patrick.net

I'm going to try to read Henry George's "Progress and Poverty" on the flight to Europe and back.

I think he's probably right that there should be exactly one tax: a tax on land value.

Patrick says

I'm going to try to read Henry George's "Progress and Poverty" on the flight to Europe and back.

I think he's probably right that there should be exactly one tax: a tax on land value.

Probably one of the best/fairest taxes to levy. If you can't make your land work for you sell it to someone who can or is willing to try. Temporary wealth tax is fine w me too. Low income flat tax if need be, that's it.

The land value tax has a number of great features:

- vacant land becomes a liability rather than a speculative vehicle
- a land value tax does not tax the building, so you can make improvements without increasing your tax bill
- does not penalize work or commerce, as income and sales taxes do
- you can't hide land
- land taxes are public record
- every physical thing ultimately comes from land, so taxes on all physical things will be built-in
- there will be no need to track incomes or sales, so much less paperwork
- everyone has to live somewhere, and so will pay the tax either directly or via their rent
- companies will pay tax in proportion to how much land they use and how valuable it is

Some comments above mystify me.

More than half of the people pay zero income tax.

Make them pay something before you talk about tax breaks for the rich.

mell says

You cannot tax unrealized gains as they could evaporate tomorrow. This is not only unconstitutional, it's as evil as some of the worst money and land grabbing by the worst commie regimes. The fact that billionaires often live off their gains has nothing to do with it. The right thing to do would be to get rid of bail-outs, which would self correct every issue associated with this topic. If you tax unrealized gains the billionaires would get hit, but the middle and upper middle and upper class would get squashed, which then would prompt the billionaires to buy their scraps for pennies on the dollar, making billionaires even richer and creating tons of additional government dependents. In fact even taxing realized gains right away while delaying realized losses to the max of 3k/year as it has been practiced forever is already unconstitutional commie bullshit. Abolish the irs NOW

It’s nothing more than a political stunt. I guarantee it won’t pass, and I’m willing to bet on it. Democrats are trying to sell this BS to get more votes from the losers who want free 💩 from others.