User blog comment:Craiglpalmer/Global Goals: Why We're Telling Everyone/@comment-4564560-20150927132820

The elimination of poverty is number one on the list and rightly so! How to do it is to provide everyone with equal opportunities, for both finding a suitable job and earning a decent salary and also for getting a proper education for making progress in the quality of this activity.

Today there is a serious limit on the amount of suitable land that is available for working and the speculation in this natural resource (which was not due to labor but due to greed and the first one to claim ownership) now results in speculation in its value and the withholding of land from use.

If a sensible government wishes to limit the corruption associated with land grabbing prior to its planned development, it should collect the ground-rent that is its natural result, when it is properly used. This rent should be taken as a tax on land values and all other kinds of tax should be eliminated.

14 ASPECTS of LAND-VALUE TAXATION affecting Government, Land Owners, Community and Ethics

3 aspects for GOVERNMENT

1. Most of the ground-rent being collected as LVT, adds to the national income. It allows the other taxes on earnings, purchases and family/corporate ownership of buildings to be reduced and eventually to be eliminated.

2. The ownership of each land parcel is registered. Then the cost of collecting the LVT is much smaller than for income tax and other production-related taxes. Using regularly updated maps, the rental value of each site (as if without buildings) is public knowledge. Then the LVT is simple to understand, the amount of tax is easily found and its payment by the land owner is impossible to avoid.

3. With LVT, the national economy stabilizes and no longer experiences the 18 year housing boom and bust cycle, which was due to the changing prices that arose from speculation in land-values during town expansion.

6 aspects affecting LAND OWNERS

4. LVT is progressive, the owners of the most potentially productive sites pay the most tax. None is paid on marginally productive sites, since their owners cannot claim ground-rent from possible tenants.

5. The land owner pays his LVT regardless of how the land is used. When the land is leased to tenants most or all of the resulting ground-rent is the tax.

6. LVT stops the speculation in land prices because any withholding of land from proper use is too costly. 7. The introduction of LVT reduces the sales price of sites even though their value (or potential usefullness) may continue to grow.

8. With LVT, land owners are unable to pass the tax on to their tenant renters, due to the competition for land use. The users of (untaxed) marginal sites price their produce according to the costs of their labour, the use of the durable capital and the added transport needs. Owners/occupiers who access more productive land pay LVT/ground-rent and compete in their production, so this tax cannot be added to what buyers willingly pay.

9. With the introduction of LVT, land prices will drop. Speculators in land values will tend to foreclose on their mortgages and to withdraw their money for reinvestment. Depending on the rate of these changes, bankrupcies can result. Then LVT should be introduced gradually to allow the investors sufficient time to transfer money to company-shares in durable capital goods, where their greater use will meet the increased demand for produce (see below).

3 aspects regarding our COMMUNITY

10. With LVT, there is an incentive to use land for production, rather than it laying idle or being partly used. An optimum amount of urban land is brought into use, which reduces the spread of suburbs onto rural land and avoids vacant city centers. 11. With LVT, greater working opportunities exist due to cheaper land and a greater number of available sites. Consumer goods become cheaper because entrepreneurs have less difficulty in starting-up and running their businesses. Demand grows, unemployment decreases and with it a reduction in the polarization of our class-society and its degree of poverty.

12. As LVT is introduced, investment money is withdrawn from land and placed in durable capital goods. The investors in company shares tend to be wage-earners (as well as banks and monopolists). Their decisions favour more competition and cheaper local production without heavy transport costs, whilst the monopolists have less control of prices and the unavailability of alternative goods. This is a natural trend of our free-marketing social system.

2 aspects about ETHICS

13. The collection of taxes directly from productive effort and commerce is socially unjust. The associated philosophy favours coercive robbery and is “Robin Hood” in style. LVT replaces this form of extortion by gathering the surplus rental income which comes without exertion. Consequently LVT is a natural system of money-gathering, which avoids the present-day distortion of business economics.

14. Bribery and corruption cease with LVT. Before, this was due to the leaking of news of municipal plans for housing development. However, the speculation in land values is no longer worthwhile after LVT is in place.