A few days ago I received a mailing from a friend, incorporating (with permission) something I wrote a while ago, and had mostly forgotten about. I think it is worth sharing here; I’ll expand on bits and pieces of it, as the spirit moves me.

It has been said that a budget is a moral document. Usually that is construed to refer to the spending side of the budget. But it is equally and importantly true of the revenue side. When we tax the wrong things, we get undesirable effects. When we fail to tax that which we should tax, we get undesirable effects as well. [I might add that an individual’s revenue which comes from stealing from others is also a very poor idea – even when the theft is legal! Chattel slavery certainly fit in this category, as did the industrial slavery Douglas Blackmon described in his recent book.]

With other Georgists, I seek a shift in how we tax ourselves which will produce a better world for all of us. Land value taxation will have important effects in many areas which concern most Americans:

  • slowing, stopping and reversing urban sprawl
  • urban blight
  • improve wages, without raising the cost of living
  • spur job creation – here
  • poverty eradication
  • wealth concentration
  • education funding
  • reduce long commutes
  • excessive energy usage
  • reducing greenhouse gases
  • economic development
  • infrastructure finance
  • boom-bust cycle

The term LAND includes not just the value of urban land, which is huge (and currently underreported and thus ignored, despite being the underlying source of huge fortunes), but also the rest of the natural creation …

  • broadcast spectrum – those airwaves which we all say (complete the sentence) … belong to the American people, but which have been sold to corporations
  • water rights (ditto)
  • natural resources, particularly the non-renewables
  • congestion in the skies and at location3 airports
  • geosynchronous orbits
  • and many others – see Mason Gaffney’s paper, The Hidden Taxable Capacity of Land: Enough and to Spare, here

Land Value Taxation (LVT) can solve a lot of problems and set the stage for solving many others. Most of us believe that without this taxation reform, none of these problems are solvable; all we can do is place small bandages on them and spend a lot of money on programs which help relatively few victims.

We seek a society with NO VICTIMS.