Speaking Truth to Power: Land Value Free Lunch Part 2

Wendell Fitzgerald, President of the Board, San Francisco Henry George School. With Peter Melton. HenryGeorgeSF.org. Produced by DanShaw.com.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Henry
• George
• School
• economics
• progress
• poverty

[africkinamerican]

It's not about harvesting resources, it's about harvesting the manmade thing called "land value" for the use of the community which creates it.

Under such a system, land is used more wisely. The more valuable land is used more intensively, and the less valuable (usually land further from cities) is spared instead of eaten up by the nonstop sprawl we see in so many urban areas today.

[dr131]

Won't this just give entire community a stake in highly pollutive activities? Now instead of one company trying to extract large profits at the sake of the environment, entire towns will want to harvest all of their resources since it will increase their community's revenue. This policy also seems like it would encourage politicians to "rape their countries land" in order to increase tax revenue for short sighted spending sprees.

[moneybags512]

true, but obviously what we're doing right now isn't working for a lot of people.

You could certainly get most of what you would need from a tax like this.

[oneearth22222]

I took an economics class through the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation about 25 years ago in Edmonton, Alta. Canada, and George's wise and wonderful words left a lasting impression on me. Thanks for posting these videos. I would definitely like to see more (maybe some debating?).

[lvtfan]

Land value taxation may not be sufficient today, alone, to meet all the revenue needs. But it can meet a large share of them -- and by its implementation, we may reduce significantly the need for some of the spending we do now to help people injured by our current structure.

[lvtfan]

Today a lot of the federal income tax comes from our major urban areas. Under LVT, a lot of our tax revenue would also come from urban areas, but it would no longer be a burden to the economy, because this is truly a burdenless "tax."

[lvtfan]

But "land" includes a lot of things besides the value of urban sites.  It includes things like electromagnetic spectrum (which we *say* belongs to the American people, but all evidence says belongs to corporations), water rights, landing slots at major airports, natural resources under private and corporate lands, etc. Look on the website above for a theme called "land includes" for more about this.

[lvtfan]

Many people think that if we started to rely on LVT, many of the social and economic ills that we spend our common money on would heal, and so government spending could be reduced, allowing us to further reduce reliance on taxes on income, buildings, sales and other things we really should never have started taxing in the first place.

[lvtfan]

For more about these ideas, see wealthandwant dot com.

Formica45, land value taxation can provide a large share of the revenue now taken from a number of other tax bases. It will probably not provide 100%. But that is not a reason not to use land value taxation first, and then supplement that revenue with other less desirable taxes as necessary.

[Formica45]

Can a system like this sustain an economy beyond the city? Or can a nation state be sustained if all cities were doing this? More explanation of the ramifications of this system must be asked.