| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] Between Douglas and George | | Date: | Thursday, April 6, 2006 15:44:57 (-0700) | | From: | Jeffery Smith <jjs @.........org>
|
| In reply to: | Message 3781 (written by Keith Wilde) |
On Apr 6, 2006, at 3:19 PM, Keith Wilde wrote:
> That site values increase under current systems is an undeniable,
> empirical fact. Just as undeniable is that the owners have usually
> done very little directly to 'earn' that increased value. Thus the
> appeal of LVT.
>
> Joe has argued persuasively, however, that LVT can be quite unfair to
> persons trying to operate a business on land that was formerly not of
> great interest to land speculators.
'Cept, if land is of interest to speculators, it's because they can
make a buck there. If they can, so should a present owner be able to,
thus having the funds to pay any higher tax.
Also, where you don't have LVT, you do have speculative withholding.
Then you have some speculator with an eyesore or vacant lot keeping
down value in a good neighborhood, making it hard for entrepreneurial
owners to invest and make a buck from their own land. Nothing fair
about that. It's why the Chamber of Commerce support LVT in
Philadelphia - even paid for a full-page ad.
> And he has provided texts from Douglas that suggest some more
> complicated approaches to the problem of changing site value. I'm not
> confident that I have understood them well, but would like to see them
> considered in relation to cultural heritage, dividends and compensated
> price.
One way to consider them is to look at what happens when places do
adopt LVT.
> Cultural heritage, understood primarily as technological advance,
> makes a contribution to increasing site values. So, of course, does
> increasing human population and migration from places of lower site
> value to urban areas. I have not perceived that Social Credit writers
> are advocates of population control, so assume that when the
> collective value of land in the nation rises it is a reflection of
> cultural heritage--an increment of national wealth that is not
> attributable to identifiable individual efforts and should therefore
> be shared equitably. How is that to be done?
Why not recover it and share it? Recover it via land dues, share it via
rent dividends.
> Wally's message from yesterday seems to suggest that when the consumer
> dividend and compensated price rebate are "spent", the effect is to
> cancel initial extensions of credit (to finance new production) and
> that there is consequently no surplus with which to inflate prices
> (especially of land, for purposes of this discussion). The national
> accounting and credit authority are assumed to control the quantity of
> credit and money in circulation, and to thereby maintain a stable
> price level. But is that sufficient to inhibit the dynamics of
> population movement and the consequent price pressure on land
> locations?
One way price control shows up is as less economic activity. So the
controls did work in one sense - prices didn't rise - but they failed
in another sense - people stayed out of markets.
SMITH, Jeffery J., President, Forum on Geonomics
7536 SE Milwaukie Av, Portland Oregon 97202 USA
503/232-1337; jjs@geonomics.org; www.geonomics.org
Share Earth's worth to prosper and conserve.
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