The Best Tax is a Tax on Land and Some of that Revenue should be Divided Equally to all Citizens

I will be responding to Con's rebuttals using quotes from his argument so the reader doesn't have to scroll back up and try to decipher what I'm referring to. "The claim that 'Land' should be considered as 'ANY resource … kind of robs any meaningful distinction from land, labor & capital" Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I don't see how it robs meaningful distinction from land, labor, and capital. It adds distinction in my mind. The definition allows you to see that: land + labor = capital And capital + labor = capital So my basic argument can be summed up thus: "You are entitled to the fruits of your labor. Capital is the fruit of your labor. You are entitled to your capital. Land is not the fruit of your labor. In fact, land is the fruit of no one's labor, but the value of land is the fruit of the community's labor, so you are not entitled to land and the community is entitled to any increased value of land". And yes, that means ANY natural resource. Hopefully that clears it up. "… the purpose for which the specific site is employed will not be factored into the calculation of the value of the site, and thus does not contribute to the tax derived from aforementioned value. .. " That is somewhat correct. There's not necessarily an authority determining what each piece of land is for in this hypothetical. The site's value is determined by the market. So if a landowner owns a site in some area where businesses have decided to congregate, the value of that site will be priced accordingly regardless of how he/she decides to use that site. Once again, that's not the effect of the land value tax, that's the effect of the market. So to the next point "we will need to have a flat tax on all land, so that the single mother will pay the same for her site (per square foot) as the multimillion dollar company would. " That's not correct. A flat tax on land is not 'every square foot will be charged $X', it's 'landowners must pay X% of the value of the sites which they own'. A landowner is not charged per square foot. They are charged per the value of the site(s) that they own. A single mother who owns $1M of land would surely be able to afford to sell it or pay the tax. The same woman with $100 of land would be able to afford it. " While it might be true that an agency might value the site it cannot be anything other than an arbitrary assessment when considered in isolation. " It would be no more arbitrary than what the market already determines. It's pretty mathematically consistent. Consider persons A and B. A lives near a school and has a two-bedroom, one-bathroom, brick house with a fireplace and no need for repairs. B lives near a sewage plant and has a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house with a fireplace and no need for repairs. Their houses are identical, but when A sells her property to move to another town, she will sell her house for $100,000 and when B sells her property to move to another town, she will sell her house for $50,000. It can be reasonably deduced that the site value of A is at least $50,000 higher than that of B. The more properties that can be analyzed, the more accurate a reading can be got. If one looks at similar properties in different areas, one can deduce the value of a site. There are a number of other ways, also. Houses depreciate over time, sites do not. One can see the relative difference in the rate of change of the values of properties to determine land values, as well. And an assessor could do all of them to ensure that the value was accurate. Multiple methods coming to similar results indicate that the results are more likely to be accurate. "Therefore if the single mother has a small holding on a site which contains gold… she will be forced to…" She will not be forced to do anything; she will simply have the incentive to do the most economically efficient thing. That's where the citizen's dividend comes in. She would be able to ignore that bit of the taxes except in the most extreme of cases by using her citizen's dividend to pay for the land. LVT encourages the economically efficient use of land- CD protects the right of the individual NOT to have to follow that incentive. "The question is, would this site be valued … to its intrinsic potential …or for what the community around it is doing…? " The increased value of the site is attributable to both. A site increases in value because many people want it; supply and demand, however, a new site in the same spot cannot be created. It is the spot that is valuable. So while supply and demand determine the price, they do not determine the supply. Site values operate differently than most of the free market. That's why Adam Smith said that every landowner acts, in his role as a landowner, as a monopolist. Landownership is monopoly. "What would be the situation if Time Squares 'rental' had to be determined by the state? … the state would never be able to value the sites in Time Square for what they are worth, as each site is worth what it gets sold for. .. " It's interesting that Con brings up rentals. Another possibility of collecting the value of land is to have a "single landlord" in the form of nationalized land. Then landlords would merely be renting from the government. With that system, you could have a society run with no taxes whatsoever. If your land value goes down, you pay less per month, if they go up, you pay more per month. A valuation could be done every-so-often by leasing some piece of land to the highest bidder. "Each site is sold… for the price the seller is happy to receive foe the site and that the buyer is willing to pay it. " The problem with this idea is that, in regards to sites, a buyer has no choice. Every being must exist somewhere. One cannot simultaneously believe in the right to exist and not believe in the right to exist in some place because existing requires a place to exist. The buyer may choose to go to some other seller, but ultimately, he/she must accept the offer of someone. This is tantamount to slavery. In a truly free market, the buyer and the seller can choose to walk away from the offers presented by either side. The standard assumptions of supply and demand do not apply with landownership because the supply of land doesn't increase with price. Landownership is government-granted monopoly. "When Pro declares … he assumes that the technological process of extraction of the oil is … open. .. " That is not the case. The oil in the earth does not belong to anyone. The value an oil tycoon adds by extracting that oil belongs to the oil tycoon. The original value, however, does not. This is not a Marxian error. This is capitalist. "Someone had to come up with the technology for finding and extracting oil . .. " Yes and that person would be wholly entitled to sell that oil at whatever price. The oil before it is removed from the commons though, is still in the commons- he/she did not create the oil; therefore he/she is not entitled to the whole value of the oil. He/she is only entitled to the value he/she adds to the oil. The removal of the oil from the commons comes at a price. That price could be determined any number of ways and would be arbitrary. However, the person who wants to extract the oil would be the buyer and the State would be the seller. If the State sets the price too high, it will be lowering revenue. The State doing it would no more distort the economy than a private entity selling his/her oil rights. This system restricts government to earn money the same way as everyone else: buying and selling. "But can one say that the innovation becomes public property simply because the land on which it is employed is in fixed supply? I say No" I also say no. I believe Con has accidentally created a straw man to argue against. "…any payment demanded by the state for … the resources required for human ingenuity is extortionate and coercive. " If we follow that logic to its natural conclusion, a private entity holding resources required for human ingenuity is also extortionate and coercive. What difference does it make who the extorter is? "Saying that you have a title deed for … site but having never …paid for it is not owning the property … it becomes nothing more than a rental property. ” Yes. That's the goal. I want land not to be owned. I want it to be rented from the community. "When the government gets into the business of land tax it gets into … the 'Tragedy of the commons' … an inescapable fact. . http://en.wikipedia.org...; Further study into the so-called 'Tragedy of the Commons' will show that the man who wrote it, Garrett Hardin lamented not calling it "the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons" because managed commons actually work. Therefore the tragedy of the commons is TOTALLY escapable. The reader can see the 'Unmanaged' bit by the same author in the references of the Wikipedia entry Con linked. Here is the link to the author: . https://en.wikipedia.org... {See the comments for a somewhat irrelevant post about game theory- I didn't think it was relevant enough for it to be a part of my main argument, so I'll post it there. } "As for the Citizen Dividend I believe that land cannot be owned falls into disrepair and ruin. " One can't repair land. One's HOUSE can fall into disrepair, but land can't. .. it's land. The CD has nothing to do with the effects of the tax. It is the distribution of the tax. The distribution of the tax doesn’t create the non-ownership of land, so I don't see how Con thinks that a CD would lead to land disrepair and ruin. It appears that Con has let the CD go through uncontested. Con has made no argument against the distribution of the revenue, which is half of my argument. I urge voters to remember that. In conclusion, to not collect the value of land for the public is to allow private entities to gain value they didn't create. THAT is theft.