Man I wanted to write about georgism (see my comment on the parent's post where I talk about land parasites)
I am such a big georgist. Seriously, I might genuinely cry seeing how georgism isn't being implemented.
it is one of the most superior policy systems but the parasites own so much that we don't even discuss about it
I was talking to my friend about georgism when he asked me if I was a capitalist/communist..
Basically in the end he just said, that he doesn't know about economics... so he doesn't know and they wanted to change the topic
I feel like this might be a major hurdle where people think that economics is some huge mumbo jumbo when I feel like georgism and (index funds?) are two things that almost everyone should know given how simple they are.
Georgism is land communism. The 'community' or whoever is collecting the taxes (LVT) owns all land and rents it out. Ideal LVT puts the market value of all land at $0 after tax liabilities, so even if you could 'own' land under Georgism it would largely be economically meaningless.
It's straight up marxism hidden as a capitalist market measure. Vacant land portion of property taxes are essentially georgism-light where the land capital is mostly under a capitalist model but with a % owned by the community (or more likely, a government that commonly works against community interests) and rented out in the form of property tax (in georgism the % is 100).
But I think you need to make a pretty clear distinction between "land" communism and, well, communism. Communism is based on public ownership of the means of production: if you own a steel factory, you don't really "own" a steel factory, the people own the factory and the state appoints a bureaucrat or manager to run it. You can receive no profit from it, you can't sell it, really you have no rights to it other than the state's promise to let you manage it (and whatever they pay you for that).
Georgism explicitly still admits private property: if you own a steel factory, you actually do own a steel factory, you can make decisions about the management of that factory, you can sell it, etc. In many ways it's more capitalist than today's capitalism, because single-tax Georgism also states that there should be no income or capital gains tax, and so you receive 100% of the profits from building that factory. You just have to pay a tax to the state for the land that the factory sits on, set in proportion to what others would be willing to rent the land for.
The distinction is pretty key, because it gets at the heart of human agency and incentives. Georgism does not admit private ownership of the land because the land was here before any humans were; no human suddenly built the land, and no human can destroy it, they can only manage its use. Likewise for other common goods (like pollution, the electromagnetic spectrum, natural resources, etc.) which Georgism seeks to manage. Georgism does admit private property, because when you construct a machine or a factory or invent a new process, that came out of your own efforts. It could be summed up as "private persons own what they build or buy, the public owns what was here before".
Georgism explicitly rejects Marx's class-based analysis and Marx's narrative of zero-sum class conflict. What symptoms Marx attributes to class conflict, George attributes to rent-seeking, something which both Georgists and capitalists agree is a corruption of capitalism, rather than an inherent element. Whereas Marxists conflate economic rent and return on capital - an economically unjustifiable leap in logic.
Marxism explicitly rejects classical liberal principles such as the rule of law, limited government, free markets, and individual rights, Georgism not only functions within those principles, but requires them.
Marxism is incompatible with individual rights due to its hostile position on private property and its insistence that all means of production be collective property. The most fundamental means of production of them all is an individual's labor. Without which, no amount of land would produce a farm, a mine, a house, or a city. And then we wonder why Marxist regimes consistently run slave labor camps.
Henry George argues that society only has the right to lay claim to economic goods produced by society, rather than an individual. Marxism recognizes no such distinction.
Georgism is fully defensible using classical economics and has been repeatedly endorsed by both classical and modern economists. Marxism is at best heterodox economics and at worst, pseudoscience.
Georgism could be implemented tomorrow if sufficient political will existed. Marxism requires a violent overthrow of the state.
Henry George himself rejected Marxism, famously predicting that if it was ever tried, the inevitable result would be a dictatorship. Unlike Marx's predictions, that prediction of George's has a 100% validation rate. And he made that prediction while Marx was still alive.
Economists from Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Milton Friedman and Joseph Stiglitz have observed that a public levy on land value (Georgism/LVT) does not cause economic inefficiency, unlike other taxes.
Suffices to say, you are not sharing a grounded opinion on Georgism.
Tariffs also make sense, since all that stuff is going through and declared to customs anyway, although it might be an economically inferior mechanism.
Either way the income tax is one of the most dystopian ways to collect tax as it pretty much relies on mass surveillance of domestic activities to be implemented fairly or effectively.
Neoclassical economics recognizes, under the standard macro model, that labor taxation is second best. The first-best is capital taxation, once and for all time, but due to time inconsistency (nothing prevents a government from taxing again in the future) it fails to be useful outside of theory. There is some squishiness once you consider overlapping generations model, arguably more realistic than infinitely lived agents (which I always felt represent companies or familial dynasties more than real people).
Land value taxation is different because there is no meaningful growth or loss of the capital stock.
> Neoclassical economics recognizes, under the standard macro model, that labor taxation is second best. The first-best is capital taxation, once and for all time
Tariffs (or, more generically, consumption taxes) are effectively both. If something is sold, the money is going to some combination of labor and capital, and then the tax is paid either way. Tariffs in particular also create a preference for domestic production, which increases domestic labor demand at the cost of lower economic efficiency and higher prices, which is the primary thing that makes them dumb if you're not a fan of taking that trade off.
In theory the primary disadvantage to consumption taxes is that unless you want to track all of everyone's consumption, it's hard to apply a progressive rate structure. But in practice there is a way to do that -- provide a universal tax credit in a fixed amount. Then everyone pays a uniform marginal rate, lower income people receive e.g. a $10,000 credit and pay $5000 in taxes (which also obviates the need for $5000 in social assistance programs), and middle and upper income people get the same $10,000 credit but pay more in tax.
Man I wanted to write about georgism (see my comment on the parent's post where I talk about land parasites)
I am such a big georgist. Seriously, I might genuinely cry seeing how georgism isn't being implemented. it is one of the most superior policy systems but the parasites own so much that we don't even discuss about it
I was talking to my friend about georgism when he asked me if I was a capitalist/communist.. Basically in the end he just said, that he doesn't know about economics... so he doesn't know and they wanted to change the topic I feel like this might be a major hurdle where people think that economics is some huge mumbo jumbo when I feel like georgism and (index funds?) are two things that almost everyone should know given how simple they are.
Georgism is land communism. The 'community' or whoever is collecting the taxes (LVT) owns all land and rents it out. Ideal LVT puts the market value of all land at $0 after tax liabilities, so even if you could 'own' land under Georgism it would largely be economically meaningless.
It's straight up marxism hidden as a capitalist market measure. Vacant land portion of property taxes are essentially georgism-light where the land capital is mostly under a capitalist model but with a % owned by the community (or more likely, a government that commonly works against community interests) and rented out in the form of property tax (in georgism the % is 100).
"Land communism" isn't a bad way to put it.
But I think you need to make a pretty clear distinction between "land" communism and, well, communism. Communism is based on public ownership of the means of production: if you own a steel factory, you don't really "own" a steel factory, the people own the factory and the state appoints a bureaucrat or manager to run it. You can receive no profit from it, you can't sell it, really you have no rights to it other than the state's promise to let you manage it (and whatever they pay you for that).
Georgism explicitly still admits private property: if you own a steel factory, you actually do own a steel factory, you can make decisions about the management of that factory, you can sell it, etc. In many ways it's more capitalist than today's capitalism, because single-tax Georgism also states that there should be no income or capital gains tax, and so you receive 100% of the profits from building that factory. You just have to pay a tax to the state for the land that the factory sits on, set in proportion to what others would be willing to rent the land for.
The distinction is pretty key, because it gets at the heart of human agency and incentives. Georgism does not admit private ownership of the land because the land was here before any humans were; no human suddenly built the land, and no human can destroy it, they can only manage its use. Likewise for other common goods (like pollution, the electromagnetic spectrum, natural resources, etc.) which Georgism seeks to manage. Georgism does admit private property, because when you construct a machine or a factory or invent a new process, that came out of your own efforts. It could be summed up as "private persons own what they build or buy, the public owns what was here before".
Georgism explicitly rejects Marx's class-based analysis and Marx's narrative of zero-sum class conflict. What symptoms Marx attributes to class conflict, George attributes to rent-seeking, something which both Georgists and capitalists agree is a corruption of capitalism, rather than an inherent element. Whereas Marxists conflate economic rent and return on capital - an economically unjustifiable leap in logic.
Marxism explicitly rejects classical liberal principles such as the rule of law, limited government, free markets, and individual rights, Georgism not only functions within those principles, but requires them.
Marxism is incompatible with individual rights due to its hostile position on private property and its insistence that all means of production be collective property. The most fundamental means of production of them all is an individual's labor. Without which, no amount of land would produce a farm, a mine, a house, or a city. And then we wonder why Marxist regimes consistently run slave labor camps.
Henry George argues that society only has the right to lay claim to economic goods produced by society, rather than an individual. Marxism recognizes no such distinction.
Georgism is fully defensible using classical economics and has been repeatedly endorsed by both classical and modern economists. Marxism is at best heterodox economics and at worst, pseudoscience.
Georgism could be implemented tomorrow if sufficient political will existed. Marxism requires a violent overthrow of the state.
Henry George himself rejected Marxism, famously predicting that if it was ever tried, the inevitable result would be a dictatorship. Unlike Marx's predictions, that prediction of George's has a 100% validation rate. And he made that prediction while Marx was still alive.
Economists from Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Milton Friedman and Joseph Stiglitz have observed that a public levy on land value (Georgism/LVT) does not cause economic inefficiency, unlike other taxes.
Suffices to say, you are not sharing a grounded opinion on Georgism.
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Tariffs also make sense, since all that stuff is going through and declared to customs anyway, although it might be an economically inferior mechanism.
Either way the income tax is one of the most dystopian ways to collect tax as it pretty much relies on mass surveillance of domestic activities to be implemented fairly or effectively.
Neoclassical economics recognizes, under the standard macro model, that labor taxation is second best. The first-best is capital taxation, once and for all time, but due to time inconsistency (nothing prevents a government from taxing again in the future) it fails to be useful outside of theory. There is some squishiness once you consider overlapping generations model, arguably more realistic than infinitely lived agents (which I always felt represent companies or familial dynasties more than real people).
Land value taxation is different because there is no meaningful growth or loss of the capital stock.
> Neoclassical economics recognizes, under the standard macro model, that labor taxation is second best. The first-best is capital taxation, once and for all time
Tariffs (or, more generically, consumption taxes) are effectively both. If something is sold, the money is going to some combination of labor and capital, and then the tax is paid either way. Tariffs in particular also create a preference for domestic production, which increases domestic labor demand at the cost of lower economic efficiency and higher prices, which is the primary thing that makes them dumb if you're not a fan of taking that trade off.
In theory the primary disadvantage to consumption taxes is that unless you want to track all of everyone's consumption, it's hard to apply a progressive rate structure. But in practice there is a way to do that -- provide a universal tax credit in a fixed amount. Then everyone pays a uniform marginal rate, lower income people receive e.g. a $10,000 credit and pay $5000 in taxes (which also obviates the need for $5000 in social assistance programs), and middle and upper income people get the same $10,000 credit but pay more in tax.
I'm talking about from a practical perspective including respecting domestic privacy, not theoretical bests.
It is difficult to determine the value of a particular piece of land, particularly if it hasn't been sold for a long time and won't anytime soon.
International trade can much easier be priced, and there is no (additional) privacy concern because it all has to be declared anyway.
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