Re: Relative poverty, a problem?

<royls@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:4610717c.430751@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 01 Apr 2007 16:25:57 -0400, Nospam <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

royls@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

IME such "fundamentalism" is quite rare among those who are commonly
termed Georgists,

Well, you are one of those that advocated and debated with me some time ago
the idea of REMOVING ALL THE OTHER TAXES and replacing them with LVT alone.

No, I said we should remove all the current unfair, inefficient and
economically destructive taxes like income tax, and replace them with
taxes on economic rents.

I do not wish to _COLLECT_ any economic rent. I do wish to live
in the house that I have worked all my life to _OWN_ and to collect
Social Security income that I have earned by virtue of PAYING out
that FICA tax all of my life. I, understand that I will be taxing the
wages of other people in order to GET my Social Security benefits
but that this is FAIR if these persons will get the same in the future.
I understand that the land under my house is worth money but
I have planned well in that the House is located in an area that
is low income and somewhat isolated. The dude across the street
and the dude next to me were both disabled wheel chair dudes
and have since died. There is no reason to suspect that some
moronic Republican developer is going to want to create a shopping
mall where my house is. In a system of land rent redistribution I will
break even or get a small income from a citizen's dividend.

The PRODUCTIVE segment of the society MUST support the non
productive elderly and the young. There is no other way for this to
work and it does not matter how you account it. If I owned two
truckloads of gold doubloons to attest to the fact that I have worked
and produced for my whole life or I own my house to so attest is
irrelevant. These are MY savings and they represent production
I have donated to the society my share of which I have not YET
consumed. I will now collect what is owed to me.

I am a veteran (unlike The Current Republican CHICKENHAWKS)
and entitled to VA Health care because my income from SS and
a part time job will be less than the means test for VA health care.

It is MY TURN.

So yes, you are one of those I call fundamentalists :-)

Name calling being your substitute for facts and logic.

There is no fundamentalist religious underpinning to the concept
of social cooperation. We support the old and the young because that
is how societies operate. I did it all my life and never complained
or whined about it. My three sons are all Master Electricians and
they are out there working and contributing to the society and
as far as I am concerned that is also good and right and fair.
LVT will NOT harm them or me. It will only balance out the
scales a little. They will not need to work as hard as I did to
own a home and to provide for their retirement if the
income tax monster will be removed.

by LVT opponents. Obviously the 19th C claims of the Single Tax
heralding the Kingdom of God on earth were overdone. Nobody today
seriously claims LVT will solve all problems, nor even all economic
problems.

Well, you did some time ago. Or at least from what you said you let me the
idea that this is what you advocate.

No.

George was a luminary in that he exposed economic rent for what it
was by using land rent as the example.

I remember quite well your opposition to tax the income of the Wall Street
traders because it is a tax on income.

That's right. You need to get straight that there is a difference
between earned income and economic rent, and it is not a matter of
size.

A highly progressive income tax will tend to tax income from economic
rent simply because higher incomes are composed of more and more
economic rent. A billion dollars in wages for a CEO is not EARNED
income unless you consider congressional bribes as being an honest
contribution to the economy/society.

And we have already shown you that farming would
bear a SMALLER tax burden under LVT.

No, actually you failed to show me exactly that point.

No, I proved it. You just didn't understand the proof because you
don't know any economics. LVT would reduce the tax burden on farming
because it would end the taxation of the farmer's inputs and
production, and would only recover what the farmer would otherwise be
paying to the landowner for doing nothing.

Any tax on land that is then returned to all persons equally is not
a tax on productive persons but an egalitarian tax on all persons
similar to a head tax. The Citizens Dividend OR the funding of
government acting to the benefit of all persons is a boon to the
productive persons who would have otherwise had to pay a tax
on their consumption or on their production. (this assumes that
taxes, like death, are inevitable). And while ALL taxes will
inevitably fall on labor (there is no other VALUE to be
appropriated), the indirect nature of the tax forces land owners
to bid for the labor that will make "their" land productive enough
to allow them to then pay the tax. Only through the application
of labor can ANY _real_ value (wealth in the classical sense
of Smith and Ricardo and the Physiocrats before them) be
created.

I even gave you a
numeric example to show you that removing income taxation and replace them
with LVT will generate skyrocketing food prices.

Uh, no, if you will recall, I proved that example was utter nonsense,
and demolished it.

I don't know if the huge military costs of the United States can be
born by a tax on land within the sovereignty of the Unites States.
I find it quite unlikely. But I also find it quite unlikely that most
Americans would opt for funding the current military budget of
the United States if the actually knew the real costs and real
benefit of the current imperialism.

You replied with (mostly)
PR but never with a clear numeric example to show that it can be done.

Garbage. It has been known for nearly 200 years, and is not seriously
disputed by any competent economist, that a tax on land rent cannot,
repeat, CANNOT be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.
It is just not konwn by you, because you do not know any economics.

What is land tenure in the USA actually worth? Perhaps we the people
would be a lot better off moving to Puerto Rico or Argentina or some
other place.

If however, the LVT is used as a nonexclusive taxation used to reduce income
taxes for low income families, but not to replace all the income taxation,
well that it is an idea I can agree with.

Why do you insist that moderate and high incomes be taxed? Why should
the most productive be punished for producing more than others?

Because most really high incomes are from economic rent as opposed
to being earned incomes. We do not want to tax productivity but
what share of income is being realized by the productive class as
opposed to the owning class. I think that most of us would find
that very high incomes would flow to the owners as opposed to
the producers. The owning class is marginally entitled to derive income
from savings and investment. But not to the extent that this is currently
happening.

You apparently can't get your
head around the fact that LVT taxes land by its VALUE, not its AREA.

And I told you that exactly as today, many find taxshelters to reduce income
taxation into a Georgist situation the wealthy corporations can just do
that without breaking the law.

No, they can't. A tax on land rent cannot be shifted off the
landowner. Period.

The problem is with sovereignty. The US government cannot tax land
in China or in the Middle east. Yet the US government will forever
provide services to IP owners that live and operate in these places.
We need to bear in mind, however, that his same problem manifests
itself with income taxation. It seems that if sovereignties are to be
maintained then import duties are the only way to collect the taxes
necessary to fund this "world wide police force".

But perhaps an asset tax can be expropriated form ALL corporations
on the planet. The US gummint has all the guns.

The simplest example I gave was with offshoring. A company headquartered in
US pays the same tax on income regardless if the manufacturing facility is
in Manhattan, in Utah plains or in China.

No, they do not, because it is easy to manipulate the accounts to show
no income when the Chinese operation is a black box.

Or move the headquarters to Dubai.

If you eliminate all the taxation
and replace them with LVT, then if the company drop the Manhattan plant and
move it in China will pay NO LVT.

But they also would not pay any income tax if they moved the corporate
office to the Cayman Islands.

Well, if they are not operating (using land) in the USA, why would you
imagine that they should pay taxes to the US government?

Because the US government is the world policeman.

In any case,
the burden of LVT is borne exclusively by the land's owner at the time
the LVT is implemented. If the company owns land in the USA, then
decides to move to China "to avoid the LVT," it will simply pay all
the LVT _in_advance_ when it sells the land and moves to China.

Yes and no. The land value goes to zip when LVT is initiated
so that value is lost to the company that now relocates. But
the tax to be drawn from the land is also decimated.

Well, in today's world the company can also move the headquarter in Dubai
like Haliburton then pay no taxes at all.

No _income_ taxes. That is kinda the point.

So how do we collect a land tax from Dubai?

But LVT will not help in that
case either.

I have already explained why it will. Haliburton and all other
companies will be unable to avoid paying the LVT on all US land they
own when it is implemented.

You keep missing the point here. So long as the USA wants to
play world policeman, an import tax seems the only way to collect
what is needed to pay for the US Military. At this rate China
will take over the USA in a few more years.

Only VAT can tax offshore companies selling goods and services
in US and due to offshoring issue, I see VAT as a requirement.

Why would you imagine the USA should tax offshore companies selling to
the USA, except to the extent that those companies benefit by using US
resources? VAT is one of the worst taxes ever devised, as it
specifically punishes creation of value.

But they DO benefit from US resources. WE pay for the giant military
that protects them from the bad guys and enforces their IP property
rights.

--
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers
of society but the people themselves; and
if we think them not enlightened enough to
exercise their control with a wholesome
discretion, the remedy is not to take it from
them, but to inform their discretion by
education." - Thomas Jefferson
http://GreaterVoice.org


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