Georgism Should be Implemented in the United States

I am sorry to Con and the readers that I wasn't able to post my argument in time. School has been hectic. I thank Con graciously for accepting the debate.Moral problems in implementation. (rebuttal) As Con indicated, I have indeed taken both approaches. There is a categorical imperative and a hypothetical imperative. Hypothetical Imperative: As it stands, when a community is improved, the resultant increase in the value of land disappears into the pockets of the people who own that land. The reason you should favor the renting of a land from a community instead of private ownership is that infrastructure should be self-financing. When the local government builds a school, a community center, or even a bridge, the increase in economic rent would always more than cover the cost of the community improvement. This system gives the government an incentive to improve the community. The citizen's dividend would improve the economy Every time tax returns come back (at least in America) the economy experiences a short boom while the citizen's spend their money. Basic economics has taught us that spending is what drives the economy. The citizen's dividend would have the same effect constantly. Because of the nature of the citizen's dividend, every citizen would get their share without regard to means testing. This means that a government could all but completely disestablish the bureaucracy surrounding welfare and social security which would free up resources for more efficient uses. The citizen's dividend would also allow would-be entrepreneurs to start their businesses. Right now there are untold entrepreneurs who are trapped in a job that pays only enough to cover base costs of living so they can't start up or focus on the business they would start if they had more time. Categorical Imperative: The most powerful moral obligation may be that the citizen's dividend all but totally eliminates poverty. The citizen's dividend improves moral parts of the economy too Often, the argument in favor of the free market is that it's voluntary. However, there are certain parts of our economy that are only pseudo-voluntary. Employment, for example, is not truly voluntary. A person cannot choose NOT to be employed by someone else because he/she would become homeless. If a person was more free to choose not to work, employers would have to actually compete for labor. That is to say, it would end wage slavery, but not wages. So while it would be good for would-be entrepreneurs, it would also be good for would-be authors to write/would-be sculptors to sculpt/etc. When the value of land goes up, it is because of the community around that land and not because of an individual land owner's input. One could buy a plot of land in New York 100 years ago and sell it today without putting any work into it at all and they will have made a HUGE profit. They have not done anything to deserve the increased value, but they reap the benefits of the work of the community. Entitlement must arise from labor because when we allow homesteading the homesteader isn't just taking the land from other contemporary potential land owners, he/she is also taking that land out of the hands of future generations. Imagine person X and person Y. X claims the last plot of land. X hasn't just removed the use of that land from Y, he/she has also taken it from all of Y's progeny. And what about person Z who didn't have enough money in the first place to become a homesteader? Homesteading ultimately amounts to stealing- nice stealing that has a potentially beneficial outcome- but stealing all the same. “ Just like we had no hand in creating land, most of us had no hand in developing the things we base our labor off of every day...it seems to logically follow from Georgist doctrine that we have no right to use this...” Con may have missed something here. The argument isn't that one can't USE something that isn't made by one's own hands, it's that one cannot OWN something that isn't made by one's own hands. We can base our labor off of the land, we just can't monopolize land without paying rent to the community. “Therefore, the Georgist is caught up in a seeming inconsistency in only applying this rule to land, while allowing other forms of personal property to go un-taxed.” We don't tax land because it is being used, we tax land because it cannot be rightfully monopolized. “ I can foresee Pro possibly going back to the Georgist proposition that all economies are essentially land-based, but I fail to see any instance where he attempted to justify this” All economies are essentially land based because no matter what is produced, it must come ultimately from land. Nothing is produced without raw materials. No good is produced without real estate.