The most valuable lands on earth, those with the highest rent, are not those with the highest natural fertility. Rather, they are lands given a greater usefulness by population density.
Unless of course, you're the sort of person who doesn't like getting bogged down with facts and disagree simply because of who said it.
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23 comments:
MW when are you going to abandon your obsession with Karl George the nefarious Ricardo-Marxian LVT and LTV advocate?!
Ah, Karl George, action accountant! What a guy! I suspected that he might be nefarious when I saw that he had an MBE but I didn't think that he was an LVT supporter, let alone a Marxist (Ricardian or otherwise). Still, I bow to Richard's superior knowledge.
Go Karl!
RA, never.
D, is that a spoof? Or an American being deadly serious?
Dunno, but if he lives up to his video, I'd pay money to go and see him!
Trouble is a lot of Georgists still use examples which rely on soil fertility for differences in value.I would ban all these Farmer A/Farmer B examples ( and references to economic rent,tell you the truth,as they only confuse people. Jerry Jones wrote a pamphlet deliberately avoiding using it : no one noticed in a negative sense.)Also islands are a nuisance and references to Mother Nature.
D, tell me how you get on.
DBC, indeed, the pro's (who refer back to Anderson/Ricardo's law of rent) and anti's ("punching a tree") both fall into this trap, which is why I have pointed out several times that the rental value of the tip-top most valuable land in the UK (retail on Bond Street) is about a million times as much as the least valuable (Scottish grouse moor). AFAICS, we could just exempt farmland and the system would still work.
I'm surprised by the claim that Scottish grouse moor is the least valuable land in Britain. I'd have guessed the miles-and-miles-of-bugger-all moor was less valuable.
D, from my extensive research, I establish that you can buy SGM for less than £2,000 per acre. Maybe there's stuff even cheaper than that (i.e. SGM without a shooting licence), in which case the ratio is more than a million-to-one.
While we are talking about not-very-valuable property, would you get an LVT rebate if your property had negative value (e.g. a listed building in very poor condition)?
You should read the real killer chapter that follows this one time permitting.
All who say that references to agri land are now irrelevant are proving they have not read it and understood it. Particularly faux Marxists. These are the simple cases that prove it in the more complex ones, just that much more intensely.
True Communists like me do not stop when it suits us or when observed facts run counter to our prejudices. We change our core beliefs and move on.
This is how George was asking us to think.
Bayard. Good point.
I fully respect that some are willing to pay extra for sentimental benefits received. But no one forces that on them. However in Detroit it costs more for banks to own a repo'd home due to social costs being greater than rental value so they bulldoze em by the thousand.
* A True Communist is one who believes that true free markets and true socialism, working in harmony, are the most fruitful and sustainable way to advance civilisation. Who wants to join me.?
B, the lowest that LVT can be is £nil. If it costs more to maintain a listed building than is economically justifiable, then whoever imposes that obligation on the owner has to compensate him, in the same way as we'd expect the local council to maintain parks and the cenotaph, for example.
RS, I've read the whole book, it says what I say it says. I spent five years thinking about all this before I ever read it and came to more or less exactly the same conclusion on just about everything (including the thought experiments).
So how come you talk as if you have just looked at the words?
How come you keep asking for compensation. Chpt 28
How come you keep saying there will be losers with lvt. Chpt 34
How come you are so timid about the Good News consequences. Chpt 38
Its not a bible. But understanding it fully will save a whole load of time and pain.
Keep up the good work
RS: "It's not a bible". Correct, even if it had never been written, I would still have come to the same conclusions about stuff.
MW the point is you have reached conclusions that do not agree with what the book is saying in principle.
Often what you conclude is the exact opposite.
You are reaching some conclusions the book was written to refute.
Such as wage fund theory.
RS, there is a difference between good economics and good politics. Better to make a small political sacrifice (e.g. exempt pensioners) than to get nowhere at all.
Why do you keep wailing on about 'wage fund theory'?
I have always said that the gross income of a business is split in various ways, i.e. as wages, supplier invoices, rents, profits, interest, taxes etc (these are legal terms rather than Georgist economic ones).
So really, wages (in either general or narrow sense) are a profit share, not a cost to the employer*. In fact, not even rents (in the narrow Georgist sense) are 'costs', they are the landlord's profit share.
* Unless an employer is forced to keep on unproductive employees for legal reasons, in which case those wages are rents.
I wail for good reason. Because of your misunderstanding of the politics versus the economics that leads to the blatant racism often seen on this forum.
Its not really racism. Its a false fear of too many workers going after fixed wages by not understanding where wages really come from. Chpt 1
On your point about 'every little counts' can you point to a time where in general, not specifically, doing little things and avoiding the BIG, has ever permanently increased wages in proportion to rent? See chpt 24 for why every little counts. . . little. It says that fixing little things will only increase the share going to land owners that much more. Get it yet? So the politics of this is ignorant and hypocrisy.
You claim to have read it or reached the same conclusions. But right here in black and white in your own words you clearly have arrived at the opposite conclusions that every little counts or that wages are paid out of employers capital.
Bingo! These are central refutations in the book. It says it clearly in the preface. Have you read it?
You said it. Im not misrepresenting you. These are your words.
Lets talk this evening at the shop?
RS, you are as bad as other people on this blog who claim to know what I think better than I do and constantly claim that I have said things I never said. I know what I think and can remember most of what I have said.
Where the f- have I ever said that "wages come out of capital"? You are slightly delusional on this point.
My more basic point is this:
"I would rather have full-on LVT for everybody and all land, combined with complete 100% exemptions for pensioners' main residences (as defined) than the current shambles".
I'm not saying it'd be perfect, so what? We can let future generations gradually phase in LVT for pensioners (and increase the state pension accordingly).
MW whenever you say that immigrants are bad or muslims are evil.
Racism is a belief that there too many people to support from a fixed amount of caital.
When anyone who has read the book can see that the more people, the more wages. All the way to infinity.
That is the delusion. A bigger delusion is that every little counts. Chpt 24
"If it costs more to maintain a listed building than is economically justifiable, then whoever imposes that obligation on the owner has to compensate him"
In an ideal world, this would happen. In this sub-ideal world, it doesn't. However, would not negative LVT go some way towards fulfilling this aim?
RS, it is quite clearly the case that as long as housing is strictly rationed, heavily subsidised and lightly taxed, immigration benefits high earners and land owners; and hurts lower earners and tenants.
And even when I'm in charge and run the most liberal economy ever (where skilled immigrants are more than welcome), if you think I'm also letting in Islamist malcontents, welfare junkies and criminals, you have another think coming.
B - one man's tax break is another man's tax burden.
So if we really want to subsidise listed buildings with negative LVT (or a public contribution towards their upkeep), it's up to local voters/taxpayers to decide.
Those that want to keep it will get the corresponding amount of the subsidy added to their own LVT bill, those who really aren't fussed will not be forced to contribute.
But you are happy to let in non muslim malcontents? Why single them out for special treatment?
Is it because you believe in wage fund theory still but cannot change?
RS, it's not 'special treatment' the same treatment will apply to all malcontents :-) It has sweet f- all to do with "wage fund theory".
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