Wrong, as proved above.

See if you can understand this, Mr Doo:

Suppose instead of your hypothetical tax on labor and rental
accommodation that is brought to market, there is a tax on labor and
rental accommodation that is exactly the same
_whether_it_is_brought_to_market_or_not_.

Will people opt to keep their labor and rental accommodation off the
market, and just pay the tax? Or will they bring their labor and
rental accommodation to the market as fast as they possibly can, in
order to make some money to pay the tax with?

_Get_it_??

The they say the land tax is uniquely better because the amount of
land brought to the free market *won't* change BECAUSE the amount of
land that exists in the physical world doesn't change a bit as a
result of the tax.

Lie. The argument (which is correct, even though you are neither
intelligent enough to understand it nor honest enough to admit it if
you did) is that no landholder can increase _his_own_ income by
withholding any of _his_ land from the market. Despite the fact that
it is self-evidently false, you have decided to believe that the
government of HK can and does increase its total land income by not
getting any income from a portion of its land, and likewise despite
the fact that you are fully aware that no _private_ landholder could
possibly arrange such a miracle of anti-economics.

Hello??? Have they any explanation for THAT contradiction??

??? ROTFL!!! You claim that LVT, which is _exactly_the_same_ whether
the land is used or not, is equivalent to a tax that _only_ applies
when a factor is used, and you accuse _Georgists_ of contradiction??

ROTFL!!

Until they get one (it's only been 130 years!) they have no reason to
ask why tax professionals and professional economists don't take them
seriously.

See above, lying filth. There is no contradiction; like all anti-LVT
hate propagandists, you simply lie and lie and lie about what LVT is.

Reality, simple and obvious:

* The community's economic welfare depends on the amount of an item --
housing, labor, land, etc. -- that is BROUGHT TO THE MARKET, not the
amount that exists in the physical universe.

* The land tax reduces the amount of land that is BROUGHT TO THE
MARKET in two ways, by:

1) Creating powerful incentives for politicians to profit by using
the law to *reduce* the amount of land that is available for use on
the free market. Example: Hong Kong.

Which example I have demolished, and which self-evidently makes no
sense. If it did, private landholders would be doing it, too. And
they aren't.

If you increase the politicians' reliance on land tax to 100% by
making it their only source of revenue, you obviously magnify their
incentive to do this to the maximum possible limit.

<yawn> Private landholders get pretty much 100% of the land rent, and
we don't see _them_ holding their land idle to boost other
landholders' rents, do we?

2) Reducing land owners' incentives to offer land on the open free
market, by reducing their ability to gain by doing so.

Garbage, as proved above. Are you more likely to offer land on the
market if you have to pay just for keeping others from using it, or if
you can keep others from using it for free?

Hello?

And if you impose a 100% tax on income from land, it will *destroy*
the free market in land just exactly as such a tax would destroy the
free market for rental housing or labor -- which are highly fixed in
supply in the physical universe after the imposition of a tax on them
just exactly as land is!

LVT is not a tax on income from land; it is exactly the same whether
the land yields any income or not.

It's simple as that.

Yep: you have no argument other than to lie about what LVT is. It's
as simple as that.

The Single Taxers' land supply analysis is plain bunk.

<yawn> That must be why it is part of the furniture of economics, and
has not been seriously disputed by any competent economist for well
over 100 years.

Which is why you don't see a Single Tax, or even just a confiscatory
land tax, in the real world *anywhere*, in spite of thousands of years
of tax experimentation and over 100 years of Single Taxers pushing the
idea of it everywhere.

Lie. The most unambiguous use of LVT was in the German colony of
Kiaochow, China, just before WW I. It was brilliantly successful,
just as LVT advocates said it would be. There are of course other LVT
success stories that Mr Doo refuses to know the facts about, and
doesn't want you to know about, either:

http://www.progress.org/geonomy/geono05.php

And why land taxes exist only at moderate,
non-market destroying rates.

The only way a land tax can destroy the market is if it exceeds the
land rent, which a tax on land _value_ (LVT) cannot possibly do.

Now you know -- or you never will.

_You_ never will, that is plain.

If you do, be sure not tot mention any of this on the Wikipedia LVT
page, you'll offend people. ;-)

Why would Wikipedia submit to being polluted with the kind of
transparent, ridiculous lies you have been trying to peddle here, Mr
Doo, hmmmm?

Inquiring minds want to know.


<sigh> You see? I warned you, Mr Doo. I told you that you would
make a fool of yourself if you continued with your anti-LVT
disinformation campaign in this newsgroup, and that I would demolish
and humiliate you for it. That has now happened, exactly as I
promised. You have been exposed as a habitual, pathological liar on
the subject of LVT, and as an economic illiterate.

But it could be worse. You could now try to rescue all the arguments
that I have pulverized so thoroughly by further stupidities and
dishonesties, and consequently suffer even more grievous exposure and
ridicule as you dive ever deeper into the cesspool of anti-LVT hate
propaganda.

Please don't. I'm not a cruel man by nature, really I'm not, and it
pains me to subject you to such merciless treatment, even though you
do deserve it.

-- Roy L
.

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