The Top Ten Reasons Why the Georgist Remedy is Not a Tax

by Daniel Syddall

10. Taxes are arbitrary. Land dues are not arbitrary.

9. Taxes are unjustified. Land dues are the fulfillment of justice.

8. Taxes add cost. Land rent is always paid anyway, so land dues prevent private appropriation, reducing land costs.

7. Taxes are inimical to property rights. Land dues are essential for property rights.

6. Taxes create inefficiency, by imposing deadweight loss. Land dues raise efficiency, by reducing deadweight loss. Continue reading

The Top Ten Obvious Facts for Georgists

10. Wage Rates Don’t Depend on Productivity.

We hear a lot about lifting oneself by one’s own bootstraps — but that can’t be done unless there’s a pool of poor saps to lift oneself above. Education and training can help an individual to compete — but competition, of abundant workers for scarce jobs, drives wages down even while overall productivity increases.

9. Technological Progress Reduces the Value of Products.

Look at today’s low prices for a microwave oven, a gigabyte of digital memory, a dress shirt or a car that gets 35 mpg and goes from 0 to 60 in seven seconds. We just can’t blame our eroding standard of living on the prices of the goods we buy.

8. Land Is Not Produced by Labor.

It just isn’t, and that makes land fundamentally different from things that are produced by labor. Economists have tried and failed to get around this fact, in many complex and convoluted ways, for a century. Continue reading