georgism broken record ad nausium

[FrankChodorov]

I like the plan .... I am just not going to wait to have 50 people join in. I am doing it already and if you join me I will help you out.

How about this:

I think you should move to Keene and refuse to pay the outrages bill that the local crime bosses hand you in the form of a property tax.
Then I think you should turn over the tax collectors tables with me once a week and get arrested with me.
Then I think you should tell jokes in jail that make me laugh and make the guards change thier minds and let us go.

from Leo Tolstoy's "Resurrection"

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/t/tolstoy/leo/t65r/chapter65.html

excerpt:
Nekhludoff asked the foreman to let the women take the cows, and went back into the garden to go on thinking out his problem, but there was nothing more to think about.

Everything seemed so clear to him now that he could not stop wondering how it was that everybody did not see it, and that he himself had for such a long while not seen what was so clearly evident. The people were dying out, and had got used to the dying-out process, and had formed habits of life adapted to this process: there was the great mortality among the children, the over-working of the women, the under-feeding, especially of the aged. And so gradually had the people come to this condition that they did not realise the full horrors of it, and did not complain. Therefore, we consider their condition natural and as it should be. Now it seemed as clear as daylight that the chief cause of the people?s great want was one that they themselves knew and always pointed out, i.e., that the land which alone could feed them had been taken from them by the landlords.

And how evident it was that the children and the aged died because they had no milk, and they had no milk because there was no pasture land, and no land to grow corn or make hay on. It was quite evident that all the misery of the people or, at least by far the greater part of it, was caused by the fact that the land which should feed them was not in their hands, but in the hands of those who, profiting by their rights to the land, live by the work of these people. The land so much needed by men was tilled by these people, who were on the verge of starvation, so that the corn might be sold abroad and the owners of the land might buy themselves hats and canes, and carriages and bronzes, etc. He understood this as clearly as he understood that horses when they have eaten all the grass in the inclosure where they are kept will have to grow thin and starve unless they are put where they can get food off other land.

This was terrible, and must not go on. Means must be found to alter it, or at least not to take part in it. ?And I will find them,? he thought, as he walked up and down the path under the birch trees.

In scientific circles, Government institutions, and in the papers we talk about the causes of the poverty among the people and the means of ameliorating their condition; but we do not talk of the only sure means which would certainly lighten their condition, i.e., giving back to them the land they need so much.

Henry George?s fundamental position recurred vividly to his mind and how he had once been carried away by it, and he was surprised that he could have forgotten it. The earth cannot be any one?s property; it cannot be bought or sold any more than water, air, or sunshine. All have an equal right to the advantages it gives to men. And now he knew why he had felt ashamed to remember the transaction at Kousminski. He had been deceiving himself. He knew that no man could have a right to own land, yet he had accepted this right as his, and had given the peasants something which, in the depth of his heart, he knew he had no right to. Now he would not act in this way, and would alter the arrangement in Kousminski also. And he formed a project in his mind to let the land to the peasants, and to acknowledge the rent they paid for it to be their property, to be kept to pay the taxes and for communal uses. This was, of course, not the single-tax system, still it was as near an approach to it as could be had under existing circumstances. His chief consideration, however, was that in this way he would no longer profit by the possession of landed property.

[FrankChodorov]

SD isn't like the bay area .... there might not be a pile of equity.

buildings fall down (depreciate) while land values appreciate (economic rent)...

check your Tolstoy readings!

[Dreepa]

land values appreciate

You can say land values SHOULD appreciate.  But you cannot say lands value appreciate.

Some land is worth more than other land.

[FrankChodorov]

land values appreciate

You can say land values SHOULD appreciate.  But you cannot say lands value appreciate.

Some land is worth more than other land.

as long as demand is increasing via population increases then land values must go up as supply is fixed...

maybe not in specific locales were populations are declining or speculation has produced a bubble but how can it be any other way?

[Dreepa]

Actually land values would be going down too

can you please explain to me using basic economic theory how something can go down in value when the supply is fixed and the demand continues to rise as populations rise?

Does demand really rise?

You can build up... 3-d space.  I mean look how many people live in NYC.
Also you can put 15 in an apartment.

The whole freakin' desert of AZ is wide up.  I don't want to live there.

When a factory goes out of business  land sometimes becomes cheaper in that area.

Might be an 'external factor' but it does happen.

Geography and external factors do determine price... not necessarily population.

[FrankChodorov]

Actually land values would be going down too

can you please explain to me using basic economic theory how something can go down in value when the supply is fixed and the demand continues to rise as populations rise?

Does demand really rise?

You can build up... 3-d space.  I mean look how many people live in NYC.
Also you can put 15 in an apartment.

The whole freakin' desert of AZ is wide up.  I don't want to live there.

When a factory goes out of business  land sometimes becomes cheaper in that area.

Might be an 'external factor' but it does happen.

Geography and external factors do determine price... not necessarily population.

this is simple supply and demand economic theory folks...

[Dreepa]

can you please explain to me using basic economic theory how something can go down in value when the supply is fixed and the demand continues to rise as populations rise?
....


this is simple supply and demand economic theory folks...

So I will let you answer your own question.

[FrankChodorov]

can you please explain to me using basic economic theory how something can go down in value when the supply is fixed and the demand continues to rise as populations rise?
....


this is simple supply and demand economic theory folks...

So I will let you answer your own question.

you can't explain it...

[Lloyd Danforth]

SD isn't like the bay area .... there might not be a pile of equity.

buildings fall down (depreciate) while land values appreciate (economic rent)...

check your Tolstoy readings!

AS the housing market falls apart, the value of land will drop

[FrankChodorov]

SD isn't like the bay area .... there might not be a pile of equity.

buildings fall down (depreciate) while land values appreciate (economic rent)...

check your Tolstoy readings!

AS the housing market falls apart, the value of land will drop

yes, hence my caveat statement of a "speculative bubble"...

[tracysaboe]

We've been over this numerous times.

1) There's nothing wrong with speculation.

2) A Speculative bubble is caused by government easy money policies and manipulation of the interest rates.

It has nothing to do with your Georgist theories.

Tracy

[FrankChodorov]

We've been over this numerous times.

1) There's nothing wrong with speculation.

2) A Speculative bubble is caused by government easy money policies and manipulation of the interest rates.

It has nothing to do with your Georgist theories.

speculation in land is the result of the neo-classical/marginalist utility revolution (that you worship) that treated land the same as capital...

it pits the return on land as it lays idle against employing labor on land.

[tracysaboe]

And you say you've read "free market environmentalism."

Go back. Reread the section on the forests that were all privately owned in the midwest.  Speculation. Purchasing something as an investment with the intent of selling it when prices rise keeps prices stable and prevents rollerecoaster gluts where everything is dirt cheep and then high ammounts of scarcity after everyones had their way with the land.

Speculation is just as much a type of labor as anything else. Investment is labor.

And I notice you completely ignore the other comment about the bubble being caused by government manipulation of interest rates and money supply.

Tracy

[FrankChodorov]

Purchasing something as an investment with the intent of selling it when prices rise keeps prices stable and prevents rollerecoaster gluts where everything is dirt cheep and then high ammounts of scarcity after everyones had their way with the land.

Speculation is just as much a type of labor as anything else. Investment is labor.

over accumulation is set in motion by the state granting of monopoly privilege to the interests that it serves - big business.

they then ask for more interference in the marketplace  via the politicians that they own...rather than deal with root causes - privileges.

investment in land to speculate is nothing more than using a legal means to capture the wealth (labor) of those you exclude.

in the system I advocate there would be no purchase price to land.

[Russell Kanning]

So someday you will join our property tax revolt Tracy...... And Frank will not be joining us.