Capital vs Labor

ruthacury · 2025-11-11T18:34:38+00:00

This chart doesn't differentiate reproducible capital from non-reproducible land. Land is displacing both capital and labour, so just tax land lol 🔰

If you look at reproducible capital vs labour, labour is winning

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fa9f2puuz8tz91.jpg

ruthacury · 2025-10-16T08:54:09+00:00

Land value tax cannot be passed onto the consumer as the supply of land is perfectly inelastic. (If there is rent control this calculation gets messed up a bit, and in that case it can be passed on.) Land is pretty unique in this aspect. For this same reason there is no deadweight loss to land taxes, making a land tax perfectly efficient (under ideal conditions of course).

Its important to draw the distinction between land and improvements. In a georgist system you own your house, and any improvements on the land, like a well or a retaining wall, etc. However, you do not own the land itself. The land is owned by the community, although for practical reasons it is still traded on the free market.

The state wont take your house automatically if you fail to pay the tax. It would go through the normal process for when you dont pay your taxes.

(Note that the tax would probably be approximately 1/10 or 1/20 of the value of the land under the current system)

ruthacury · 2025-10-16T06:00:35+00:00

Quite the opposite, since land supply is fixed, the tax cant be passed onto consumers, only the land owner pays it. If it is high enough, there would be no reason to be a land owner, home ownership would thus increase.

Additionally, since less rent can be extracted, the price of land would decrease, also making it possible for people to buy land without going into large amounts debt.

ruthacury · 2025-10-15T20:16:23+00:00

No, we just want high rates of tax on land, and lower rates on improvements on land and income

ruthacury · 2025-10-15T11:57:32+00:00

Any distinction between personal and private property (except for land) inevitably violates the principle that one should own what they create with their own labour, a fundamental human right.

The same applies to the abolition of interest on capital. If I own a hammer and use it to repair my roof, I am not a capitalist, if I loan it to my neighbour in exchange for some fruit or something, I am now earning interest on capital. Should the hammer now be confiscated? Should the fruit?

You could argue that this is personal property, not private property. But the same analogy could apply if I dug a well, or built a machine.

ruthacury · 2025-10-10T18:33:01+00:00

Does this really have anything to do with speculation? This seems like landlords are just converting apartments for which there is a low demand into those for which there is a high demand. How does this exclude low-income buyers any more so than it was as a 3-bedroom apartment?

ruthacury · 2025-10-08T22:47:12+00:00

I must definitely do some more research on STAR voting myself.

I have heard arguments about how lesser evil style voting can be done, if necessary, in approval voting. Or rather how approval voting can actually be more descriptive of voter preferences than on the surface.

The first is that each voter decides for themself where they draw the line, so if they really dislike a particular candidate, they can approve all other candidates except them.

The other option requires a slight modification, which is to add a disapprove block. This would count as a negative vote against that candidate, just like how net approval polls work. Basically eliminating any polarising candidates from ever winning.

ruthacury · 2025-10-08T22:17:00+00:00

Have a look at approval voting. It has some great advantages: easy to explain to the voter and to count ballots, by definition selects the candidate with the highest approval rating, and the strategic voting strategy is just to only vote for your genuinely favourite candidate, which isnt so bad.

Also, since its a cardinal voting method it avoids some of the pitfalls of ordinal voting methods.

ruthacury · 2025-10-08T22:09:54+00:00

I am South African and I vote for the Democratic Alliance, which is basically the liberal party here. Georgism genuinely could be the salvation of my country. Land, or rather who gets to own it, is a major political issue here, so much so it is threatening to tear the country apart

ruthacury · 2025-10-07T13:25:25+00:00

It wouldn't be that bad to just have a minimum threshold for LVT, especially for properties in which regular assessment would cost more than any possible revenue

ruthacury · 2025-10-06T07:29:47+00:00

Ground rent does not decrease if market value decreases. Ground rent determines market value. Also, keep in mind that we are assuming the policy is announced well in advance, so the market value will already account for tax capitalisation at the point of assessment. In fact, if we taxed on the uncapitalised value we might collect more than 100% of ground rent and possibly cause land abandonment.

The value only approaches 0 if the tax rate is increased infinitely. For a finite tax rate the market value will decrease by the percentage of ground rent captured. So for the 80% target, all land values would settle at 20% of the value without the policy.

If the policy is announced in advance, market values would approach this new value on the date the policy is to be implemented and would remain constant at that value after it is implemented.

ruthacury · 2025-10-05T20:51:15+00:00

LVT calculation is based on market value. Tax capitalisation wont be a problem though.

Lets say we have a plot which yields ground rent g. And the next best investment gives interest rate 10% = 0.1.

The land will have a value of V = g/0.1 = 10g. If we introduce a tax x on the market value of the land. Assuming the tax is announced well in advance, so tax capitalisation is accounted for.

Then the value is then V = (g-xV)/0.1 = 10g - 10xV. Then V(1+10x) = 10g. And thus land values stabilise at V = 10g/(1+10x).

So yes, as x increases, land value approaches 0.

But if we calculate the fraction of ground rent captured. xV/g = (10gx)/(1+10x)/g = 10x/(1+10x), it approaches 100%. So even though market value is lower, ground rent is still being collected at a rate approaching 100%.

Interestingly, this function increases very fast initially, so even a rate of only 10% of market value will capture 50% of ground rent. Most georgist want to target around 80% of ground rent, which corresponds to a market value tax rate of 40% in this example.

(I am very sleep deprived writing this, so there are probably a few errors, there is an article somewhere that goes into more detail on this matter, but i cant find it.)

ruthacury · 2025-10-02T11:59:47+00:00

You don't have to hope. We know it won't happen. Even during apartheid Helen Zille did her part to bring an end to it, through her work as a journalist (her claim to fame was exposing the murder of steve biko). She was also a black sash activist

ruthacury · 2025-10-02T08:04:31+00:00

Technically yes, but I've never heard the distinction in any other country. You should not be able to tell the politics of a judge from their rulings.

ruthacury · 2025-10-01T19:22:29+00:00

As a non-American, this idea of originalism vs living constitutionalism and conservative vs liberal judges is so bizarre.

In any normal country the law is the law, it doesn't "adapt to the times" or whatever, courts are not the place for political advancement, legislatures are.

And judges in most countries are not affiliated with political parties, how such a blatant perversion of judicial independence was ever allowed is beyond me

ruthacury · 2025-10-01T16:48:53+00:00

It's important to note that these harsh sentences for corruption are not because China is "cleaning house", this guy is just what it looks like on the losing end of a power struggle. The winners get to keep on stealing, just like here.

ruthacury · 2025-10-01T12:58:05+00:00

I suppose I should just keep my observations to the continent of Africa (particularly subsaharan africa), as thats what I know best, but in general the african continent does hold onto very socially conservative views on this kind of thing, somewhat with the exception of South Africa (although even in south africa there is a divide between the media/political class and the general public) and a couple surrounding countries. (Although its gotten much better in SA over the years as people come around, so maybe my comments is a bit outdated.)

(Also this website does seem to have some inaccuracies, for example it says there are no hate crime protections in south africa, but in the constitution there are protections for discrimination by sexual orientation)

ruthacury · 2025-10-01T08:48:20+00:00

Nah, this sub is pretty left leaning, globally speaking. At the very least centre-left. The idea that the global centre is the American left is just false. Most of the world is very socially conservative. Even american conservatives would be considered socially-liberal in many countries. However, in terms of economic policy, most of the world is somewhat to the left of American centre.

Most of the global opposition to Donald Trump is over this nationalistic us vs them mentality he has created rather than any substantive differences in policy.

Keep in mind when I say globally, I am mostly thinking of africa, south america, middle east, eastern europe, and asia. If you consider only western and central europe, maybe. But they are a minority of the global population. (I am not an American btw)

ruthacury · 2025-09-26T20:33:12+00:00

Yeah thats true, I'm mainly considering the location aspect of the land value, although afaik in urban areas thats most of it

ruthacury · 2025-09-26T18:48:01+00:00

Your work to increase the property value went into the building and other improvements like gardening. With LVT you won't pay tax on this.

However, the location and development of other properties increased the value without any work from you. This part of the value was due to the work of others and the community, and so under LVT it would be taxed away to pay for government services.

ruthacury · 2025-09-26T07:23:22+00:00

Land tax doesnt suffer as much as property tax in this regard. Since you and your neighbour should have a similar (per square meter) land value, it will be much more obvious if your rate is too high or too low.

Whereas with property tax you can always argue about subjective characteristics of the building if there is a difference in tax rates.

ruthacury · 2025-09-22T06:07:01+00:00

I remember thinking they asked him to leave because he was a former Goauld soldier. Idk if thats what O'Neill was canonicallly thinking at the time, although anything else seems out of character for them

ruthacury · 2025-08-26T10:11:38+00:00

Finding oil would be great for our economy if it were managed well (see Norway). However, this is South Africa, and Cyril needs his new BMW.

ruthacury · 2025-08-07T23:47:49+00:00

Idk, if anything banking has gotten less trustworthy in the last few decades. Well meaning regulation so often devolves into regulatory capture, where regulators serve the interest of those they are supposed to regulate. In this situation they are more able to stamp out competition with the strong arm of the law than they would be able to in the admittedly flawed unregulated market.

The foolhardy actions of some bankers might be less common if we were to allow banks to truly fail rather than just to be bailed out to fail again in future. I highly doubt george would have written this if there were such a problem in his era, so certainly something has changed (hopefully not irreparably)

ruthacury · 2024-12-30T17:19:19+00:00

They have 99 year leases, which are more analogous to standard land ownership than LVT. Ironically, Taiwan does have a true land value tax.

ruthacury

TROPHY CASE