Mason Gaffney wrote:
>----------------- HES POSTING -----------------
>John Medaille's gloomy assessment of how concentrated wealth will always
>beat back Georgist taxation is more downbeat than history warrants, IMHO. I
>suggest a look at *New Life in Old Cities*, 2006, (NY: Robert Schalkenbach
>Fdtn, ISBN 0-911312-92-7). This work documents how Georgeish (if not 100%
>Georgist) policies were applied in many American cities during their various
>golden ages of fast population growth.


Mason, with respect, I must point out that your 
examples reinforce my point rather than refute 
it, because they are all in the past; that is, 
they have all been beaten back. This is certainly 
the impression I get from reading "Land-Value 
Taxation Around the World, Second Edition," 
edited by Robert Andelson, a staunch Georgist. 
The practical problem of Georgism has always been 
how to value the economic rent, and the political 
problem has always been how to maintain the 
system in the face of concentrated ownership. 
After all, Georgism is an attack on land 
speculation, and those who would speculate must 
first get rid of the LVT. My own guess is that 
the LVT cannot be maintained in the face of 
concentrated ownership, and that distributed 
ownership cannot be maintained without an LVT.

Nor was I arguing against the adequacy of the LVT 
for the proper purposes of government, but rather 
for it. As for the improper purposes of 
government, no source is ever adequate, nor 
should it be; this helps to explain our $9 
Trillion debt ($44T if you throw in the social 
funds). Putting the gov't on a diet and cutting 
off other sources of funds, and particularly the 
source called the "income tax" but really a labor 
tax, is one of the chief advantages of the LVT.

On another note, we can see some effects of an 
approximation of the LVT in the current housing 
crises. I read in the paper this morning that 
home values have dropped 11% across the country, 
but only 3% here in Texas. Texas relies on the 
property tax rather than income taxes, and the 
property tax approximates (imperfectly) an LVT. 
As a result, property values did not run up as 
much as they did in income tax states, and won't 
run down as much. Somewhere there must be a study 
of the effects of proposition 13 on California's 
home prices; I suspect that the exaggerated 
values could not have happened without prop 13.


John C. M?daille