How to Fix Capitalism with one simple trick

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>>139415577
>George's proposal enables us to lower taxes on labor without raising taxes on capital. Indeed, it lets us lower taxes on both labor and capital at once, and without reducing public revenues.

> Georgist tax policy reconciles equity and efficiency. Taxing land is progressive because the ownership of land is so highly concentrated among the most wealthy,'8 and because the tax may not be shifted. It is efficient because it is neutral among rival land-use options: the tax is fixed, regardless of land use. This is one favourable point on which many modern economists actually agree, although they keep struggling against it
> Georgist tax policy contains urban sprawl, and its heavy associated costs, without overriding market decisions or consumer preferences, simply by making the market work better. land values are the product of demand for location; they are marked by continuity in space. That shows quite simply that people demand compact settlement and centrality. A well-oiled land market will give it to them.

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>>139415669
> Georgist tax policy creates jobs without inflation, and without deficits. "Fiscal stimulus," in the shallow modern usage, is a euphemism for running deficits, often with funny money. George's proposed land tax might be called, rather, "true fiscal stimulus". It stimulates demand for labor by promoting employment; it precludes inflation as the labor produces goods to match the new demand. It precludes deficits because it raises revenue. That is its peculiar reconciliatory genius: it stimulates private work and investment in the very process of raising revenue. It is the only tax of any serious revenue potential that does not bear down on and suppress production and exchange. As I have noted, George's fiscal policy takes two problems and composes them into one solution.

> George's land tax lets a polity attract people and capital en masse, without diluting its resource base. This is by virtue of synergy, the ultimate rationale for Chamber-of-Commerce boosterism. Urban economists like William Alonso have illustrated the power of such synergy by showing that bigger cities have more land value per head than smaller ones. (Land value is the resource base of a city.) Urbanists like Jane Jacobs and Holly Whyte have written on the intimate details of how this works on the streets. Julian Simon (The Ultimate Resource) philosophizes on the power of creative thought generated when people associate freely and closely in large numbers. Henry George made the same points in 1879

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>>139415776
>Georgist policies encourage the conservation of ecology and environment while also making jobs, by abating sprawl. It is a matter of focusing human activity on the good lands, thus meeting demands there and relieving the pressure to invade lands that are now wild and marginal for human needs. Sprawl in the urban environment is the kind most publicized, but there is analogous sprawl in agriculture, forestry, mining, recreation and other land uses and industries.

>Georgist policies strengthen public revenues while in the same process promoting economy in government. Anti-governmentalists often identify any tax policy with public extravagance. Georgist tax policy, on the contrary, saves public funds in many ways. By facilitating the creation of jobs it lowers welfare costs, unemployment compensation, doles, aid to families with dependent children and all that. It lowers jail and police costs, and all the enormous private expenditures, precautions, and deprivations now taken to guard against theft and other crime. Idle hands are not just wasted, they steal and destroy

Bump for actual theoretical political discussion.
If you're interested further, look into Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz's commentaries on land value taxes.
http://cgt.columbia.edu/news/joseph-stiglitz-fight-inequality-tax-land/

>>139415577
seems like a lot of justification with little detail on actual tax reforms?

Land is already taxed, what exactly is he proposing?

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>>139417528
Yeah ive listened to some of his talks

bump

progress and poverty is a good read

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>>139418057
Land was not created by humans. Economic community activity soaks into the land crystallizing as land values - how land values are created. This accumulated wealth is termed as economic rent. The economic rent is common, as community economic activity created the value in land, not the landowner. Thus Georgists believe that economic rent should be treated as common property (as distinct from collective or state owned property). The economic rent is reclaimed via a levy on the unimproved value of land. Georgism is clear that buildings and other improvements are exempt. The mechanism Georgists advocate to capture commonly created wealth in land is a levy on nearly the full market rental value of land (what it would cost to rent the land), based on frequent reassessments. Public ownership of land titles and public control of land are not usually considered to be within the Georgist philosophy, only the capture of commonly created wealth (economic/commons rent). The exception is in Georgist communities that make use of land value trusts, public leasing systems (e.g., Hong Kong and Singapore), and Georgist proposals for 'land value covenants'. In these cases, land-titles may be altered or be transferred to the public as a technicality. Georgists are usually opposed to taxing what they consider to be legitimate forms of private wealth, wages, or man-made capital.