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Income is not a measure of how fast your wealth is growing, it's a measure of how much salary and wage earners are compensated on a regular interval. Many peop
by ende 11y ago
Income is not a measure of how fast your wealth is growing, it's a measure of how much salary and wage earners are compensated on a regular interval. Many people earn income without necessarily earning wealth. If you want to target wealth, you need to target capital and the source of its generation. The Land Value Tax is exactly that, and it's not 'outdated and wrong economics' (whatever that is supposed to mean). The LVT is highly regarded among economists as among the most efficient taxes. If anything its conception was ahead of its time, as its single shortcoming was the impracticality of determining unimproved land values in the early 1900s before computers existed.
To address your points:
1) Nonsense. The income tax is discriminatory against anyone who makes an income. Many of the 1% don't rely upon income but rather capital dividends.
2) Piketty's ideas require world-wide coordination of wealth taxation dragnets; a highly unlikely proposition. The LVT on the other hand is a wealth tax that cannot be evaded through a Swiss bank account.
3) Not really sure what you're trying to say here. Any tax immediately impacts the price of whatever it is it is taxing. An income tax impacts the cost of labor, and its introduction likewise impacted all those who were earning an income when the tax was introduced. What is your point here? One of the reasons the LVT is so highly regarded among economists is because of its minimal economic impacts.
- JesperRavn 11y agothe LVT is highly regarded among economists as among the most efficient taxes. Almost no mainstream economists recommend a land value tax. For example, consult any graduate or undergraduate textbook. I would challenge you to find a single professor in a top 20 school who advocates a land value tax as the primary form of taxation.
- ende 11y agoLVT has maintained support among mainstream economists as recent as Milton Friedman, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and Tyler Cowen. I have no idea where you are getting your misconceptions from.
- JesperRavn 11y agoFriedman and Stiglitz yes, but they are not very recent (in terms of when they produced their main work) but for the others Tyler Cowen [0]: So I take the Georgist view to imply two claims. First, it is easier or better to tax barebones land than barebones labor. Second, taxing a factor directly is much better than taxing complements of that factor. Since I am not convinced either of these are true, I hold no particular attachment to the idea of a single tax on land Paul Krugman [1]: "Believe it or not, urban economics models actually do suggest that Georgist taxation would be the right approach at least to finance city growth. But I would just say: I don’t think you can raise nearly enough money to run a modern welfare state by taxing land [only]." >I have no idea where you are getting your misconceptions from. I'm pretty sure you are getting yours from Wikipedia. [0] http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/02/why_are_land_ta.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/02/why... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax