/lit/ - Literature

>>17576935
Because it's true and works. Porky doesn't want to get taxed on all the land he owns.

>>17576935
The answer is very simple: Marxism. Georgism arrived in the anglo world before Marxism, and it ignited a progressive political movement throughout the world. Publishers of George's highly popular works characterised Marx as "the next thing to read". It turns out that having a pragmatic, evolutionary set of policies that gradually change the system to be more just is not as popular as sperging out against a satanic caricature of capitalism, blaming it for everything wrong with the world, and imagining that all you need to do is hold a revolution... flip over the table and voila - on the other side of the revolutionary moment is a banquet laid out by Jesus himself and there is a place set for everyone. Marxism had a story that was more attention grabbing, emotionally keen, and generous with its promises. Georgism was boring but would have done what it set out to do.

Ultimately Georgism has been buried by the mutual consent of rentier capitalists and marxists, who are both happy to see the back of it because it was in the way of what they were both seeking. The landowners want to make financial gains by privatizing socially generated wealth. Political marxists unironically need the poor to be so miserable and tortured that they are willing to join and embrace violent revolution, so they unconsciously resist setting up good systems when they are not moving closer to their exact wet dream political ideal.

>>17577283
good post

>>17577283
But social democracy and Keynesianism have been the mainstay of centre-left parties since the early 20th century. Why not Georgism?

>>17577371
How do those sound similar to Georgism to you?

>>17578190
I didn't say they were. But anon was saying Marxism displaced Georgism.

>tax land
>porky reinvests into something else
>no tax
It wasn't very well thought out

>>17578231
The land will still be there to be taxed; it's impossible to offshore it. And some locations will always be more valuable than others and some people (and corporations) will own more land than others.

If land stops being a store of value by unproductive speculators THEN GOOD. Land will be cheaper for developers and prospective homeowners. Cheaper development means more quality and quantity of housing for renters too, as slumlords won't be able to charge premiums on rundowns without losing tenants to the competition.

With lower rents and mortgages, and more construction jobs besides derived jobs from new buildings, regular people will have more money and governments won't need to spend as much on cash transfers to the poor - because unemployment and living costs will be lower.

>>17578310
>If land stops being a store of value by unproductive speculators THEN GOOD
The unproductive speculation gives the land its value in the modern world
None will build there and none will want to be anywhere near there
It's worthless without it unless you're waiting for the catastrophe at which point the warlord will take it from you
People in third world countries would rather work in horrific factories than till the fucking land

>>17577371
It was displaced because Marxists didn't want to work within the system, they wanted to overthrow it. George was a capitalist and Georgism was a framework for capitalism to use one of its own mechanisms to solve the very same issues Marxists wanted to address. He favored a more realistic and measured approach while Marxists wanted to burn it all to the ground and build a new utopia from the ground up. Compared to the latter, Georgism didn't sound very cash-money anymore

>>17576963
/thread

>>17577371
>>17578221
It was displaced because Marxists didn't want to work within the system, they wanted to overthrow it. George was a capitalist and Georgism was a framework for capitalism to use one of its own mechanisms to solve the very same issues Marxists wanted to address. He favored a more realistic and measured approach while Marxists wanted to burn it all to the ground and build a new utopia from the ground up. Compared to the latter, Georgism didn't sound very cash-money anymore

>>17578991
You still haven't accounted for the fact that most labour parties in the developed world weren't Marxist but parliamentary social democrats and trade unionists.

>>17579004
You asked why Marxism displaced Georgism, which is because it wasn't radical enough.
If you're asking why Georgism didn't displace social democracy, the answer is that it was (or at least sounded) too radical for them.

Social democracy was a form of neoliberalism that was just progressive enough to placate the masses without eliminating the ability of "porky" (particularly rentier capitalists) to freely generate artificial wealth.

>>17576935
Because he was a Ricardian. Also the case for progressive income taxation is much more persuasive.

>>17577283
Except that's kinda wrong. Reactionaries like Churchill supported Georges ideas. There wasn't anything particularly "progressive" about who initially supported him. The libertarian movement in America was influenced by George before European theorists like Mises/Hayek. Those people eventually embraced a broad defense of absentee ownership. Not many people went from George to Marx, his supporters were political liberals.

>>17578310
Bro, it's not just some conspiracy of a minority elite who want a return on their property but the entire middle class.

>>17578433
>The unproductive speculation gives the land its value in the modern world
It does increase land value. Which is what drives land value too high for regular people and developers to buy.

>None will build there
Sure they will, because they can live in, work from or rent out the improvements they make on that land.

>none willwant to be anywhere there
Sure they will. We know they will because people already pay high rents to live in some locations. Land taxes would push out slamlords by squeezing their margins and they'd have to sell their rundowns to property developers or homeowners.

>>17579244
>the case for progressive income taxation is much more persuasive.
It doesn't encourage productive investment the way land taxation does and, at the extreme, it can even hamper it.

>it's not just some conspiracy of a minority elite who want a return on their property but the entire middle class.
I didn't say it's an elite problem. A poor slumlord is guilty of the same as a rich slumlord.

>>17579244
I have for a long time felt that home ownership is that small piece of the cake that turns over most people and makes them resistant to any widespread change. They become afraid of losing their bit of crust and hunker down.

>>17580912
What exactly are you implying lel

>>17577283
Spbp

>>17579244
Henry George was a mixture of conservative and progressive ideals. That's why you're having the conversation you're having right now.

Also, I wouldn't describe Churchill as a 'reactionary', mostly just a conservative.

>>17580854
>It doesn't encourage productive investment the way land taxation does and, at the extreme, it can even hamper it.
If you make land cheaper there's a possibility other things could become more expensive. Without land speculation all that money looking for something for noting today could move into something like bitcoin or other high return quasi-ponzi schemes that could cause energy costs to skyrocket as a funny side effect.

>>17580967
Beyond Churchill, George's ideas were well received by thinkers coming from wide range of backgrounds - which goes to your point about him fitting in neither a conservative or progressive camp ideologically.

>Among many famous people who asserted that it was impossible to refute George on the land question were Winston Churchill, Leo Tolstoy, John Dewey, and Bertrand Russell. Tolstoy and Dewey, especially, dedicated much of their lives to spreading George's ideas. Tolstoy was preaching about the ideas in Progress and Poverty on his death bed.
Based

Bump. Does anyone have a Goergist chart? Would anyone want me to make one?

>>17579244
>Also the case for progressive income taxation is much more persuasive.
No it isn't. Land value tax is probably the single best known tax. It cannot be avoided, it is not regressive, it is a proxy for taxing the wealthy, and it is both equitable and efficient. It makes zero sense to tax income. You tax things that you want less of. E.g. private claims on land. Do you want less workers? Less highly valuable workers? No, I'm guessing you just want the state to play robin hood out of seething envy.

>>17581452
Fine, that would still be a better outcome because it wouldn't make housing, one of the most essential necessities, more expensive than it would otherwise be.

If the economy were too get too "hot", lowering inflation would be much more effective at preventing bubbles. Creating a housing bubble is not the way to go.

>>17583289
Let's not forget that income tax ends up hurting the poor and middle class more than the rich and well connected, who are the most likely people to arrange their affairs in a way that is optimised to minimise tax. Income tax should be regarded with the same disdain and fury as so-called "surplus value", but because the state is doing it and it hurts the bourgeoisie, who cares do it do it do it, amirite?

>>17583125
Good idea. Some essentials I can think of:

>The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
>The Isolated State by Johann Heinrich von Thünen
>Agrarian Justice by Thomas Paine
>On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation by David Ricardo

Joseph Stiglitz is the most well known Georgist economist alive today. He has some published research that led to the Henry George Theorem. Might be of interest.

>>17583125
I alot of georgist memes on my laptop. I'll try to post them tonight.

>>17584209
bump

>>17585813
Because you bumped it. Here are 40-something Land Value Tax memes.

This one is OC.

>>17585957
Nice blog faggot

>>17585971

that's all for now.

>>17586009
Oh baby that's a good one.

Imagine posting this thread on /biz/, they would be absolutely stupefied

>>17587851
We have had lots of good Land Value Tax threads on /biz/ before it got shitted up by pajeets. And also on 8pol before it got taken down. 4pol however, has always had difficulty with advanced intellectual concepts.