Wealth and Want The URL comes from the subtitle to Progress & Poverty -- and the goal is widely shared prosperity in the 21st century. How do we get there from here? A roadmap and a reference source.
Reforming the Property Tax for the Common Good I'm a tax reform activist who seeks to promote fairness and reduce poverty. Let's start with the enabling legislation and state requirements for the property tax. There are opportunities for great good!
Henry George: Progress and Poverty: An inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with increase of wealth ... The Remedy This is perhaps the most important book ever written on the subjects of poverty, political economy, how we might live together in a society dedicated to the ideals Americans claim to believe are self-evident. It will provide you new lenses through which to view many of our most serious problems and how we might go about solving them: poverty, sprawl, long commutes, despoilation of the environment, housing affordability, wealth concentration, income concentration, concentration of power, low wages, etc. Read it online, or in hardcopy.
Bob Drake's abridgement of Henry George's original: Progress and Poverty: Why There Are Recessions and Poverty Amid Plenty -- And What To Do About It! This is a very readable thought-by-thought updating of Henry George's longer book, written in the language of a newsweekly. A fine way to get to know Henry George's ideas. Available online at progressandpoverty.org and http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm
Pages I refer to often
Income Distribution in the US How is our income distributed? Well, it is pretty concentrated. How concentrated? Take a look.
Progress and Poverty, by Henry George Here are links to online editions of George's landmark book, Progress & Poverty, including audio and a number of abridgments -- the shortest is 30 words! I commend this book to your attention, if you are concerned about economic justice, poverty, sprawl, energy use, pollution, wages, housing affordability. Its observations will change how you approach all these problems. A mind-opening experience!
Wealth Concentration Tables from 2004 SCF: 50-40-5-4-1 These tables show how concentrated the ownership of various kinds of assets are. With calculations you won't find anywhere else! This version is less aggregated: Bottom 50%, Next 40%, Next 5%, Next 4% and Top 1%.
A committee convened by former New York Governor Spitzer is looking at the Property Tax in NYS with an eye to capping it or providing so-called circuit breakers, in the form of a rebate from the state for any 70% of the residential (owner-occupied, first home) property tax that exceeds a certain percentage of a household's Adjusted Gross Income.
I'm pleased to share (with permission of the author) something that
appeared on a mailing list I subscribe to. The conversation was along
the lines of "how do we share the idea of land value taxation [a reform of the property tax] with people who are used to hating the property tax?"
Roy Langston wrote,
When I encounter the usual unreasoning hatred of property taxes, I just point out a few inconvenient truths, along these lines:
One of the things we hear about property taxes is that rising property taxes are driving poor widows on fixed incomes out of their lifetime homes -- and that therefore the property tax must be "reformed" or replaced by taxes which fall on other groups of citizens: e.g., workers, consumers.
Is this the direction we should go? Is the fact that some people live in places they can no longer afford a reason to make a major change in the tax most municipalities rely on?
LVTfan thinks otherwise. Yes, the property tax is in need of some reform, but it is fundamentally the best tax available to us.
Friday night, PBS's NOW program had an excellent piece about Alabama's tax system. It featured three families from different parts of the income and property spectrum, and one of my heroes, Susan Pace Hamill. People whose income is below the federal poverty line pay income taxes in Alabama, and groceries carry sales taxes, at rates as high as 10% or 11%! But property taxes are low.
Have you noticed that the places where property taxes are high seem to be the best places to live, with the largest proportion of the children going on to attend 4-year colleges? Have you noticed that where property taxes are low, there is a great deal of poverty and poor schools and living situations that result in undereducated children? Which sort of place would you prefer to live in? Which sort would you like your grandchildren to grow up in? Your nieces and nephews to raise their children in? Should other people's children have anything less?
The series of posts appearing below this one were copied in from my primary blog, http://lvtfan.typepad.com. LVTfan is a reference to the only tax I can think of that deserves a fan club: Land Value Taxation. There are many more posts there than here, and I comment them to your attention!
Recently, four city mayors in Connecticut
proposed that cities ought to be permitted to impose a 1% sales tax if
they chose. Those who spend much time thinking about incentives
recognize this as a poor idea. I particularly liked this pair of
letters to the editor in the New London Day:
STAMFORD - During an appearance yesterday at the Urban Transitway
construction site, U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., called for
major national investment in roads, trains, bridges and other
infrastructure.
Dodd came to town to promote his bill that would set up an independent
national bank for such projects. The bank would designate regionally
significant projects for loans, loan guarantees or other financial help
and issue tax-exempt bonds to finance them.
Dodd said the United States needs a national policy and a dedicated
funding stream for maintaining infrastructure, rather than leaving it
to politicians to fight for money for individual projects.
It may be a dry topic, but it's important, he said.
"It normally glazes over the eyes of the most determined listener," Dodd said. "I'm proud to be in a city that cares about it."
The title for this post was prompted by an article in the NYT about
people not raised on farms deciding to become farmers, particularly in
places near large cities. It seems that local food was said to be the
answer to a number of questions. I'm generally in favor of it, but I'm
not sure it is the answer to as many questions as its supporters
claim. That doesn't make "local food" a bad thing; just not the answer
to as many questions as it might seem.
But the title for this post sprang to mind. It seems to me that Land Value Taxation is the answer to a lot of very important questions.
By this, I mean fixing the problem of low wages -- wages
insufficient to support an individual or a family in conditions we
consider acceptable on a reasonable number of hours of labor per week.
I don't mean minimum wage legislation, or living wage legislation, both
of which I regard as well-intentioned but ultimately destructive for
the community they intend to help. I don't mean measures like the
Earned Income Tax Credit, either. It appears that people must jump
through high hoops to get those dollars (which often seems to require
professional advice, at a price), and then a significant portion of the
money goes not to the wage earner but to his tax preparer/advisor, in
the form of fees and interest.
One of my standing google alerts took me to an article on Florida
taxes. On the comments pages, some people were proposing the FairTax as
a good alternative to the current federal income tax. I ended up
posting several comments in response to their statements, and thought
I'd cross-post my comments here.
