Tag: Land

An Equal Rights Economy

Inkwell Institute

Budget Deficit Series #4

Everyone in Washington is scrambling around trying to find the best way to lessen the deficit and work on a balanced budget…..I have been pointing out that there are a wealth of choices that NO one wants to talk about as a solution.

For years now I have tried to get more people interested in the concept of Land Value Taxation (LVT) and found an interesting article on the website,  http://www.ied.info:

By paying land (resource) rents to ourselves (socially collected) a citizenry is quintuply repaid through those continually circulating social-credits building roads, railroads, water systems, sewer systems, and electric grids (any natural monopoly) as well as fund governments, provide education, health care and retirement.

  • Infrastructure and populations, not capitalists, establish the use-value of land and resources and their rental values provide the social credits to fund all essential social services (the community social-credit-process).
  • Restructure to the just described honest capitalism and taxes disappear as your employed working hours and resource consumption drops by half as all enjoy a quality, secure, life.
  • This requires sharing the “productive” remaining jobs and equal pay for equally-productive labor.
  • Each region of the world, each nation, each region of a nation, each state, each county, each community, and each entrepreneur must have equal rights to their share of both created and saved finance capital (created money and savings). With those rights, entrepreneurs (private industry) will fill every niche within the production-distribution process.

You can follow those flows of money and commerce within this efficient economy in your head. Both the community process operating those natural monopolies and efficient private industry producing consumer products and services are fully visible.

There are answers to the money problems that we are facing as far as a country….the problem is NO one is willing to offer hard answers to hard questions….eventually, Americans will have to do the tough things if the country is to survive…..right now the country is settling for feel good slogans that accomplish absolutely nothing….but as we are witnessing those things are not working….the “real” solutions are lacking and the Congress keeps talking……

There are other ways to lessen the budget deficit without totally screwing the American people………as I have said before it would take hard choices that few politicians are willing to make….

There Is Another Cause Of The Economic Crisis

All is quiet on the economic front, at least until 2 Jan 09…..Kuwait craps on Dow, GM/Chrysler get their minimum amount of cash, Wall Street biggies are rolling in dough and foreclosures continue to rise.  By now everyone is tired of bad news, especially economic bad news and stick their heads into the wide screen TV and prey all will get better.  The spoiled, pampered nation ignores the obvious hoping it will go away.  No one wants to admit that the situation will get worse.

Few will admit to the causes of the problems and the biggest has been ignored for long enough.  Credit is the culprit, at least that is what they want us to believe.  Personally, I see another way.

THERE IS ANOTHER CAUSE, not yet mentioned, that must be considered before we can fully explain the impact of progress on the distribution of wealth. It is the confident expectation that land values will increase in the future. The steady increase of rent in all growing countries leads to speculation — holding onto land for a higher price than it would otherwise bring at that time.

The result of land being withheld is that the margin of the city is pushed away so much farther from the center. The actual margin of building is at the limits of the city. This corresponds to the margin of production in agriculture. But we will not find land available at its value for agricultural purposes, as we would if rent were determined simply by present requirements. Instead, we find — for a long distance beyond the city — that land bears a speculative value. This is based upon the belief that it will be required for urban purposes in the future. To reach the point at which land can be purchased at a price not based upon urban rent, we must go very far beyond the actual margin of urban use.

We may conceive of speculation as extending the margin of production. Or, we can look at it as carrying the rent line past the margin of production. However we view it, the influence of speculation on increasing rent is an important fact. It cannot be ignored in any complete theory of the distribution of wealth in progressive countries. Speculation is the force, arising from material progress, that constantly tends to increase rent in a greater ratio than progress increases production. As material progress goes on and productive power increases, speculation thus constantly tends to reduce wages — not merely relatively, but absolutely.

Speculation–It leads to land being withheld from use, as higher prices are expected. Thus, the margin of production is forced out farther than required by the necessities of production. As landowners confidently expect rents to increase further, they demand more rent than the land would provide under current conditions.

The price of land has been a major contributor to just about all our recessions and such.  When one acquires land to hold for higher prices–then that is speculation.  There is a way to control speculation, but the question is, does anyone really want to stop the cycle of boom or bust?  Thanks to American economist Henry George that answer is Land Value Taxation.

What Causes Poverty?

We can point at several causes to the question asked of what causes poverty?  Loss of a job, social injustices, education and the list can go on and on.  But can one factor be named as the cause of poverty?

Back in the late 1800’s an economist named Henry George stated that involuntary poverty and unemployment is the direct result of land speculation.  Speculators hold land out of use waiting for higher prices.  This means that land would not be readily available to labor and capital.  Thus, unemployment is the result because the land is not being used for production.

This withholding of the land leads to depressions and recessions in the business cycle.  Land speculation leads to higher prices in boom times that makes it too expensive for business to use.  And in turn labor suffers, production suffers.  In deflated times land values drop to a point where it stimulates investment and business.  Labor and production improves.  Unfortunately, this “good” times does not last.  For with the lower prices in land speculation returns and the cycle begins again of boom and bust.

According to this example the speculation in land prices leads to and is a direct cause of poverty.

I will understand it if Wall Street economists do not agree with this model.  But they are hiding their heads; they are wrong or they are just stupid.  Many seem afraid of this simple answer, they want to turn the science of economics into something it is not.  Many noted economists have won a many ward by inventing graphs and stats….but in reality it is not that complex….it boils down to speculation.

I know can it be as simple as that…and the answer is yes.  Look at the current economic situation–it began in the housing sector then moved on to the others.  The housing sector is most effected by speculation and that is what lead to this point in our economic history.  The prices kept climbing and financial wizards kept finding ways to put people onto land and it reached a point that it broke.  Speculation lead to this point and now it is on the down turn and eventually production will return when the price of land reaches a point that stimulates the business cycle.

By reading this one should get the understanding of what is happening in the world of economics.  I hope it helps.

Native Americans Withdraw From The US.

After hundreds of years of abuse and lies, the Lakotah Nation has officially withdrawn from the US.  Finally, after years of waiting and hoping the NAs have found a voice.  AIM was a beginning this is a continuation and with the grace of the  Great Spirit others will follow in their footsteps.  They are the leaders we have been looking for, now get behind them and force the government into a confrontation.

http://www.republicoflakotah.com/index.htm