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Wealth and Want | |||||||
... because democracy alone is not enough to produce widely shared prosperity. | |||||||
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Communications
Priority
#1. Safeguarding the property tax
Priority #2: Enforce Good Laws
Priority
#3. De-Balkanize Tax Enclaves
Priority
#4. What Tax to Fight First?
Priority #5: Make Landowners Pay Their Taxes Tax All Natural Resources Uniformly and Comprehensively Advances in the arts and sciences keep disclosing new values in old resources. Owing to institutional lag, these values can grow huge without finding their way onto the tax rolls. A thoughtless reaction is, "Bureaucrats want to tax everything!" The point is to tax all natural resources uniformly and comprehensively, to end the lowering taxes on incomes. productive business, and sales! Land taxation will not win wide support, nor will it deserve to, if it is perceived as a tax focusing on median homeowners, farmers, and merchants, while exempting oilmen, media tycoons, and timber barons. In addition to newly awakened resources, many resources long known (like water) are held in odd tenures that have not been recognized as taxable property, although they should be. Any comprehensive move toward using resource rents for public revenue must include these varied resources and tenures. I have a list of 30 or so, too many to treat here. To give a sampling, they include
In tapping these many varieties of resources and tenures for public revenues, citizens and their representatives may have to set priorities. Two practical criteria rise to the top:
... Recent FCC auctions have
fetched billions of dollars for spectrum
licenses, but this is like selling the badlands after giving away the
beachfronts. The values of extant licenses given away ion the
past,
especially spectrum in top locations, are much higher. AT&T
recently paid $112.5 billion for the McCaw Company's spectrum
licenses, which are a smattering of all that is out there. These
licenses should be on the property tax rolls in the jurisdictions
that they cover. The revenue possibilities are staggering. Read
the whole article
Jeff Smith: Subsidies at Their
Worst: PrivilegesMoney is the mother's milk of
politics. Yet the milk invested by
lobbyists and those they represent is a drop in the bucket compared
to the flow they get back from the public tit, thanks to the milkmaid
state. Politicians grant well-connected big businesses:
a. direct cash outlays, such as cash to corporations for advertising overseas, Land titles are the granddaddy of all privileges. Historically, titles preceded all others and created a class of elite owners with the power to win the six other indirect subsidies, along with the more direct ones – grants, contracts, and tax favors. To undo and reverse this history, it's necessary to collect and share the natural rents from all seven inconspicuous privileges. For these pieces of paper, government should charge full market value. ... Getting a Citizens Dividend would not only eliminate poverty, it'd also erase any rationale for subsidies - direct or indirect - to the poor or to the privileged. Repealing the free ride of privileges would be like repealing capitalism. Without those subtle detours imposed upon public revenue, owners would have to work to amass a fortune, and work is one of the worst ways known to strike it rich. What you can do: Dry up the
milkmaid state. Dispense with the
notion that the state must meddle in enterprise. Dispense the notion
from others, too. Focus government on its lone raison d'etre - defend
rights. Demand your right to a fair share of natural revenue. ...
Read the whole article |
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Wealth
and Want
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www.wealthandwant.com
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... because democracy
alone hasn't yet led to a society in which all can
prosper
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