Talk:Georgism

Um...if land belongs to all, than how can you tax it? Researcher 16:46, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

And, wouldn't equal distribution of land go right in hand with complete egalitarianism?? Researcher 16:48, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

Who is this Henry George fellow, when was he livin', when did he come up with this idea, etc.? ħuman 19:56, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

He's a 19th century economist/politician from the US. That should probably be added. Honestly, while he was big in the day, those who follow this today are kind of wingnuts. (I remember us talking about this idea in my econ class, but I don't remember what.) Researcher 19:59, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

Actually Joseph Stiglitz and John Kenneth Galbriath are Georgians, among other post-Keynesians. Even John Locke and Adam Smith influenced the idea. Hypothetically speaking it would probably be the most efficient way of levying a progressive tax but as others have stated how you would actually value the land, wheher improved or not, is difficult. ClothCoat (talk) 23:53, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Holy cow

Secret Squirrel and I agree on something political.

Seriously...thanks Squirrel. You managed to say it better than I could. Researcher 21:09, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

Wha..we disagree? What about - I forgot. Oh yes, the pro/anti-globalization thing. Anyhow, I get a chuckle out of those who take these quaint and archaic -isms from the distant past seriously today. They're the sort of things one only knows of as footnotes in old history books, until teh Internets come along and voila, people actually start putting up websites advocating Georgism. I bet there's even a website promoting the Townsend Plan out there somewhere... Secret Squirrel 22:59, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

I don't even know what the Townsend Plan is. I wonder if anyone is still pushing Clay's "American System." The bigger question--what could we possibly link to this? I hate orphaned pages. Researcher 00:23, 5 October 2008 (EDT)

Townsend Plan - originally a proposal (circa 1933?) for an old-age pension to be paid for by a 2% national sales tax. Mathematically suspect - the numbers didn't add up, the 2% sales tax wouldn't come close to covering the proposed $200/month pension for every senior citizen. To get around this it relied on a requirement that the entire $200 be spent immediately, where it would be taxed at 2%, and claimed the plan would pump so much money into the U.S. economy it would automagically generate all the tax revenue needed to fund it, and get us out of the Depression all at the same time. (This is called something-d-o-o economics). The passage of Social Security made the Townsend Plan a moot point but it had its advocates well into the 1950s and beyond. As to what to link to Georgism...that's a stumper. Secret Squirrel 01:05, 5 October 2008 (EDT)

Perhaps a "master article" that lists defunct, obsolete, and otherwise forgotten economic ideas? ħuman 02:58, 5 October 2008 (EDT)

Influence, esp. in East Asia

While the modern influence of Georgism is admittedly minor, I'm not quite sure it's fair to reject Georgism, or Georgist theory (especially tax theory) out of hand. As mentioned, Sun Yat-Sen was a proponent of a high land value tax to supplant or minimize others; this method has been put into great effect in both Hong Kong and Taiwan.

In fact, Hong Kong's high property tax rates (15% compared to around US states running the gambit from ~12% to 6%) form the majority (last I heard) of its tax income, to the point where it remains one of the few autonomous states having no sales tax, furthermore having a maximum median income tax of 15%, whereas simply the median tax bracket of the US is around 25% (if we're using median household income of around $50,000).

Taiwan's property tax, I've heard, can run up to 40% of the net assessed value.

Now, of course, Hong Kong is helped by not having to fund things like, for instance, a military, and having to govern a relatively small area. But Hong Kong's preference of relatively high property tax (I remember reading that the Crown Government of HK intentionally released only small bits of property for sale to keep land value tax incomes high - this is most likely continued by the SAR government), a policy directly related and having been derived from Georgism, which in its most realistic embodiment simply calls for a single high value land tax to supplant all other taxes, at least proves to some extent that Georgism isn't completely unworkable; Hong Kong and Taiwan remain economic powers in the region, despite China's rise (and it should be noted that the Shanghai Stock Exchange, is still rather closely guarded by PRC authorities, whereas the HK Market fully open to foreign investors).

I realize we're trying to bust open the cranks that call for whole adherents to the tenets of Georgism, which are admittedly nutty, but I worry that in thoroughly rejecting and accepting Georgist economic theories as utter bull, and fully discarded, we're not quite being either honest nor fully informative on the state of the theory. Those who advocate Georgist theories in the US ARE cranks - not necessarily because high land value taxes as a main means of tax income is unworkable, but because the tax structure in the US and other countries are so complex, with such bureaucratic machinery behind them, that it seems to me that any such radical change would be either nigh or fully impossible.

What are others' thoughts, before I make any edits to this effect?^{— Unsigned, by: 74.68.126.134 / talk / contribs} 07:30, 25 May 2009‎ (UTC)

Major corrections needed!!

There are a number of completely wrong statements in this article.

"However, this implies that all land has a natural value by its very nature. This assertion does not fully hold in reality, however..."

This statement is absolutely wrong. Georgists do not imply all land has value. Rather, they conclude that all land that has value ought to have the entire value recaptured by the community. Land that doesn't have value would obviously not have a Land Value Tax... that is why they call it a Land Value Tax.

"...and an excessive property tax can cause deleterious effects, including not developing the property and not maintaining the property, for example."

That is true of so-called "property taxes" which fail to distinguish between land and improvements. Taxing man-made products necessarily reduces their supply, but that is not true of land. The supply of land is fixed.

In fact, by *not* taxing the unearned rent from land, one is providing a subsidy to land speculators, and when land is held out of production for purposes of speculation, this creates enormous waste in the economy. Thus, georgists actually claim that the LVT is an "incentive tax," since it removes the huge subsidy for idleness that landowners are given.^{— Unsigned, by: 76.16.103.78 / talk / contribs} 09:28, 23 September 2011‎ (UTC)

Latest BoN edits/reverts

Before this turns into a full-blown edit war: looking at the article history, the latest BoN apparently objects to the changes introduced by User:Longnameislonger, as evidenced by this diff - http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Georgism&diff=1284761&oldid=944138 --ZooGuard (talk) 16:04, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Not to be confused with

Adulation of a certain royal lizard sproglet. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 17:53, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Sure thing, buddy. Wẽãšẽĩõĩď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 00:50, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

... or (any of the several chaps nicknamed) 'Gorgeous George'82.44.143.26 (talk) 16:18, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Shit Page

Maybe I am missing something here... Is this supposed to be a joke or serious? This is a place for making ridiculous and obviously false contributions? How is that "rational"? ^{— Unsigned, by: 70.36.139.140 / talk / contribs} 00:51(UTC) 2014 Feb 4

Why don't you try explaining what's wrong with it? You've been asked multiple times. Wëäŝëïöïď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 01:00, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Better now. I'm fine with skeptical and snarky content, but it should not be clearly false. It was so false it was not even worth my time to explain. 70.36.139.140 (talk) 08:48, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Now I've been through those edits it is not a case of Georgism not being implemented to protect the rich and privileged rather it's just not practical. Valuing land is already difficult and a policy drops market value to almost zero makes that worse (it makes historical cost and market value method useless) while the improved/unimproved distinction is even more difficult to accurately measure. Attempting to tax this results in system that is incredibly complex and will require several assumptions to get any value, accurate or not. Among the principles of good taxation are simplicity and low cost of collection, applied Georgism has neither. WatcherIntheDark (talk) 09:38, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, if you use a clueless valuation system like the one that you've dreamed up there, then obviously. The sensible way to value land is by valuing its rental price (which is unaffected by the land value tax), not its purchase price. Not surprising that is what Henry George recommended. It leads to a simple system which can be run by one man and a dog. As it was in the days when most of Britain's tax was raised from land taxes. -- 174.0.108.214 (talk) 15:56, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Am I missing something?

The taxation system described here seems very similar to your average alt-tax/anti-tax tomfoolery, yet the article seems to take a promotional tone. The justification for such a tax not increasing rent seems laughably naive, even if backed up by a Smith quote. Queex_{chthonic murmurings} 12:44, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

That is because the article is poorly written. I am in the process of putting it bright. 94.192.105.51 (talk) 17:11, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm also a bit concerned about the article starting to sound as a Georgist promotional and like Queex I don't get the "it won't get shovelled onto the rent"-argument. What exactly would prevent this?

Personally, I do think there's at least something to be said for the core Georgist argument about rising land values largely being dependent on the increasing wealth of the society as a whole and/or public investments (e.g. in infrastructure), not, for the most part, on the actions of whomever happen to own a plot and that this makes for a reasonable case (in principle) for taxing away this "unearned profit". Where it all breaks down, as far as I can see, is in the implementation of such a tax, since most land value is probably not exploited through outright land sales (which would be relatively easy to estimate), but indirectly by using land as collateral for loans etc. (and how is this going to be assessed and taxed?). The above suggestion by a BoN from April, 2014, that assessing land by rental value is no more of a solid basis than market value (who decides what the "correct" rental value is - especially for land that is not actually rented out?). Similarly, the claim that (presumably in the good old days) the UK had some sort of Georgist tax system which was so great that it can simply be copied into "a simple system which can be run by one man and a dog" is beside the point at best and simply wrong at worst as indicated by a look at "the other wiki's" article on the history of taxation in the United Kingdom ("In 1692 Parliament introduced a national land tax. This tax was levied on rental values and applied both to rural and to urban land. No provision was made for re-assessing the 1692 valuations and consequently they remained in force well into the 18th century").

The reason why Georgism has made more frequent (if still sporadic) appearances in the public sphere over the last 5-6 years than for several decades is probably because it seems to offer a solution to housing bubbles. However, even if a Georgist land tax could be implemented, it would only target rising land values, not speculative bubbles in housing. And whether Georgists, who tend to favour a laissez faire approach except in the case of the land tax, would even try to "puncture" such bubbles or take preventative measures is also an open question.

I don't think that Georgism is quite on the level of "your average alt-tax/anti-tax tomfoolery" as it doesn't necessarily promise phenomenal economic benefits for everyone, nor a particularly fair (in the sense of redistributive) tax system. Also, apart from farmers who might be relatively hard hit as they own lots of land (and agricultural land can rise quite a lot in value too), a land tax is probably less regressive on average (as wealthy people are more likely to be land owners) than some of the flat tax schemes (especially the (in)famous Steve Forbes version). The closest thing to the "panacea tax"-phenomenon in Georgism is probably the rather optimistic estimates of how much the public purse would clear from a land tax as this is no more than "guess a number", complicated by the impracticalities of actually introducing and assessing such a tax, though there are probably Georgists who will claim that a land tax is a quasi-magic fix to any number of economic woes. ScepticWombat (talk) 18:07, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

The fact "land value tax" does not increase rent follows from economic theory though, and every economist (even opponents) agrees with this point. People do not choose prices on a competitive market, everyone always attempts to get the maximum value they *can* get given a certain market. The same thing happens at the demand site, where people seek the cheapest, resulting an equilibrium price. Taxes are divided amongst supply and demand depending on relative elasticity. The reason they increase prices is not because of someone's choice to pass it on, but because they decrease supply. But land supply does not change. Basically, if land owners can increase rents according to the market, they would already do so. Also, note that farmers will not be disadvantaged because farming land value is many, many times smaller than urban land value. Besides, despite land having a continuous cost, land can be bought very cheaply and taxes on labour and capital are removed. 78.23.18.229 (talk) 23:11, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Very negative

This article is too negative towards Georgism.94.192.105.51 (talk) 17:14, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Not particularly. Given that the core tenet of a land tax hasn't demonstrated any of its supposed benefits in practice, there's no reason to wax lyrical or go all misty eyed over how it's supposed to work. So please don't turn the article into a recruitment poster for Georgism. ScepticWombat (talk) 18:09, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

This is a subject you know nothing about. LVT has 150+ years of good empirical evidence. 71.237.193.148 (talk) 09:40, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Then I assume you can provide some kind of citation to that effect? ScepticWombat (talk) 09:55, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Reverting Edits

When people reverts an edit without any mention of why, they should be ignored, not sided with.94.192.105.51 (talk) 17:22, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Largely blanking the article and making a bunch of opinions how it should operate (and never has) is not good by community standards and all. Feel free to discuss here. -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 17:24, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Those parts were overly sympathetic to Georgism, based on what I have seen as standard practice on RW. However, you are absolutely wrong that there is a lack of empirical evidence for LVT.71.237.193.148 (talk) 09:42, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Again, citation, please. ScepticWombat (talk) 09:56, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

http://www.cooperative-individualism.org/cord-steven_evidence-for-taxing-land-values-2010.htm seems to come up a few times Macstarna (talk) 23:01, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

A page to be watched for partisan PR, but not that often

I've noticed that this page seems to attract some BoNs of what appears to be a decidedly pro-Georgist bend (as this talk page also illustrates). I'd therefore suggest that at least once or twice a year any editor who happens across this page check the edit history and see if some mopping up is required. I'd not advocate protecting the page, because some of the BoNs have added much needed sources, but check the language involved (e.g. citing "economists" in general when the sources are clearly written by Georgist or libertarian economists). I think the content of the article is perhaps still a bit too congratulary/promotional at the moment so any improvement is welcome. ScepticWombat (talk) 10:45, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Nothing about monopoly

The game of monopoly was created to demonstrate the benefits of Georgism over typical capitalism. The Georgist ruleset is not very well known any more. Here's a link. —Kazitor, ^pending 06:57, 16 March 2018 (UTC)