I think one of the most important things you should mention in that future video are the concepts of ATCOR (all taxes come out of rent) and EBCOR (excess burden comes out of rent), analyzed by the georgist economist Mason Gaffney and others. If true, these principles prove that, on the very long run, an economy which is *only* taxed according to the full economic rent from locations (land) and natural resources, produces the most amount of revenue for the government compared to any other taxation system. This theoretically refutes the criticism of "LVT, pollution taxes and severance taxes alone not producing enough revenue" on the long run.
Other important thing is the *Henry George's theorem* analyzed by Joseph Stiglitz. And finally you can also mention "gameofrent" created by Lars Doucet, which is a great site for new georgists. EDIT: RU-vid keeps hiding this second comment, no matter how I formulate and rewrite it.
Ever since I learned about georgism I've got this eerie feeling that it is no coincidence that this theory is so unknown to the public, almost never talked about and not taught in schools…. There isn’t a single person in power that doesn’t own a lot of land. Correct me if I'm wrong here.
Saw another comment that said some have argued rich people have been filling economic education centers with anti-georgists for decades now for this exact reason
This mostly harms the poor. Imagine getting kicked out of your house for not paying land taxes that are made higher by something like this. (Sorry can't reply, OP cowardly blocked me from replying)
@@yakovbrod9992Imagine not being able to afford a house because all the land is being bought by the rich and then having to rent from the rich and then they keep raising the price. So you can't afford it and get kicked out!
Yep. Communism, socialism, fascism, white nationalism, etc. These are all controlled opposition. Those in power make no effort to suppress them because they aren't a threat. When Henry George died, his funeral procession through Manhattan was 200,000 people. The landlord class was terrified, and there was a concerted effort to suppress Georgism for this very reason.
This quote is on the back of George’s headstone in New York. “The truth that I have tried to make clear will not find easy acceptance. If that could be, it would have been accepted long ago. If that could be, it would never have been obscured. But it will find friends - those who will toil for it; suffer for it; if need be, die for it. This is the power of Truth.” -Henry George, Progress and Poverty
@@NeotenicoIt's hard to tell with people like him, but sometimes the idea takes over their ego. It's not about self glorification, it's about the idea he holds so dear that his own ego is invested in the idea rather than himself, to the point that it's on his tombstone. The problem is the language those sorts of people use is almost the same who want to self glorify through the fame of their ideas, so they're hard to tell apart.
@@thetaomega7816best bet for this working is the rich fighting themselves 🤣 some of them will want lower taxes while others will “but not like this” and so the battle begins.
India has this exact system for several decades (Except the Citizen Dividend). It's the first time I've realised that not all countries have it. (In India, a land is valued by the local government based on a variety of different criterias. Then that value is compared with the rent earned on the property. The higher of the two is taxed, meaning if rents rise, then the tax rises as well )
From what I've read, LVT is different from the India taxation system because 1. LVT is levied against all land, not only developed land, 2. the property assessment and comparison to rent includes the value/rent of the structure, not of just the land. Seek out the GeorgismIndia subreddit for more info.
Overall it's a good idea, but I do have some further questions: 1) Your framing of a "citizens dividend" seemed confusing, because the money from a land tax (especially if it replaces other taxes) would just go to the government to give more to the services the government already provides. You say "if there's any left", but there won't be any left because public services can always have bigger budgets. It seems like just UBI (universal basic income) which is a different topic and not necessary for Georgism. 2) It's not clear how an idea from the 19th century would be adapted to the modern economy, particularly tech companies like Amazon, which don't use that much land (server farms, but they're not that big relative to the company size) but they have immense wealth and value that comes not from themselves but from people using their platforms. Most products on Amazon (which is what the value of Amazon is) are from other companies or people, facebook posts are from common people. So basically the value is created by (unpaid) people not the actual company which is just hosting a platform for people to communicate. So in some ways tech companies are able to dodge this tax because they aren't technically making any value from the land they own they don't need to pay taxes on it.
I suggest that you read the The Annotated Works of Henry George Volume I: Our Land and Land Policy and Other Works (2015) and Volume II: Progress and Poverty (2017), published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. They include the economic research done in the 21st century. And you can check up on Singapore's and Alsaka's approach as case studies. All thst stuff is online. Sadly though, your analogy is false. In Common Law jurisdictions, Land law is structured around Tenure. In the UK and US, the State owns the land, but then provides different forms of tenure that can be owned, sold, or transferred. The tenure dictates your rights in terms of whst you can do on the land you have tenure of. So Freeholders have the least restrictions in perpetuity. Their tenure can be used, occupied, inherited, sold, leased, or transferred freely within the limitations outlined by Freehold tenure in law. Leaseholders have a sub-tenure allowing occupation and use of land, subject to the conditions of the lease contract between them and the Freeholder of the land. It is usually delimited in time, the leaseholder must pay an annual ground rent, or vacate the land. This tenure can only be sold, subject to the terms of the lease. However, as only the State has eminent domain over all land, it can override freehold and leasehold tenure as outlined in law. So all land is a platform owned outright by the State. Freehold tenure is the nearest tenure to unlimited ownership, but it can be subject to limitations in law imposed. So if Google built their HQ in land they bought freehold, they couldn't stop the State flying planes over it, unless there was a law excluding it. Likewise, if oil, or some other precious commodity was found underneath it, the State retains the right to take the land, but must compensate Google for doing so. So Land is already a platform, where it is pay to play. But Georgist land taxes do not rely on soley on ownership. They can be applied to occupation also, because you derive an economic benefit from occupying or owning land. And that economic benefit can be taxed. Leashold properties allow occupation and use of land, and has an economic value, which can be taxed. So, land banking - developers sitting on land until the price goes up - would stop immediately if the taxes made it unprofitable. If the frerholder leased the land, both the leaseholder and the freeholder derive an economic benefit, and both can be taxed. So, your analogy is false, because the structure of Land Law already treats land as a platform, where occupation or use provides an economic benefit.
Re: 2) You're telling me land with a data center worth millions of dollars and paid security on top isn't worth much? And Amazon and other tech companies happen to rent computer services to users as well. Web hosting, server hosting, processing for cloud applications... Companies will even run digital services at a loss if it benefits them (RU-vid, Uber)
Two things to note 1. While you can lower taxes (or not increase them for certain new programs) you'll still need all of them given how much the government spends on services, there's no way a land value tax can pay for that in a modern society. In Denmark it's used and we still have all the usual taxes 2. While Alaska doesn't have state taxes they are part of a country that has taxes and the federal government provides money for infrastructure and either fully or partially pays for certain services (like Medicaid which provides healthcare for low-income and handicapped people which paid for jointly by the federal government and the state government with 90% being paid by the federal government in states that expanded Medicaid like Alaska did. They also give money to public schools, universities, and police and of course provides defence)
Alaska does, and I'm sure other georgist places have too. But there would need to be more transparency to implement this in a place with more than 3 people.
Brit, i have a question for you How to calculate value of the land, im sitting on yt and chat gpt for if i remember 3 days and i cannot understand. Dont miss understand me, idea is great (it just works), but i really cant see how to know: how the hell calculate this? (if you do not rent but own a house)
As if our governments were going to spend the tax revenue efficiently anyway 😅. The purpose of modern tax is to control the money supply of fiat currency and prevent runaway inflation by people having too many dollars to spend.
@@VitaeLibra Yes it does but the rate is far too low to help much today, none the less Georgism has a strong legacy. The last great opportunity was in the 1957-60 coalition with the Georgist justice party. Estonia had a decent rate LVT since leaving the USSR which helped them grow a lot, but they failed to reassess so the effective rate fell. They finally reassessed last year but because of the shock that would cause to some they lowered the rates, hopefully they move to yearly assessments and raise the rate again.
@@teamgeist3328 does population have anything to do with viability? It's a tax after all and its scalability is endless (or until your population decrease, but then it's scalable until you hit zero!).
Georgism is incredibly based, but sadly politically extremely difficult - not because it would hurt lots of ordinary people (just the opposite), but because even now, 12000 years after the invention of agriculture in what we think of as a knowledge economy, the correlation between land ownership and political power remains incredibly strong.
@@dhidhi1000 vote for whom? point to a candidate with a land value tax as one of the points in their campaign, i dare you. There might be some, but not many. Not even close. Every country has a libertarian faction, a communist faction, seldom any has a georgist faction. It's not as simple as "vote properly" when there's no one to vote for. Unless you run yourself, which not many are cut out for even among the total population, much less people who support georgism. You'd be lucky to find enough people to run a campaign, not to even mention the amount of personnel required for a whole political movement.
As an Alaskan (and an aspiring urbanist), it was a huge surprise to see the PFD mentioned in a video on LVT! The idea of replacing property taxes in some capacity with LVT has been floated a few times in recent years, most notably by the Organization Strong Towns. This video will be a fantastic resource for groups in Alaska looking to further improve state policy. Hats off to you, friend!
BS. The rich are not stopping anyone. The money tax made is scamming you and making you think you need to tax everything. Also those taxes are never used for things that help society.
I've been a big fan of Georgism ever since I read/saw some content about it a couple years back. As your video suggests, George and his theories were immensely popular in the 19th century (his treatise _Progress and Poverty_ outsold every other book ever written except for the Bible in the 1890s), yet in the modern day and age, there are very few people who have even heard of the man. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think fading into complete obscurity is an incredibly curious fate for an economic school of thought that quite literally dominated the Western world for a time. We learn about Adam Smith ad nauseum, after all, and he died nearly 50 years before Henry George was born. There is most certainly a vested interest of the landed elites to suppress public knowledge of his writings. Some have argued that many of these elites founded schools of business and filled the economics departments with anti-Georgists for the express purpose of "recasting" Neo-classical economic doctrine to downplay the importance of land. Thankfully, the internet is making it easier to supplement what we learn about political economy in our formal educations. I'm very hopeful that videos such as this gain significant traction and make the idea more attractive, especially as a way to bridge the gaps in the increasingly polarized political landscape we see today. Kudos for a well-composed video explaining the system, arguing for its consideration, and using your platform to open eyes to alternate systems of economics that aren't just the overplayed "neo-liberal capitalism vs. Marx-inspired socialism/communism."
And George took inspiration from classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo (as well as from early socialist thinkers like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Ferdinand Lassalle), who also recognised that land was different from capital and that land ownership wasn't contributing to society and thus shouldn't be profitable, but they hadn't quite figured out how to effectively deal with it.
It is kinda sad that it seems to only be about either raising or lowering existing taxes today. Nobody is proposing any types of new taxes such as LVT. I do, as you do, hope that videos such as these will start to gain traction and perhaps the topic will start to actually become more of a debate that people knows about. I’m sure that a lot of people would like the idea of LVT, but the problem being that they just unaware, it’s not like the news or political parties often bring up the idea
There are a few reasons why Georgism is virtually unknown outside of a small community of people who study economics and political economy. For one thing, just as the Single Tax Movement, as it was known in the early 1900s, was on the verge of general acceptance, World War I happened, followed by the global influenza pandemic, followed very quickly by the boom years of the 1920, and then the Great Depression and World War II. The second, more insidious factor is that in those years, there was a well-funded, concerted effort to remove any mention of Henry George and his ideas from the university Economics curricula, a fact which has been well-documented by the late American professor of Economics Mason Gaffney, in his 1994 book, "The Corruption of Economics", co-authored with British economist Fred Harrison and American economics professor Kris Feder.
@@gcvrsa Most of what I was alluding to in my second paragraph was borrowed from a synopsis of Gaffney's essay _The Stratagem Against Henry George_ . Haven't gotten the chance to read the essay itself so I wanted to keep my language theoretical and avoid any decisive statements. I've got the PDF bookmarked though and certainly plan to read through it soon. I'll be sure to look into the book you cited as well!
Only smart people will ever learn about Georgism, people who actively use their time to improve themselves. The vast majority of people just watch TikTok dance videos, or are working so hard they don't have the time to watch videos on Georgism. There needs to be a large public figure, most likely a politician, who can teach the their people about Georgism and implement it
Your video on this 4 years ago literally spawned my academic career; I read Progress and Poverty days afterward cause I was so convinced. Now I am starting my masters in political economy focused on land policy. You are a Georgist hero, I think. I have been reading this book called Land Value Taxation Around the World by Robert Andelson, which explores all the attempted implementations throughout the world up until 2000, essentially no one ever took it far enough, even though it was working.
He has been in austria for years. he can’t not only leave the country but also the city itself. He’s under “house arrest”, kinda…. so him living in london is just blatantly false. How do i know this? I am ukrainian, and i know several people who personally know him.
Fun fact! At the start of the game 'eve online,' speculators bought factories- an asset limited in number- and just left them to rot hoping they would gain in value. As a result, the devs implemented an LVT for those factories based on the value that they could potentially create, and sure enough those factories soon began to be of use as they were forced to produce things with them or to sell them off to someone who would.
Another argument in favor: the government has an incentive on improving infrastructure since that would increase the land value and thus the government revenue
Question: How do we prevent the government from spending excess tax revenue on projects done on a higher budget than is realistic by someone with personal connections to politicians so they can take the money for themselves? In other words, what guarantees the excess money won't be stolen by corrupt officials, therefore eliminating the dividend?
@@mach2223 Ultimately this is more of a "patch the grant loophole" problem than inherent to the tax itself. Ethics boards are a solution that is wierdly resilient against corruptions, to the point that corrupt officials who have tried to implement one for vanities sake ended up being the first target of their own board. turns out people who job hunt for "please help us find corruption in the government" REALLY dislike the idea of their taxes being misspent. friendlyjordies has a good example in one of his videos, though i cant point you to the specific one at the moment. Im also glad that most people are starting to realize the IRS and DMV are just absurdly underfunded for very clearly corrupt reasons, and i bet that most people would love the IRS to have one number they have to keep track of per plot of land rather than 20 for every little person and thing that politicians decided needed to be charged for that week, which would reduce the budget that those bureaus need to run efficiently.
The hilarious irony of capital taxation. Rent is a reward for the efficient allocation of land. If capturing part of this ground rent means an increase in the efficiency of land use, it is collected in addition to a welfare gain, rather than bearing deadweight loss. And yet, we endlessly seek new ways to tax the things that we, ourselves, make, creating an opportunity cost to public expenditure.
The entire video follows from this: "You deserve to fully own the fruits of your labour. No one deserves to fully own the fruits of no one's labour, i.e., land."
It really blew my mind when I first learned about it. Looking at my city where property values have practically tripled since I was a kid - it's all land value! All those million dollar homes people are sitting on? That is literally the money right there that we should have in our economy, that's our higher wages, our public services, infrastructure, and lower rents locked away on someone's asset sheet. Tax the land!
I just watched that Down the Rabbit Hole video about EVE. They had the same problem in that game when speculators bought up all the factories that produced ships because they expected to make money in the future. The response was to tax all factories for simply existing. This forced speculators to sell the factories to those that would utilize them or start utilizing it themselves. Housing has become the literal worst issue for first worlds. It’s gonna cause either a true collapse or a worldwide, French style riot if it isn’t addressed. Like why the fuck am I gonna pay $1500 for a single bedroom when that’s literally a mortgage???
A Libertarian friend of mine told me for ages that I needed to look into the Land Value Tax. We have quite different political philosophies, so I was shocked when I realized how reasonable it actually is.
@@potato1341 I don't disagree. But considering he's been trying to convince me that taxation is theft and how roads should be privatized for a decade, I didn't expect much.
@@factandsuspicionpodcast2727 oh dear. I wouldn't want to imagine a world with toll booths on every street to make sure the road provider got their fair share.
@@factandsuspicionpodcast2727 I can understand why hardcore anti-taxers would like it. LVT isn't really a tax, but a rent, imposed by property owners onto property users. If someone thinks individual land plot owners are due their rent in the existing system, it should be easy to convince them that land _shareholders_ would be due their _dividends._ Imagine all the problems that would occur if shareholders in a business didn't own abstract shares, but specific pieces of the business. Like maybe one person owns the HR department and another person owns accounting, one person owns the furniture and another owns the computers. That's the crazy system we have with land.
It's so depressing living in a world with the knowledge that life could be almost like a utopia for everyone yet the greed and corruption of the 0.1% is so strong that the majority lives and dies in a world so unjust
If only we lived in some sort of democracy where we can decide our representatives! In the US lots of these decisions are made at the local level, and local politicians typically aren't multimillionaire with vast swaths of land. I can't speak for other countries.
@@TheFireGiveryeah, if only! I wonder why we don't just vote for economic democracy then. Oh right it's never going onto the ballot. Party bureaucracy still affects local politics and if you think independents are the answer... I'm sorry?
@@bgiv2010in the US, independents really ARE the answer. The stigma around 3rd parties is heavily propagated in the interest of those two evils that we try to find the lesser of every 4 years. Because narrowing it down to a 50/50 really benefits them and no one else
This is the best explanation of Georgism to date. On a side note, your outro reminds me of the lyrics of Solidarity Forever: It is we who plowed the prairies, built the cities where they trade Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
I have never heard of this song, but thank you for the recommendation. I will look it up. In comparison, it reminds me of some lyrics by a man called Eric Peterson. “I will never understand why they all only use those hands To build a stead that will always stand in old time country But settle for white rooms and hollow doors, paper ceilings, padded floors. Luxury boxes where you're stored in what was country..”
@@numerum_bestia And that reminds me of a Tom Paxton classic: "Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, Little boxes on the hillside And they all look just the same...."
This would be so hard to put in place. Who would determine the value of that land vs the property ? We have a land value tax (taxe foncière) in France which adjust annually based on the CPI, but since the 70s, home prices have gone up about 500% in Paris, versus a c.30% CPI. Would that mean a 470% land value tax increase ? No, because Parisian flats are way more moderns and buildings well maintained versus what we had in the past. Furthermore, Haussmanian buildings (ie old classic Parisian ones) are worth more than those built in the 70s because they are prettier and in lower supply (we don’t build them anymore). Would this be included in the LVT or not ? Because you can extract value from the historical building by it just existing and not create anything. All you have to do is not let it collapse. Basically, there’d just be tons of loopholes to go through…
Loopholess system of it would go like this: we check the amount of money generated in the 1km wide square around the place of this building in taxes (tax per sale, tax per rent), we get the value generated by everybody around that place, and next, we count the amount of money to be taxed each year based on the generated wealth around that piece of land. If the land do not generate any money, there will be base tax for it, low, but rising as the amount of land you have. Period. The more money you generate, the more tax you get. It would be appliable for every piece of land. If you would want to get tax lowered, because the building is of some kind cultural or historical significance and goverment forbids its destruction, it would be possible, but at the same time the building would need to be firstly in pristine shape, and after that it would need to be open for tourists, that would love to see it. The system would be very strongly based on simple excel spreadsheets, and those would be deadly for any land hoarders. After getting this law in motion, huge amount of wealthy people would try to sell their properties as fast as possible to avoid getting taxed extremely high. Huge amount of land and properties for sale means high competition, and this means price sinking to the bottom in many places, just to get rid of the excessive space. Will it be enforced in Great Britain? Without revolution, I don't think so. British nobility, multibilionaires and politicians would do anything to avoid passing this law. It would mean huge loss of their wealth. They do not like the thought giving back their land, passed across dozens of generations since medieval times to the peasants XD This is lost cause XD
The only loophole for getting land in the city taxed for no-price, would be by freezing all movement in neighbourhood. I did not tell about scan of land around sized 1000 x 1000 meters by accident - it means, that no matter how much land you will get around the city, this 1km border around your land will also become bigger in terms of square meters, getting more and more business owners, shops, banks and landlords around into accounting. This system would require registering every cash register to the adress and piece of land, that is operating on, every business to the land that is operating on, and if the business has multiple patches of land, it would mean multiple registers. It's that simple and that extremely harmfull for every land hoarder XD
@@danielmichalski94 You’re just ignoring a simple fact, which is that it’s extremely hard to value the land itself. Let’s say three people selle their homes: -one sells a ground floor 50m2 home for 100,000€ -one sells a 150m2 house with a large garden in a relatively urban area for 500,000€ -one sells a last floor 100m2 flat for 300,000€ In such a situation with diverging prices based on the type of real estate that is bought, how do you value the land ? The easiest way would be to take the cheapest and value from there, because otherwise, if you took the house you could end up with a land value > house price for the small ground floor apartment. If you do that, then the value of all properties with « special features » will skyrocket because you’ll be able to consider that it’s the features of the property and not the land itself that is worth the money. Also, ironically this LVT will lead to more gentrification. Take my Paris example where the taxe foncière went up say 100% less than inflation (for argument’s sake). If tomorrow its fiscal base were adjusted, then any lower/middle class that saved enough to buy a property in Paris will be taxed significantly more on capital that it can’t use (can’t rent it since he lives in it), while his income is unchanged. This tax would effectively become a nice way to make wealthy areas even more of a ghetto for the wealthy, while the poor would all buy (if they can) in the same areas with low land value.
@@danielmichalski94 Also your tourist is argument is funny to me. Living in Paris, this would mean that 3/4 of the city’s houses would be open to tourists. Same thing in Rome or any other beautiful historical city. And again, this just means that a middle class family could no longer live in historical buildings because they wouldn’t have the cash for either the LVT or the refurbishment costs
@@Toini01 And here, I need to add only two things. Firstly - you misunderstood one thing. The height of tax in my idea will not be based on price of land, but on the amount of money generated on this land and around it. Secondly - I need to set up simulation for it to check, if it would work, abuse it a little. Without it I cannot predict what would happen.
Brilliant work, it's such a shame that this idea isn't mainstream anymore (used to be in before WW2). Hopefully your work contributes in opening peoples eyes :)
People work for their income, so it makes sense why people consider the income tax unfair. However, if you don't do anything as a land owner, it makes sense why you should be footing the bill. If you reward production and penalize non-production, naturally, there'll be more production and thus more resources and new products to go around. Land tax > Income Tax.
Well, i m convinced. But i have one question, and maybe cause i am simply uninformed, but how do we decide the value of the land? Specifically outside of the city? Specially farmers that may own alot of land and higly productive but do not make that much revenue at all.
i dont think anyone really has a solid or perfect method to do this since georgism isnt really talked about much. from what i see every unit of land should be worth the same as another no matter is location or surroundings and tax would be calculated based on the area you own rather than its current value. But like you said that puts unfair tax on farmers who own a lot of land without making much money (especially in the UK). Im assuming if a system were to ever be put in place, farmers would get an exemption or tax cut similar to now. This means farmers would get to keep providing and land hogs would be forced to either sell there land or have something developed on it to make money which would grow rural places without harming people who actually contribute.
@@HS-ig4lyuh, how the video said, even if definitely don't have a perfect way to calculate, it's probably defined by the demand of the land, for example in a city have much more demand per less land, which will increase the tax, which will obligate de land owners to densify and being more productive to compensate to ""lose"" land, on the contrary, is case of interior regions.
jREG doesn’t read anything he talks about, man is just all about memes. Wouldn’t follow any advice from him on politics, but I got to admit, the Quebec wall was a good idea.
jREG is kinda right, Georgism got unirronicly railed harder than marxism did in america. Why? Because american efforts to get rid of Marxism failed, because what they did to geroge succesed, the elite completly wiped him out of economics, couldnt do that with marx
@@elevatedmeance6807 Exactly, George's book was the top best-selling book after the Bible. It was more popular than both Adam Smith and Karl Marx. That's why it was praised by so many famous people from MLK to Einstein to Roosevelt. And now no-one's heard of Progress And Poverty.
An economic system at its core, is a method to distribute resources efficiently and effectively, thus if idle resources are common, than the economic system had fail at its job, all these idle land, idle workers, idle capital, is a sign that ours economic system have failed us.
Land tax has many advantages, but one thing that is almost always ignored in these videos is how to fairly appraise it's value. It's very easy to implement flat land tax (each square meter in the borough is taxed the same), and it's reasonably easy to tax the complete value of the improved land by tracking it's past selling price and maybe a threat of forced buyout if there is a suspicion of undervaluation. But how do you separate the value of land from the value of the improvements? Also the video goes a bit too far into fantasy land painting an overly positive picture of the side effects, ignoring the law of supply and demand in determining the prices of rents and services.
Yeah, in the UK, the amount of council tax you pay is still linked to the price of your house for 1991. A revaluation of all houses all the time forever comes with serious drawbacks. It also doesn’t account for the issues in gentrification that such a system would entail. I admire the authors work but the lack of any meaningful evidence of disadvantages is disingenuous.
You suffered under authoritarian state capitalism :p Georgism would qualify as social democracy, the form of capitalism that aims to reform the system to improve the lives of the people.
This is a brilliant idea that would benefit the mass majority of the global population... which is the exact reason it'll never be allowed to happen :(
I certainly agree that this tax scheme is likely the most fair one can think of but the problem is how to evaluate the value of the land? the government will have HUGE incentive to over-evaluate everybody's land..
This is done daily (at least in the US) through appraisals and market value comparisons (otherwise how would sellers know a base price to sell). People often contest their property tax bill by hiring an appraiser. Further, if the government over-values the property, they can purchase it for that price, which also deprives them of ANY tax they would have gotten (and any more until they can sell for that inflated price).
"This is done daily (at least in the US) through appraisals and market value comparisons (otherwise how would sellers know a base price to sell). People often contest their property tax bill by hiring an appraiser."@@quintessenceSL Yeah that what I mean by inefficient. >Further, if the government over-values the property, they can purchase it for that price, which also deprives them of ANY tax they would have gotten (and any more until they can sell for that inflated price). The government has no obligation to buy up any property
Taiwan solves the problem by letting people self-report the value, which both determines their LVT and the price for which the government can take it from you, so if you report too high, you'll be responsible for setting your taxes too high, if you report too low, you risk the government taking your land and giving you less than it's actually worth.
17:08 Correction: Singapore gained independence from Malaysia, not the UK. Note: they didn’t want independence anyway but were forced to by Malaysia because Singapore disagreed on a lot of things!
It sounds like a lot of the UK economy is based around financial bubbles that are more important to the government than actually creating a country where people can afford to live in.
not just the UK but the entire european union and the west, thank the debt/mortgage economy and international banks who absolutely love the current situation
There is one. If a homeowner is unemployed and low on funds they may not be able to pay the tax, though this can easily be mitigated by giving a tax exemption for primary residences. Probably best to not remove ALL other taxes (taxing tobacco & alcohol is still a good way to disincentivize their purchase alongside already being good source of tax revenue currently) but LVT could easily support MOST of the government tax brackets. The other issue is good luck getting all those pollies with 10-to-20 investment properties to agree to this.
@@ninjashot37 yeah the obv issue is no one would want LVT to happen when every rich guy and their pet politician have their stakes in real estate speculation. But indeed, it'll be tricky to assess whether someone is not in the capacity to pay the tax, as it's applied on 100% value of the land. I could inherit my parent's property and end up burdened with taxes I can't pay in case I get unemployed.
kinda cringe; if anyone sought it out, they would find it, but here he is just doxxing this guy because he doesn't like him. that sort of standard is easily abused.
Honestly, this makes capitalism work, sure there's still ways for rich people to get away with taxes like buying art and such, however this makes it so people like bill gates buying up a lot of land essentially get punished for doing so, 10/10, would tax the land
It all sounds good. But doesn’t take into account the huge levels of corruption. So much tax is given away to friends of MPs/Ministers. And it’ll never happen anyway. Too many people in Parliament own land/property and rent it out. They’ll never pass a law that takes money away from themselves.
Never say never. They said people without property would never get a vote, but they did. It took near a century to do it here in the UK, but it happened.
Land owners aren't the only rentiers in modern society who get to sit back and make money from other people's hard work with next to no risk. Big tech platforms are similar in benefitting and taking 40% of the value from the work of creators, on an internet created with public money. People who are anti-capitalist are usually angry at rentiers, not capitalists. They really need to learn the difference. Hard working people including capitalists don't like rentiers either so if they educated themselves they might even get capitalists on their side. Capitalists invest in their businesses. Rentiers invest in lobbying a.k.a bribery and it pays well.
Old Brompton Road Tube Station! That was the headquarters for the University of London Air Squadron. I was a member just before it was sold - some of my most formative moments happened in that building. The ‘secret’ tunnels to the old underground platform were amazing. It’s extremely depressing to see it reduced to doing literally nothing.
Jup, all true. BUT all the fat cats own property to make passive income, so changing that peacefully will never happen because they're the ones that make the rules. Guess we gotta eat them first.
This is why we need to stop whining about the plight of British 'farmers'. Stop calling them farmers and use their proper name: multimillionnaire landowners.
my one question is how do city parks work? a pretty, open field doesnt really seem like an efficient use of space, and i worry that they might cease to exist and replaced by endless buildings. i love all the ideas proposed here, but thats just the one thing im worried for
Based Britmonkey making yet another video on Georgism. Somebody tag Tom Nichols in this so he can watch this instead of trashing it like he did in that video on Monopoly.
The central thesis of Georgism is that no one has any moral claim to property rights in the gifts of Nature, as they fundamentally belong to all the living in common. Therefore, the "Land Value Tax" is not really a "tax", at all, but a user fee for what you reserve for your exclusive benefit out of the common wealth. Since you don't actually "own" the land, because land cannot in any real sense be "property", you aren't paying taxes for something you own.
Sorry but I'm still a bit confused on why landowners will decrease rents on purpose to attract renters or to deflate their land value? Lets say in your early example with the shophouses with different shops. As an owner of the land there, I rent the 1 million dollar land for 15k a year while land tax is 12k a year (1%) to a coffeeshop and they make money while i still make money. The area becomes popular and the value of my land increases as determined by the government or by transactions of recent sale of land around my land. So now my land is valued at 1.2 million and the tax is 14,400. I'll just increase the rent to the coffeeshop to 18k a year and they feel the pinch and increase prices of their coffee because they need to cover the cost of the increase rent or till they cant afford to pay it and some other business who might be able to withstand the rent price takes over. Maybe I change the shophouse to house two different businesses and split the rent between the two businesses at 10k each and profit 5,600 instead. The landowner can still make money in these cases. Even with the citizen's dividend, wont that be just a constant march towards faster inflation? higher business value -> higher land value -> more tax revenue -> more dividend -> people willing to pay more -> higher business value -> and so on? Overall I dont think land owners can intentionally decrease their rent just to devalue their land just to lower their tax burden since the value of their land isnt determined by the rent price but by other factors like government surveys or transaction records of land sales in the neighborhood . That would mean there is no point in owning the land in the first place since overall you will lose whatever value in holding that land? Any experts can elaborate on the this point? I do like the idea of it simplifying the tax system and forcing the use of the land to be more productive though since assholes like that oligarch has no choice but to actually use the land productively to extract wealth from it. The concept still intrigues me and would love to see how it can be implemented to work for the average citizen. Also on the note regarding Singapore. From my perspective there has been steady push by property developers (e.g shopping mall developers who bought the land on a 99 year lease from the government) to extract as much value as they can from the tenants of their property by charging higher and higher rent on them which in turn push businesses in these properties to charge higher and higher prices on consumers. It has become a race to see what is the maximum limit these property owners can charge tenants before businesses start failing due to consumers finding it too unaffordable. On the other hand these property developers are seeing record profits while the average joe is seeing prices increase from those businesses located at those malls. This is especially the case is the property developer is a Real Estate Investment Trusts where they build property as investments and they prioritise investor returns. Not to mention that its usually only the big brands that are able to afford higher rents, leading to less mom-pop shops and mostly major food/retail conglomerates with multiple brands under their names that can continue to rent from these malls.
Georgism is unironically an excellent compromise between left and right, socialism and capitalism. I’m a centrist liberal and this is exactly what I want. A society where people can get rich and be rewarded if they actually create something useful (ie. ideal capitalism) but also where there is less wealth inequality (ie. ideal socialism).
@@PlatinumAltaria Haha no, I’m not a social democrat. Firstly, I strongly disagree with many left wing views, and secondly, I’ve had leftists tell me I don’t belong on the left even when I did consider myself center-left a few years ago.
Thr thing about LVT is: it works, but it shouldn't be exclusively LVT, there are other things that need to be taxed to prevent exploitation, like giant investment firms could manipulate the markets without any concerns if they just stayed away from land for example.
"This is the best idea that will never happen." This was the part I was waiting for, a explanation for why despite all the pro's, this tax remains unutilized by most of the world. Landlords getting in the way surely cant explain all of it
@@reillywalker195 well that just begs the question of why haven't more developing nations who would love a easy to implement and effective method of taxation hasn't adopted it either.
why isn't this implemented yet as said in the video only landlords and aristocrats hate this almost of else will benefit from this is it that landlords and aristocrats are stopping this from happening
Maybe if only rich people exist that would be the problem probably the real problem is people thinking they don't have power because they aren't rich. Also this doesn't even effect all rich people some of them might end up paying less taxes.
I agree we should implement a LVT, but I think you overestimate its effects and how much revenue it would raise. You seem to imply it would fully fund the government and leave enough left over to fund a citizens’ dividend. That just isn’t true. George thought it could be, but he was living in the USA over a century ago, when the government was tiny and didn’t even have a national income tax. Modern governments need far more money than a LVT could ever raise by itself. LVT is good, but it isn’t the solution to everything and it discredits the policy to make it sound naively utopian.
The primary reason why it is so difficult for people to understand the benefits of a Georgist economic system is because the value of Nature is literally at the roots of all human economic activity, and a shift toward taxing land values rather than taxing economic productivity would completely and utterly transform every facet of human civilization from the ground up. This makes LVT seem as if it's overly simplistic to many people, who have been conditioned to believe Economics and Finance are terribly complex fields that cannot possibly be understood by the hoi polloi. So, when we say, "We can literally save the whole world with this one weird trick," people's brains immediately dismiss the idea.
LVT is overly simplistic as a replacement for all other taxes. Monopolistic exploitation of people's and industry's need for land is only one form of economic exploitation. Acting like land value taxes will solve all the ills of society is crazy.
How can I help compaign for this to the Government, Surely there is a party somewhere with this as a interest?! I wouldn't be politically active for much, but this is one of those few things.
I really appreciate you videos. They give me a different perspective on things that mainstream media doesn’t. They bring up ideas and topics that the news and politicians don’t seem that enthusiastic to talk about, all while having a positive and encouraging attitude. Thank you for spreading awareness about these topics and thus showing us, the people, alternatives to what mainstream media preach about. Keep up the good work, and I’ll be happy to see your next video, whatever it will be about.
I've been thinking for a long time of how to tax the rich, without discouraging them from creating more wealth (Working, Investing and so on) and I think this might actually be the Solution. The only thing I see an immediate problem with is, that this would make it impossible to have Land that doesn't earn money, but is important like nature nature reserves or just recreational forests, lakes and Parks. They would have to be exclusively owned by the State. Also, why would I have Greenery on my Property, that doesn't earn me anything, when I could have more living-space. Those are things that might need another incentive to balance out
@@duncanapisdorf I am sure you can make it work for the famous Parks and Nature reserves. But even with Yellowstone, Imagine they would have to pay for every m^2 of it. depending on how much it cost easily cost the 500 million. Just because of the sheer size of it
Why can't ecological considerations like nature reserves, etc. Be considered to yield pigouvian subsidies? Heck, we could be printing carbon coins to give forests value, then you could help pay off the LVT with the carbon coin proceeds, no problem.
but, that's basically part and parcel of the overarching Geoist Agenda, don't you see? A bunch of subsidies and taxes, meant to nullify quasi-rent in society.@@Torodes23
As many people should see this video as possible. I think bringing this idea back into the public eye of discussion is a very good cause. I have been interested in the LVT for a while now and this video really does do an amazing job at explaining it. I'll definetly be sharing this with people. Thank you for your great work, have a wonderful rest of your day mate.
I do like how this system still uses the market to determine the value of unimproved land. Other schemes I've heard require a bureaucracy to determine this value, which I think is extremely fraught and the primary weakness of command economies.
@@PlatinumAltariaI can understand decommodification of HOUSING as in like, public housing, housing co-ops, etc. But decommodifying LAND? Wouldn't that just revert to like feudalism? Do I pay for a patch of sand in the desert with labor vouchers?
@@chatboss000 Feudalism is very much the opposite of decommodifying land :p Land would be held in common, just like how the air is right now. Its use would be governed based on the needs of the people, so everyone would have housing, space for recreation and work, and the natural environment would be protected. Some things just don't work as a market. Your local community would have parcels of land set aside for housing people. When you move in, it's yours. When you leave, it goes back to the community rather than you selling it for profit. You pay no rent or property tax, and you can't have more than you need.
@@PlatinumAltariaPart of the point of the land value tax is that land is technically owned in common, and people pay its rent in order to use it. 'The market' that is used to determine the rent would be more accurately described as simple 'demand for the land', ie. the more people who want your land, the more each person wants your land, therefore the more you're denying other people's right to use what's ultimately a natural resource, the higher the tax is and therefore the more you'd need to develop on the land to support the economy that those people share. It's true that more geographically-limited markets such as the property and energy markets follow the principles of perfect market competition less so than markets that are less geographically-limited, such as the food market. However, that doesn't mean that governments, even elected, are always going to be the right managers of those services, as with an LVT especially, those markets can function well with regulations in certain uncompetitive aspects of them. For the example of housing, not only would you have an LVT that encorouges development of housing for others to live in, but you'd also need to consider that people's demand for housing isn't as simple as 'I need a house, I'll live in one no matter what without preference', people's demand and preferences for housing are different and change vastly over the course of their lives. In this case, there are in fact competitive aspects in the market, but obviously in other cases there won't be, but it doesn't justify socializing the entire market when other, more efficient options are available. Also, just one more thing. Under an elected government or community, who's to say that it's guaranteed the land will be protected? Who's to say that people won't want more than they 'need'? Who's to say what people need? Each individual or the community as a whole? Who's to say the community as a whole won't want to exploit more natural resources? I definitely think markets create grave issues environmentally, but I also find it very theoretical that a community would always treat its environment well.
Also we currently tax what you buy, what you own, and what you earn. These can fluctuate in tax profit. Especially with wealthy tax safe havens. Land tax MIGHT pay less (The tax rate can be adjusted.) But it is a completely consistent and transparent form of wealth to tax. Because usually, land doesn't go anywhere. You can generally expect the same amount of tax annually. *4 affects I can see happening with a Goergist tax system* is *1)* That it might cause more investment in the digital space and less in brick and morter investments. _(Perhaps there should be a tax on digital real estate, like website domains. To keep up with the times.)_ *2)* Also it might encourage people to build more vertically while keeping their building's footprint small. Which might incourage a skyscraper boom. _(Sky Scrapers can be cool, skylines can be aesthetic even. But too many bunched up on each other means a city where the buildings block out the sun's natural lighting. Making them more dimly lit. Which sounds depressing. Perhaps forcing them to space out or start taxing floor space past like the 3rd floor might help.)_ *3)* It might encourage more tiny homes, which I am not against. But for the sake of options and not stepping down in quality of life as a society; We could reduce tax price for lived in residential homes of average size or a just comfortable amount of space. _(How much would you say that be and should this apply to land lords?)_ *4)* Might decentipize necessary spaces like farm land. As well as desperately needed 3rd places like already half way in the grave malls and amusement parks. _(I think it would be best to give them reduced taxes. But how much is enough to not punish farming, without buffing it too much, where we overfarm land? But also... land value can change around populations. Farmlands are usually outside dense population anyways. So perhaps the land is more inherently cheap that way in this system. Farms can be smelly anyways, so probably for the best.)_
18:38, I must say as a Kiwi, I'm downright appalled by how high how rents are. How government is just too incompetent to fix it because they benefit from it.
