tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8425320452010909021.post8028847986091985078..comments2024-02-11T16:29:16.235+05:30Comments on INVISIBLE ANALYSIS: FRANCE FIASCO SPEAKS SOMETHING ELSE CAN YOU HEAR IT PART 1INDRANEEL SENGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16737884422257285340noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8425320452010909021.post-27043423903921174122018-12-09T14:03:34.664+05:302018-12-09T14:03:34.664+05:30Socially Just Taxation and Its Effects (17 listed)...Socially Just Taxation and Its Effects (17 listed)<br><br>Our present complicated system for taxation is unfair and has many faults. The biggest problem is to arrange it on a socially just basis. Many companies employ their workers in various ways and pay them diversely. Since these companies are registered in different countries for a number of categories, the determination the criterion for a just tax system becomes impossible, particularly if based on a fair measure of human work-activity. So why try when there is a better means available, which is really a true and socially just method? <br><br>Adam Smith (“Wealth of Nations”, 1776) says that land is one of the 3 factors of production (the other 2 being labor and durable capital goods). The usefulness of land is in the price that tenants pay as rent, for access rights to the particular site in question. Land is often considered as being a form of capital, since it is traded similarly to other durable capital goods items. However it is not actually man-made, so rightly it does not fall within this category. The land was originally a gift of nature (if not of God) for which all people should be free to share in its use. But its site-value greatly depends on location and is related to the community density in that region, as well as the natural resources such as rivers, minerals, animals or plants of specific use or beauty, when or after it is possible to reach them. Consequently, most of the land value is created by man within his society and therefore its advantage should logically and ethically be returned to the community for its general use, as explained by Martin Adams (in “LAND”, 2015). <br><br>However, due to our existing laws, land is owned and formally registered and its value is traded, even though it can't be moved to another place, like other kinds of capital goods. This right of ownership gives the landlord a big advantage over the rest of the community because he determines how it may be used, or if it is to be held out of use, until the city grows and the site becomes more valuable. Thus speculation in land values is encouraged by the law, in treating a site of land as personal or private property—as if it were an item of capital goods, although it is not (see Mason Gaffney and Fred Harrison: “The Corruption of Economics”, 2005). <br><br>Regarding taxation and local community spending, the municipal taxes we pay are partly used for improving the infrastructure. This means that the land becomes more useful and valuable without the landlord doing anything—he/she will always benefit from our present tax regime. This also applies when the status of unused land is upgraded and it becomes fit for community development. Then when this news is leaked, after landlords and banks corruptly pay for this information, speculation in land values is rife. There are many advantages if the land values were taxed instead of the many different kinds of production-based activities such as earnings, purchases, capital gains, home and foreign company investments, etc., (with all their regulations, complications and loop-holes). The only people due to lose from this are those who exploit the growing values of the land over the past years, when “mere” land ownership confers a financial benefit, without the owner doing a scrap of work. Consequently, for a truly socially just kind of taxation to apply there can only be one method--Land-Value Taxation. <br><br>Macrocompassionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09852689411841500628noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8425320452010909021.post-16834197317695352942018-12-09T13:53:43.491+05:302018-12-09T13:53:43.491+05:30Reforms certainly do need sacrifices. In our prese...Reforms certainly do need sacrifices. In our present case, where there is an unequal and unfair distribution of wealth, it is the over-wealthy who will need to make the sacrifice. Much as I hate to be writing like a Communist who calls for the Preliterate to take charge and to reshape the national economy, there seems to me to be a need for serious changes to be introduced. This would be before the powerful and greedy monopolists of this succeed in polluting the atmosphere so badly that even they will discover (too late) that the numbers of us who are dying due to this change in the atmosphere is unnecessary, and that they the monopolists could be kinder to the poor.Macrocompassionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09852689411841500628noreply@blogger.com