Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (457)

The Taxpayers' Alliance tweeted this Bastiat quote:

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorises it and a moral code that glorifies it” - Frédéric Bastiat

And added the hashtags #MondayMotivation and #LowerTaxes.

To which I replied: He was referring to landlords and bankers, actually, and many others piled in on similar lines.

Bastiat was a Physiocrat, which is what Georgists used to call themselves before Henry George came along, so he was against Socialism (the milder, pre-Marxist kind) as much as against corporatism, seeing them as two sides of the same coin. For some reason, the right-wingers co-opted the Physiocrats while reviling Georgists. Here's another example, from Wiki Quotes:

It is a rather singular argument to maintain that, because an abuse which has been permitted a temporary existence, cannot be corrected without wounding the interests of those who have profited by it, it ought, therefore, to claim perpetual duration.

Which is Benj's standard reply to the KLN: "But I paid for my home out of taxed income!"