Austerity Is a War on Prosperity
By Fred E. Foldvary (Progress Report)
“Austerity” is a policy of reducing beneficial government spending and raising harmful taxes. The taxes that have been increased in the name of austerity have been on goods, wages, value added, and the profits of entrepreneurs. The spending cuts are often on the infrastructure that make the economy more productive, or on the services that the poor depend on: education, medical services, housing, and food aid.
Giving consideration to a just tax
Why is it so hard to understand the justice and benefits of capturing the community created value of land for the community?
By John Fisher
http://freeport.nassauguardian.net/editorial/307852125169490.php
How an anti-rentier agenda might bring liberals, conservatives together
Throughout the late 19th century, the political economist Henry George argued that a main reason there was so much poverty amidst prosperity was the large presence of people collecting unearned income, or what he called “rents”. His particular focus was on land, and his solution was taxes. [Editor's note: more accurately than "taxes", George advocated a "single tax".] It’s difficult to overstate his influence on turn-of-century reform movements, providing both the theoretical basis for those looking at other problems in the new industrial era and a concrete set of solutions for organizers building new mass political movements.
By Mike Konczal (Washignton Post)
Communism, welfare state – what’s the next big idea?
Any attempt to challenge the elite needs courage, inspiration and a truly groundbreaking proposal. Here are two to set us off
By George Monbiot (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/01/alternative-to-war-on-britains-poor
Why all progressives should support a land value tax
Through no effort of their own, landowners reap a £100bn annual windfall. Caroline Lucas’s bill shows the way towards a moral capitalism.
By David Cooper (New Statesman)
Churchill knew that landowners cannot change the value of a plot of land. Its value depends only on location and size. Is it near a station? A park? Good schooling? All of these factors are determined by the community, not the landowner.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/02/why-all-progressives-should-support-land-value-tax
Lower property taxes to the ground to save cities & nature
By Erich Jacoby-Hawkins (Robert Schalkenbach Foundation)
Taxing land value is fair, because a site’s value stems from the community around it; land rent is higher in the middle of a bustling city than in a quiet village, and higher in a town than in a remote wilderness. When realtors say the three most important things are location, location, and location they are right; the value of a site comes from what you can do there, determined by what is around it. Roads, services, and customers are all vital links for a business, so even though remote land is cheaper than land near a city, smart businesspeople pay more to be where they can easily access inputs and markets.
http://www.erichthegreen.ca/2013/02/lower-property-taxes-to-ground-to-save.html
We Need a Land Value Tax, Not a Property Tax Cap
By Scott Baker (Common Ground NYC)
Land, unlike manmade capital, is finite, generally increases in value wherever location and population pressures are applied, and is the single leading cause of booms and busts in the financial cycle (there really is no such thing as a “business cycle”). Whereas capital, like buildings, can always be increased or decreased to suit market demand, land cannot. Therefore, the value of land belongs to the community that created it, to be collected via taxation, while the value of the buildings upon it are production, and belong to those who produce them.
http://www.empirepage.com/2013/3/3/we-need-a-land-value-tax-not-a-property-tax-cap
I agree with Churchill: let’s get stuck into the real shirkers
They parasitise us from above. But landowners and the Tory party’s idle rich are spared the fairest and simplest of taxes
By George Monbiot (21 January 2013)
You can learn as much about a country from its silences as you can from its obsessions. The issues politicians do not discuss are as telling and decisive as those they do. While the government’s cuts beggar the vulnerable and gut public services, it’s time to talk about the turns not taken, the opportunities foregone: the taxes which could have spared us every turn of the screw.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/21/i-agree-with-churchill-shirkers-tax
Land Value Tax, Rent Inflation and Gentrification
By Jon Geeting
The reason for the rent inflation is that the speculative value of the land is going up. Landlords see the number of amenities in the neighborhood increasing, and they start thinking they can get away with charging higher rents. Vacant lot owners see rents increasing, and they hold off on developing them into housing until rents go even higher.
http://www.keystonepolitics.com/2012/10/land-value-tax-rent-inflation-and-gentrification/
A Concrete Example of How the Land Value Tax Can Help Philadelphia
A land-value tax would reduce blight, increase available office space and housing units while pushing down prices, and encourage more people to use public transport
http://www.keystonepolitics.com/2013/01/how-the-land-value-tax-will-help-philly/
A Land Value Tax: an idea whose time has come
By Jack Chadwick
A tax on land – “the original source of all wealth” – would have a lot going for it; equally lauded by denizens of the Left and the Right. David Lloyd George, Keir Hardie, and even Winston Churchill numbered among the early advocates for land value taxation.
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2012/12/09/a-land-value-tax-an-idea-whose-time-has-come/
