| Subject: | RE: [socialcredit] land, money | | Date: | Sunday, March 19, 2006 13:08:12 (-0800) | | From: | thomsonhiyu <thomsonhiyu @....ca>
|
(Jeff Smith wrote:-) Why not pay its full value for displacing anyone
else's use?
(Joe replies:-) What makes you so sure 'anyone else' is going to WANT
to use it? You say the 'market' will determine that. But will it?
Lets look at a real case scenario. I 'own' a 2 acre parcel of land on
which my lumber business is located. I purchased the land in 1968, for
$ 3,500, when it was simply bush and swamp. Anyone else with $ 3,500
could have done exactly the same thing. The previous owner wasn't
particular to whom he sold, only that he got what he was asking for his
property. I was the first, and possibly the only, prospective buyer who
would give him his price. I cleared the land, filled the swamp, and
have used it for my business ever since. The BC Assessment Authority,
an agency of the Crown provincial, in their last Notice of Assessment to
me, value this 2 acres, just as 'land' (excluding all the improvements),
at $ 100,000. ('Improvements' are shown and assessed separately on BC
Assessment tax assessments.)
In 1984, there was a well founded rumour that the main road on which my
2 acres fronts was to be widened from 2 to 4 lanes. And that a 33 ft
strip of my property all along that boundary would be expropriated.
Since much of that 33 foot strip is used for the storage and display of
my products for retail sale, its loss would've effectively put me out of
the retail lumber business. And without being able to sell that way,
carrying on the manufacturing part of my business for 'wholesale' sale
only on the scale we operate would not be viable. Not, at least, on
what remained of my 2 acre site.
Immediately across the highway to be widened from my 2 acres were two
1/2 acre vacant lots. Each would also lose 33 feet off the boundary
abutting the road. Each of the lots was also bush and swamp, much as my
original 2 acres had previously been. And each had been for sale for at
least the previous three years at $ 11,500 each. There had been lots of
lookers, but no takers.
The idea occurred to me that if I did lose property due to
expropriation, a solution would be to purchase these two lots and move
the retail part of my business across the road. I purchased the lots,
and cleared the bush, and filled the swamp. In the end, however, the
Government decided not to widen the road, and built a new four-lane
highway roughly parallel to it about a half-mile further south. I still
felt that relocating the retail sales would be a good possible move for
sometime in the future, however, so I retained the two 1/2 acre lots.
Which, in the ensuing years, have now grown back up in bush again.
The last Notice of Assessment I received values them at $ 75,000 each.
And, as I have told several people over the years who've enquired as to
whether these lots might be for sale, I would be quite willing to sell
them both, together, since one alone is of no use to me, for their
combined assessed value. Whatever it happened to be that year. Anytime
anyone wants to give me that, they can 'own' them. There have been no
takers.
Now here is where I have one of many problems with the 'Georgist' ideas.
My 2 acres, with everything off it, just as 'land', is said to have a
'site-value' of $ 100,000, or $ 50,000 per acre. Yet exactly the same
type of land, immediately across the road, is said to have a value
equivalent to $ 150,000 per acre. Three times as much.
Some will say, and do, well, a smaller parcel is usually more saleable,
and is worth more. (For what, they don't say. Housing? Who wants to
live across from a sawmill? On a still heavily travelled thoroughfare?
Hardly 'prime residential' land. For a retail lumber yard? If I
developed the lots as that, would the 'site-value' be diminished to the
same as that of my other property currently used that way? I hardly
think so!)
And then consider my 2 acres, which has a Government road frontage on
three of its four boundaries and could quite easily be 'split' into four
1/2 acre lots by less than half a days work by any registered Land
Surveyor and his chainman. None of that 2 acres would be 'lost' for
access roads. Yet its 'assessed' value is only one-third that of the
other 1/2 acre lots. Is subdividing it going to increase its
'site-value' to as much as the other lots? Again, for what?
This whole question of 'assessing' seems to me, at least, to be quite
arbitrary. Who really knows what that property would be 'worth' until
it actually 'sells'. And then it's only really 'worth' what someone
actually paid for it. To them, and the vendor alike.
Far better that, in conjunction with the other proposals Douglas made
for changes in the 'macro-economic' cost-accountancy/price system, that
the Land Question be dealt with along the lines he proposed. Where
'speculation' (and 'inflation') has been removed; where 'concentration'
of ownership can be controlled by those most affected by it, the
'neighbours'; where security of tenure, once established, is secured for
life, with successorship rights enshrined , but subject to reasonable
confirmation; where the value added in improvements can be credited
fairly to the improver on sale; where the addition to the 'real credit'
of the community those improvements made can pay him, and through him,
the community, 'dividends'to increase purchasing power; and where ALL
LAND TAXES (the fourth largest annual 'cost' now in my little business),
ARE ABOLISHED.
|
RE: [socialcredit]
Reply to this message