Re: better tax code: no income tax, head tax (&| ppty t)

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:02:25 -0500, RogerDodger <none@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:24:39 -0800 (PST), Lysander
<lysander@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Feb 28, 3:37 am, ro...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:39:05 -0800 (PST), Lysander

Labor supply is very inelastic like land supply is.

Wrong. The supply of land is fixed. The supply of labor is not.

Even if Roy was right about land and he is not there is never a fixed
supply of anything, he is still being awfully dense here. If the
elasticity of supply of raw land is 0 and the elasticity of supply of
labor is .00001 then they are pretty close. The labor supply curve is
very close to perfectly inelastic. When one understands that a supply
curve is the pairing of prices and the corresponding amount that
PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO SELL AT THAT PRICE, it is obvious the amount of
land in existence has nothing to do with whether or not the supply
curve is perfectly inelastic.

Of course, supply is the amount of something *brought to market*, not
the amount of something existing in the physical universe.

No, it is the total amount available for purchase. If no one tries to
sell a Rembrandt on the market in a given year, it doesn't mean the
supply of Rembrandts is zero. It just means the market is illiquid.

Land does not have to be "brought to market" to be used, as wild
animals prove every moment of their lives. It is all already
available, for human purposes of wealth production just as much as for
animals' survival. So landowners NEVER "bring land to market." All
they ever do is STOP others from using it unless they pay the
landowners' extortion demands.

You are just wrong.

The Georgist claim is that land tax is superior to taxes on labor,
improvements, etc. because land supply is inelastic and their supply
is not.

Friedman pointed out that labor supply certainly *is* inelastic in the
"physical existence" sense in the near to intermediate term --
dropping a big tax on labor doesn't reduce the population or number
ofr workers at all at the time

That is an equivocation fallacy. The word, "labor" is being used in
two different senses: workforce, and productive effort. The supply of
labor is not the workforce, it is the amount of productive effort
available for purchase, and levying a big tax on it will certainly
reduce that amount. Friedman should have known better; but in
fairness, equivocation fallacies are extremely common, and very easy
to fall into.

-- and buildings and other
improvements to land are even more inelastic in supply, dropping a big
rent tax on them doesn't eliminate them from existence at all (and
they can't sell their homes and move away in the long run).

That is also false. A high tax on improvements will most certainly
eliminate them in the long run, as they will not be maintained. Make
the tax high enough, and owners will actually demolish improvements.
But no amount of tax will eliminate land or cause owners to demolish
it.

You are just wrong.

Yet dropping a big tax on labor or on rent for improvements to real
estate

That is another equivocation fallacy. "Rent for improvements" is not
economic rent but a rental _payment_. A tax on land rent is not a tax
on rent _payments_ but on the amount users are _willing_ to pay for
exclusive use of the land whether anyone is actually using it or not.
Because the tax is due either way, it encourages bringing land into
productive use. Taxing rent _payments_ for improvements, by contrast,
_discourages_ their productive use. Which is very much the point.

As you would have to be either very stupid or very dishonest not to
understand.

*immediately* drive supply of these items *out of the market*,
harming the economy.

Whereas dropping a big tax on land _immediately_ induces landowners to
sell more of it to users in order to avoid losing money, _improving_
the economy. Yet somehow, you are able to pretend to yourself that
these two contrasting effects of taxation are both results of positive
elasticity of supply.

Workers immediately start working under the
table, off the books, or cease working altogether. Rent for
improvements to real estate goes under the table, or is sharply
reduced in back-room deals (I slash your rent, you hire my wife for a
no-show job, etc.)

All this is entirely well known and extremely well documented.

And is the opposite of what happens in response to an increased tax on
land. Yet somehow, you are able to pretend to yourself that opposite
effects are due to like causes.

Thus, the Georgist claim that because the physically existing supply
of an item (such as land) is inelastic a tax on it won't disrupt
markets for it by reducing the amount brought to market, is seen to be
very naive nonsense -- contradicted by their own examples.

False, as proved both above and by all historical data that show a
positive relationship between land tax rates and land market
liquidity.

You are just wrong. However, I predict that you will not allow the
fact that you are repeatedly being proved wrong to stimulate any
consideration of the possibility that you actually ARE wrong.

What the Georgist needs is some explanation, some mechanism, that will
keep rental arrangments for land from fleeing offmarket and into
backroom deals just exactly like rental arrangements for improvements
to land do when steep taxes are imposed on the rents.

If you were not absolutely ignorant of everything related to land,
Georgism, economics, and rent, you would know that Georgists do not
propose to tax rent _payments_ but the _economic_ rent of land, which
is the same whether anyone is paying it to the landowner or not.

Or was that a deliberate strawman fallacy -- i.e., a lie?

Alas, they have no such thing, so they just sputter and practice
denial.

OK, that settles the question: you are a stupid, ignorant liar.

As they must, or their whole church comes tumbling down right there.

So don't expect any of them to ever admit the problem! ;-)

I have proved conclusively, above, that the "problem" is an artefact
of your ignorance, stupidity and dishonesty.

Increasing land taxes will increasingly drive suppliers of land *out
of the market*,

There are no such things as "suppliers of land," as all the land would
still be available just exactly as nature provided it if the
"suppliers" did not exist. They can't increase the amount of land
available. Only reduce it.

However, it is true that increasing land taxes will drive these idle,
parasitic extortionists out of the market, to society's great and
lasting benefit.

such taxes drive suppliers of existing
improvements to land out of the market.

Except that the actual effect of increasing land taxes has always been
the exact opposite: landowners either use the land more productively,
or yield it to someone who will.

That's what happens with high but non-confiscatory tax rates.

When the tax base is, unlike land, in elastic supply.

100% land tax will eliminate all private suppliers of land.

There are by definition no suppliers of land, private or otherwise.
100% land tax will, however, eliminate the idle, parasitic
extortionists who exact land rent from the productive in return for no
contribution whatsoever from themselves.

Honest Georgists admit this, and say that with a rent-confiscating tax
the Government Land Rental Adminstration will be the effective owner
of all land and be the party leasing it out under Georgism.

As has worked so brilliantly in Hong Kong.

Which means they are arguing that the allocating of land to its
various uses by politicians running the monopoly GLRA is a better and
more economically efficient process than allocating land to best use
by market forces.

No, that is just another lie. An auctioneer who simply solicits bids
and accepts the high bid is not allocating the lot he sells. The
market is. Do you think ebay is allocating everything it sells?

All anti-geoists are liars. That is a law of the universe.

That's OK, they can claim that, I won't go into that argument here,
except to note that the world has *plenty* of experience with GLRAs of
all kinds....

Like in Hong Kong.

(And, hey, if politically-run government agencies can allocate land to
best use better than the market can, why can't they allocate
everything else to best use better than the market can too? The world
has plenty of experience with that kind of thinking as well...)

<yawn> Unfortunately, you clearly have no experience whatever with
any kind of thinking other than concocting fallacies.

Just because the land exist does not
mean I will sell it at the market price or any other price for that
matter. We buy land because it has value. Different land has
different values due to the characteristics of the land. We only sell
when the market price exceeds the value we place on the land. Since
different land has different value, the market price effects how much
land is sold.
Note: This assumes perfect competition in the land market. Roy is so
dense to argue that the land market is a monopoly market while, his
reasoning for a monopoly actually points to oligopoly. When we are not
in perfect competition there is NO SUPPLY CURVE! Roy can not have it
both ways in that land is a monopoly market but it has perfectly
inelastic supply so therefore a tax is efficient....

C'mon, you don't think a Georgist who doesn't understand the ABC
principle that the amount of land brought to market (not the amount in
physical existence) is the supply that matters will be able to follow
arguments like this, do you?

Land is already all available for use with no help from anyone, so no
one can ever "bring it to market." All they can do is _remove_ it
from the market.

_GET_IT_??

Or be willing to try?

<yawn> See my demolition of his argument in my reply to him.

You're the one who proved he does not know what either price or supply
mean, claiming that if price was low, land would not be supplied.

No the amount of land offered for sale is less when price is low. What
you call supplied is the carpenters definition not the economic
definition. I have a car. It is not for sale because I do not want to
sell at the price the market would offer for it.

Yeah, this is more on the level they might understand. ;-)

<yawn> Look, $#!+-for-brains: you are wrong, stupid, ignorant and
dishonest, as I have proved above. You now have three choices:

1. You can make an even bigger fool of yourself (and after your
disgraceful performance here, you will find me very willing to help
you with that) by trying to rescue the falsehoods and absurdities I
demolished above with ever-wilder falsehoods and absurdities. Based
on my long experience with lying ignoramuses like you, I believe that
is the choice you are most likely to make.

Go ahead. Make my day.

2. You can cut your losses and run away, showing at least enough
animal cunning to know when you are licked.

3. You can find a willingness to learn from the fact that you have
repeatedly been proved wrong. I predict that the wisdom and honesty
required to pursue this option are beyond you.

-- Roy L
.

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