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Eminent Domain and taking land for public purposes

The Supreme Court decision in the Kelo case created a lot of public outrage and controversy. But while the justices in the majority may not have been conscious of what most Georgists would say are the fundamental issues (and most Georgists seem to be as outraged as those who aren't as focused on land's importance), a good case can be made that the decision they reached was sound.

Urban land, even in a blighted city like New London, Connecticut, is our most valuable natural resource, far more valuable than gold or oil. Cities over the centuries have been located on choice sites — where rivers meet oceans, or where they meet other rivers or large lakes, or where falling water could power mills and hydro plants, or in climatologically choice locations. Under most circumstances, it makes no sense to abandon a city. We've invested, over decades and usually over centuries, using local tax money, state tax money and often federal money, in creating infrastructure. Yes, infrastructure needs to be maintained — like all things manmade, it is continuously depreciating. But the natural advantages of some locations generally continue to be advantages.

Other locations are valuable specifically because of infrastructure. New Canaan, Connecticut, is a good example of this. Without the commuter train and highway system that connect it to New York City, it would simply be lovely, level farm land.

Over time, a piece of land that was once wilderness becomes farm land. Farm land, depending on its location, may be developed into residential or sometimes commercial property, depending on the infrastructure that serves it. Single family residential, just as in the game of Monopoly, may yield to multi-family housing or commercial uses.

But what happens when someone decides that they have no intention of leaving the home they love, or the business site they are used to, even when by most objective measures, single family housing or single-story commercial is no longer the appropriate use for the site? Should the rest of the city's residents, who do have a stake in good land use, tolerate the extreme underuse of a piece of land, or a whole neighborhood, that, given the investment the community has made or is prepared to make, now should be developed? Suppose the alternative is for the city's center to move elsewhere, to sprawl out in one, or two or three or four directions, so that those few property owners can stay on the land they love? Suppose it means that jobs just aren't created in the town, or are created out on the fringes, where it costs both employers and employees -- not to mention customers -- more to get there?

Should that be something we make it easy to afford? What is in the interest of the common good? Is land really something we all need? Is it right for some of us to be able to monopolize such a resource? What kinds of property do we have rights to, and which rights are limited by the rights of our neighbors and communities?


Henry George: The Condition of Labor — An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII in response to Rerum Novarum (1891)

Your use, in so many passages of your Encyclical, of the inclusive term “property” or “private” property, of which in morals nothing can be either affirmed or denied, makes your meaning, if we take isolated sentences, in many places ambiguous. But reading it as a whole, there can be no doubt of your intention that private property in land shall be understood when you speak merely of private property. With this interpretation, I find that the reasons you urge for private property in land are eight. Let us consider them in order of presentation. You urge:

1. That what is bought with rightful property is rightful property. (RN, paragraph 5) ...
2. That private property in land proceeds from man’s gift of reason. (RN, paragraphs 6-7.) ...
3. That private property in land deprives no one of the use of land. (RN, paragraph 8.) ...
4. That Industry expended on land gives ownership in the land itself. (RN, paragraphs 9-10.) ...
5. That private property in land has the support of the common opinion of mankind, and has conduced to peace and tranquillity, and that it is sanctioned by Divine Law. (RN, paragraph 11.) ...
6. That fathers should provide for their children and that private property in land is necessary to enable them to do so. (RN, paragraphs 14-17.) ...
7. That the private ownership of land stimulates industry, increases wealth, and attaches men to the soil and to their country. (RN, paragraph 51.) ...
8. That the right to possess private property in land is from nature, not from man; that the state has no right to abolish it, and that to take the value of landownership in taxation would be unjust and cruel to the private owner. (RN, paragraph 51.) ...

8. That the right to possess private property in land is from nature, not from man; that the state has no right to abolish it, and that to take the value of landownership in taxation would be unjust and cruel to the private owner. (51.)

This, like much else that your Holiness says, is masked in the use of the indefinite terms “private property” and “private owner” — a want of precision in the use of words that has doubtless aided in the confusion of your own thought. But the context leaves no doubt that by private property you mean private property in land, and by private owner, the private owner of land.

The contention, thus made, that private property in land is from nature, not from man, has no other basis than the confounding of ownership with possession and the ascription to property in land of what belongs to its contradictory, property in the proceeds of labor. You do not attempt to show for it any other basis, nor has any one else ever attempted to do so. That private property in the products of labor is from nature is clear, for nature gives such things to labor and to labor alone. Of every article of this kind, we know that it came into being as nature’s response to the exertion of an individual man or of individual men — given by nature directly and exclusively to him or to them. Thus there inheres in such things a right of private property, which originates from and goes back to the source of ownership, the maker of the thing. This right is anterior to the state and superior to its enactments, so that, as we hold, it is a violation of natural right and an injustice to the private owner for the state to tax the processes and products of labor. They do not belong to Caesar. They are things that God, of whom nature is but an expression, gives to those who apply for them in the way he has appointed — by labor.

But who will dare trace the individual ownership of land to any grant from the Maker of land? What does nature give to such ownership? how does she in any way recognize it? Will any one show from difference of form or feature, of stature or complexion, from dissection of their bodies or analysis of their powers and needs, that one man was intended by nature to own land and another to live on it as his tenant? That which derives its existence from man and passes away like him, which is indeed but the evanescent expression of his labor, man may hold and transfer as the exclusive property of the individual; but how can such individual ownership attach to land, which existed before man was, and which continues to exist while the generations of men come and go — the unfailing storehouse that the Creator gives to man for “the daily supply of his daily wants”?
Clearly, the private ownership of land is from the state, not from nature. Thus, not merely can no objection be made on the score of morals when it is proposed that the state shall abolish it altogether, but insomuch as it is a violation of natural right, its existence involving a gross injustice on the part of the state, an “impious violation of the benevolent intention of the Creator,” it is a moral duty that the state so abolish it.

So far from there being anything unjust in taking the full value of landownership for the use of the community, the real injustice is in leaving it in private hands — an injustice that amounts to robbery and murder.

And when your Holiness shall see this I have no fear that you will listen for one moment to the impudent plea that before the community can take what God intended it to take — before men who have been disinherited of their natural rights can be restored to them, the present owners of land shall first be compensated.

For not only will you see that the single tax will directly and largely benefit small landowners, whose interests as laborers and capitalists are much greater than their interests as landowners, and that though the great landowners — or rather the propertied class in general among whom the profits of landownership are really divided through mortgages, rent-charges, etc. — would relatively lose, they too would be absolute gainers in the increased prosperity and improved morals; but more quickly, more strongly, more peremptorily than from any calculation of gains or losses would your duty as a man, your faith as a Christian, forbid you to listen for one moment to any such paltering with right and wrong.

Where the state takes some land for public uses it is only just that those whose land is taken should be compensated, otherwise some landowners would be treated more harshly than others. But where, by a measure affecting all alike, rent is appropriated for the benefit of all, there can be no claim to compensation. Compensation in such case would be a continuance of the same in another form — the giving to landowners in the shape of interest of what they before got as rent. Your Holiness knows that justice and injustice are not thus to be juggled with, and when you fully realize that land is really the storehouse that God owes to all his children, you will no more listen to any demand for compensation for restoring it to them than Moses would have listened to a demand that Pharaoh should be compensated before letting the children of Israel go.

Compensated for what? For giving up what has been unjustly taken? The demand of landowners for compensation is not that. We do not seek to spoil the Egyptians. We do not ask that what has been unjustly taken from laborers shall be restored. We are willing that bygones should be bygones and to leave dead wrongs to bury their dead. We propose to let those who by the past appropriation of land values have taken the fruits of labor to retain what they have thus got. We merely propose that for the future such robbery of labor shall cease — that for the future, not for the past, landholders shall pay to the community the rent that to the community is justly due.

 

... read the whole letter

 

Mason Gaffney:  Who Owns Southern California?

1. HOLDINGS BY ALIENS  ... Non-resident aliens own about 75% of the "major" buildings in the L.A. CBD west of Broadway ...
2. AMERICANS FROM OTHER STATES ... A second kind of holder is the out-of-state American, individual or corporate.
3. CALIFORNIANS Many of our largest landholders also live in California. This is partly because the lands are here, but moreso because certain places in California are good places to live. One of the advantages of receiving property as opposed to labor income is it lets one choose his residence. California ranks after New York in the number of rich Americans (using Forbes' list) who reside here.

Also included here are California-based corporations. A corporation's "base" refers simply to the site of its headquarters: its shareholders are scattered around the world, and the major shareholders, who exercise control, are effectively screened behind layers of trusts and financial institutions, so they are impossible to identify with certainty. ...

The Riverside Press-Enterprise. In most cities, the dominant local paper is the largest downtown landowner. The Riverside Press-Enterprise owns its site from 14th to Prospect Streets, and Olivewood to Orange Grove, right next to a Freeway interchange. Like Rohr Industries, it benefited before 1991 by the exemption of most of its power from the city utility user tax, and still enjoys quantity discounts. Just across the Freeway, using the Cridge Street overpass, is its Vine Street garage, with land for its fleet of 265 trucks, vans, and cars. (TPE, 19 June 86) The City recently eased its fleet operations by stopping traffic from 14th Street, giving the right-of-way to Kane Street, the stub connecting the Press-Enterprise to the 91 Freeway on-ramp.

The City has also loaned its power of eminent domain to the Press-Enterprise, helping it acquire the land along Olivewood by condemning private homes. Newspaper support is valuable when one runs for public office. About this same time, however, the Press-Enteprise shifted the focus of its news coverage from the City that shelters it to the whole suburban county. The families were evicted and the houses razed several years ago, but, as of October, 1994, the land is still vacant and derelict, not even used for parking. It is held for - what? The possibility of future need? Did this warrant condemning homes? Politicians are so loathe to use eminent domain to expand parks or schools, but the possible future expansion of a newspaper, that's different! ...

4. INSTITUTIONS
Institutions acquire land for their operations and then it tends to stick to them for various reasons. It is tax free, for one, so long as they retain it (and do not use it commercially). They are not subject to corporate raids. Thus there is no mechanism whereby the current opportunity cost of land is felt by management. It never appears in their budgets; they never need compete for or justify it. College Boards are not accountable to any public body, a precedent set by Marshall's U.S. Supreme Court in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 1819.  Read the whole article

Lindy Davies: Ownership and the Law
President Bush's announcement of his vision for an "ownership society" met with thunderous cheers at the Republican Convention, and much eye-rolling elsewhere. The Bush Administration would like to start by encouraging private ownership of our retirement funds and our health-care decisions. They want to get the heavy hand of government out of such things and unleash the tremendous efficiency of millions upon millions of Self-Interested Individual Actors, the husky, brawling, broad-shouldered capitalism that made this country great. Prosperity depends on the security of private property and the potency of individual initiative! This is the self-evident truth that has been obscured by Hollywood Socialists, Democratic Girlie-men and purveyors of the Homosexual Agenda.

We should realize, however, that this is hardly a new initiative. It is really just the latest wave of an argument that has raged throughout the history of the United States, about just what -- if anything -- and on what basis -- if any -- the government can require us to surrender what we possess. There are some people out there -- and actually a fair number, after all -- who don't view the Bush Administration's privatization proposals as extremist at all -- but, rather, too soft. ...

Unfortunately, though, the law is not at all clear. Thomas Jefferson fudged the topic in the United States Declaration of Independence, inserting "the pursuit of happiness" where people expected the more loaded term "property". The Bill of Rights, however, is strong on property rights. It provides for security of "persons, houses, papers, and effects," that "private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation" and that rights not specifically prohibited are reserved to the states or to the people. In fact, the US Constitution was so bullish on property that it provided for private property in human beings, a principle made explicit in Dred Scott vs. Sandford and many other cases.

Slavery was made unconstitutional by means of the 13th Amendment in 1865. This, however, left much to be resolved, and the Congress had a very difficult job -- perhaps, in strictly logical terms, an impossible job -- in drafting Amendment number fourteen.  ...

The 14th amendment reaffirms the rights of life, liberty and property, and binds the states to the same due process and equal protection restrictions as the federal government. However, it places the Constitution's first limit on the right of property, stating that the United States or any state shall not pay "any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave". This could be seen as somewhat fishy in terms of the Fifth Amendment. After all the 13th amendment had taken the slaveholders' property three years before. Had not the Supreme Court ruled that slaves were property and had to be returned to their owners, even if they escaped to non-slaveholding states?

Although it would have been impracticable (to say the least) to enforce the Takings Clause to the tune of the market value of some four million human beings, that was what the Constitution required the government to do.  ...

The next amendment to the Constitution following the Reconstruction Amendments was another milestone in the debate over property rights. The 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913, allows Congress to “lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived” -- contravening the restriction of this practice that had been laid out in Article I. The “from whatever source derived” part has been making people scream bloody murder ever since. ...

The original advocates of the income tax (many of them Single Taxers) sought to tax accumulation, not industry and initiative. They saw that the massive concentration of wealth among a privileged few was harmful to the nation, and they persuaded the states to accept a progressive tax that would compel robber barons to pay for public goods while letting entrepreneurs gain from their contributions to overall prosperity. And yet, over the years, a tax on income “from whatever source derived” came, one loophole at a time, to be a tax on exactly those productive, hardworking, middle-class people that it was designed to help. ...

In most people's minds, after all, land is the most solid and important kind of property; in fact, the word "property" in general conversation most often means "land". However, it has long been recognized that sometimes privately-held land must be taken for public purposes. The principle of eminent domain is not (particularly) controversial. If the state wants to put a highway through your house, it must pay you the fair market value of your property.  ...

This decision was important because it extended the Takings doctrine beyond physical seizure to the taking of value -- but it was also relatively uncontroversial in that the state legislature had removed all of the parcel's market value.  ...

If government were to be held liable for every single action that took away a portion of real estate value, it could scarcely do anything at all. That might be how some of the most strident militia-folk would like it. However, it would certainly not suit real estate owners in general -- who, while they might not enjoy paying for government, do benefit from the things that government does.

What the property-rights folks are forgetting (or disregarding) is that if a piece of land has a market value, that means that the net benefits conferred upon it by the community (which includes the government) are greater than the net costs. Location value is far and away the most important component of land value -- and location value is almost entirely the result of services and infrastructure that the government provides. ...

It's no accident that the issue of "regulatory takings" is such a stew of contradictions. Indeed, the terms of the argument deny the possibility of coherence (in much the same way as they did in 1868). Land is not the fruit of human labor, and its value is not the result of any actions taken by its owner. Therefore, private property in land is an entirely different sort of phenomenon than private property in the products of labor -- and as long as the law fails to recognize this fact, it cannot hope to make sense of the issue of "regulatory takings". ...

It could be suggested that "the conditions of the grant" could, without doing any violence to the secure right of private property, require the payment to the community of the land's rental value, to cover the cost of the community's expenses which, it turn, provide the land's value in the first place. That would, of course, require a clearer definition of the moral basis of property that the United States has ever been able to come to. Yet -- think of it for a moment -- what would have happened if the original Bill of Rights had articulated the individual's absolute right to property only in the products of labor -- and the community's right to the community-created value of the land?

It would have saved us an awful lot of trouble. True, the "slavery" states would have balked at joining the union under those rules. But under them, the nation would have been so prosperous that they would quite soon have seen the advantage of joining. We would have avoided the Civil War, and probably even World War I -- it is dazzling to think about how different -- and vastly better -- our history would have been, had the Framers taken the brave step of setting forth the moral basis of property along these lines.

It's interesting that we use the word "own" to mean two different things: the sense of possession, and the sense of personal acknowledgment, as in "owning up" to one's responsibilities. The relationship between the two was once closer than it now seems to be; the word "ought" is an archaic past participle of "owe". As we consider how to arrange our "ownership society", we'd do well to remember what we "ought" -- and bring the two senses of the word back together.   Read the whole article


Winston Churchill: The People's Land  
Now let the Manchester Ship Canal tell its tale about the land. It has a story to tell which is just as simple and just as pregnant as its story about Free Trade. When it was resolved to build the Canal, the first thing that had to be done was to buy the land. Before the resolution to build the Canal was taken, the land on which the Canal flows -- or perhaps I should say 'stands' -- was, in the main, agricultural land, paying rates on an assessment from 30s. to L2 an acre. I am told that 4,495 acres of land purchased fell within that description out of something under 5,000 purchased altogether. Immediately after the decision, the 4,495 acres were sold for L777,000 sterling -- or an average of L172 an acre -- that is to say, five or six times the agricultural value of the land and the value on which it had been rated for public purposes.

Now what had the landowner done for the community; what enterprise had he shown; what service had he rendered; what capital had he risked in order that he should gain this enormous multiplication of the value of his property! I will tell you in one word what he had done. Can you guess it! Nothing.

But it was not only the owners of the land that was needed for making the Canal, who were automatically enriched. All the surrounding land either having a frontage on the Canal or access to it rose and rose rapidly, and splendidly, in value. By the stroke of a fairy wand, without toil, without risk, without even a half-hour's thought many landowners in Salford, Eccles, Stretford, Irlam, Warrington Runcorn, etc., found themselves in possession of property which had trebled, quadrupled, quintupled in value.

Apart from the high prices which were paid, there was a heavy bill for compensation, severance, disturbance, and injurious affection where no land was taken -- injurious affection, namely, raising the land not taken many times in value -- all this was added to the dead-weight cost of construction. All this was a burden on those whose labour skill, and capital created this great public work. Much of this land today is still rated at ordinary agricultural value, and in order to make sure that no injustice is done, in order to make quite certain that these landowners are not injured by our system of government, half their rates are, under the Agricultural Rates Act, paid back to them. The balance is made up by you. The land is still rising in value, and with every day's work that every man in this neighbourhood does and with every addition to the prosperity of Manchester and improvement of this great city, the land is further enhanced in vaIue. ... Read the whole piece

 

Charles T. Root — Not a Single Tax! (1925)

To illustrate simply, let us suppose a state which has never parted with its natural income but is supported by its own economic rent. A farmer wishes to take up a tract or [sic] government land in this state and offers an economic rent of fifty cents per year per acre in its raw condition. The government (i.e., the community) accepts this rent, subject to re-adjustment every five years. The farmer then gets his deed without other cost than that of drawing and recording the instrument, or a nominal price of, say, one dollar an acre.

He works his new property vigorously, clears, fences, drains and plants it, and puts up his buildings and stocks them. He has no taxes to pay, and at the end of his first five-year period he is making $10 per acre per year. Will his economic rent for the next five-year period be raised because he has prospered or because he has invested money in buildings and improvements? Not a penny. All the results of his own capital and labor belong to him and not to the community. If the neighborhood has not grown much, and fifty cents an acre is still all that is bid as economic rent for the same kind of raw ground as our farmer originally took, then his rent for the second five years will be the same as the first.


But suppose that during the second five years something of a boom has set in, and a community is growing up. Land is in demand, and for the lessening area in the hands of the government two dollars per acre is freely offered as economic rent. Now our typical farmer must come up to the market price and pay two dollars an acre for his third five years, irrespective of whether he is making more or less out of his place.

In his third five years the boom continues, and the community grows so fast that before the close of that period one corner of our friend's farm finds itself near the middle of a flourishing town. Five acres of it are needed for a public park, and five acres adjoining are wanted to cut up into building lots. As building lots, this part of the land will command a voluntary offer of a hundred dollars per year per acre of economic rent; and this fact establishes the land-value of the adjoining five acres needed for park purposes.

In this situation what shall our farmer do?

He has two courses open to him. If he doesn't want to relinquish his land, and can afford to withhold it from further improvement, he can pay the hundred dollars per acre per year of economic rent which these ten acres will now command, and keep his farm intact. If this appears to him too costly a luxury, he can signify his willingness to sell to the town the five acres wanted for the park, and the other five to individual builders.

Now, what price should he get for it? He did not pay the government much for his title deed, but he has worked on this land for fifteen years, and deserves some compensation when he transfers it. By his labor and also, in part, by reason of his clearing, draining and fencing, he has been able to make twelve dollars an acre from his ground, while his economic rent had not until now gone above five dollars an acre. Furthermore, he has built on these parcels a barn and two storehouses.

The method of computing the proper selling price under such circumstances would have to be the result of experience, but that price would certainly include the present value of the improvements and probably some lump sum besides, as compensation for loss of farming opportunity. But just as certainly it would not include, (as it would do under our present conditions), the increased location value which the town itself has created by its own growth and public works, and which in all justice belongs to the town or community and not to the individual.


This principle of economic rent applies to all the users of land, including mining, use of waterpower, and rights of way over or under its surface. Had this principle always been recognized, and the economic rent always been retained by the community, taxation would never have been heard of. When the economic rent is reclaimed by the community, the need of taxation will disappear.

Let us roughly restate the proposition: All members of the community having a joint right to the income which the social advantages of the land will command, they are all partners in this income.

Therefore, when one of their number wishes to take for his private use a parcel of this land, he should buy out his partners, i.e., the rest of the community, by paying regularly into the common treasury the economic rent of that parcel, instead of paying, as at present, the purchase price, i.e., the right to collect the economic rent, in a lump, to some other individual who has no more original right to it than himself.

But before this time the reader, unless he has given previous attention to the subject, is full of objections to the above doctrine: "How about the law?" he is asking. "Hasn't a man the right to buy a piece of land as cheaply as he can, to do what he pleases with it, and hold on to it till he gets ready to sell?" The answer is that at present he certainly has this statutory right, which has been so long and so universally recognized that most people suppose it to be not only a legal, but a real or equitable right. A shrewd man, foreseeing the direction of growth of population in a city, for example, can buy a well-located block at a moderate figure from some less far-seeing owner, can let it grow up to weeds, fence it off against all comers and give it no further attention except to pay the very small tax usually imposed upon vacant land.

Meantime the increasing community builds up all around it with homes, banks, stores, churches, schools, paving and lighting the streets, giving police and fire protection, etc., and at last comes to need this block so urgently that the owner is fairly begged to sell it, at three or ten or fifty times what it cost him. Quite often the purchaser at this enormous advance is the very community which has through its presence and the expenditure of its taxes created practically the whole value of the land in question!

It was said above that an individual has a statutory right to pursue this very common course. That was an error. The statement should have been that he has a statutory wrong; for no disinterested person can follow the course of land speculation as almost universally practiced, without feeling its rank injustice. ... read the whole article

 

Clarence Darrow: How to Abolish Unfair Taxation (1913)

Fundamentally, all law recognizes the right to eminent domain, to take the portion of any human being for the welfare of the public — that no man's claim to any portion of the earth shall stand in the way of the common good. This is a common law, but in practice it only applies where a rich railroad wants to get the land of some poor widow.

Everybody who works is poor; nobody would work if they were not poor, and nobody can get rich working. I never tried it, but I have seen others try it. The land boomer comes along and gets good car service to this poor man's home, and then charges him ten dollars per month instead of five. A lot of reformers are trying to get parks laid out in the slums, which only make the poor move, for they cannot pay the increased rent. The greater the population, the less the worker gets. As the land becomes valuable, more and more goes to rent. The bigger the city, the deeper the poverty; the bigger the city the more degradation, there are the almshouses and gaols filled to overflowing. It is better for the men who own the earth to have big cities — but for no one else. Every man, woman, and child adds to the wealth of the land owner; the others must secure land upon which to live, and they must bid with each other for the right to live. ... read the whole speech


Wyn Achenbaum: Eminent Domain and Government Giveaways

It seems to me that there are better ways than eminent domain to provide the incentives that will lead the private sector to develop choice land. ...

While at one time this area might have been an appropriate place for a neighborhood of single family homes, it appeared to me that that time had passed a decade or so ago. It seemed to me that the path of progress would -- if the incentives were logical and the market responsive to signals -- have caused the private sector to have redeveloped that site. Such re-development might have been painful to the residents of the neighborhood, but would have put now-choice land to a higher and better use than single-family homes.

But our system wasn't designed to send signals all that well -- Connecticut law required properties to be reassessed once every decade (and I've heard that once in early '70s and once in the late 80's was construed to satisfy that requirement). Now assessments are required every 4 years (though my town decided it didn't like the 2003 revaluation and is keeping the 1999 for a few more years).

But if the properties had been reassessed on a regular basis, with market-based values assigned first to the land and the residual being assigned to the existing buildings, the homeowners themselves would have been in a position to make their own rational decisions on whether it was worth it to them to continue to occupy extremely valuable land (and pay the taxes on it), or more to their advantage to accept an offer from someone who was prepared to put it to a higher and better use, and take that equity and buy elsewhere. ...

Our land, particularly the best-located land, is a common asset on which we are all dependent. Allowing individuals or corporations to occupy it without compensating the rest of us for its value is the underlying problem, and solving that problem through good assessment and rational (that is, land value) taxes is the way to solve it. When we do that, a lot of problems will begin to fall away.  Read the whole article

 

Nic Tideman: Using Tax Policy to Promote Urban Growth

The efficiency that is entailed in using the rent of land to finance public activities applies to certain other sources of public revenue as well:
1. Charges on any publicly granted privileges, such as the exclusive right to use a portion of the frequency spectrum for radio and TV broadcasts.

2. Payments for extractions of natural resources. Such payments should be set at levels that yield the greatest possible revenue of the resources, in present value terms.

3. Taxes on pollution. Every individual or enterprise that pollutes the air, water or ground should be required to pay the estimated cost of the pollution it generates. The effect of pollution on the rental value of surrounding land is one possible measure of its cost.

4. Taxes on any other activities that reduce the rental value of surrounding land.

5. Taxes on activities such as driving or parking in crowded streets, where one person's activities reduce opportunities for others. The administration of such charges may be so expensive that it is not worth implementing them, but if the administration can be handled sufficiently cheaply, these charges are efficient to the extent that they only charge people for costs imposed on others.

6. Taxes on activities, such as the consumption of alcohol, which impose costs on others (e.g., higher traffic fatalities).

7. Charges for local public services, such as water, electricity, sewer connections, etc. It is not generally desirable to make every service completely self-financing. Rather, what is desirable is that each user be required to pay the marginal cost of the service he receives. Extensions of service networks are efficient when they increase publicly collected land rents by enough to cover the costs not covered by user charges.

8. A self-assessed tax on permanent improvements to land, at a very low rate (perhaps 1/10 of 1% per year). With a self-assessed tax, each possessor of land names a price at which he would be willing to part with the land he possesses (and any immovable improvements). He pays a tax proportional to the value he names, and anyone who wishes to may take over possession at that price. The value of such a tax is that it makes it much easier to assemble land for redevelopment, and to identify appropriate compensation when land is taken for public purposes.

All of the above taxes are positively beneficial and should be collected even if the revenue is not needed for public purposes. Any excess can be returned to the population on an equal per capita basis. If these attractive sources of revenue do not suffice to finance necessary public expenditures, then the least damaging additional tax would probably be a "poll tax," a uniform charge on all residents. If some residents are regarded to be incapable of paying such a tax, then the next most efficient tax is a proportional tax on income up to some specified amount. Then there is no disincentive effect for all persons who reach the tax limit. The next most efficient tax is a proportional tax on all income.

It is important not to tax the profits of corporations. Capital moves from where it is taxed to where it is not, until the same rate of return is earned everywhere. If the city refrains from taxing corporations they will invest more in St. Petersburg. Wages will be higher, and the rent of land, collected by the government, will be higher. The least damaging tax on corporations is one that provides a complete write-off of investments, with a carry-over of tax credits to future years. Such a tax has the effect of making the government a partner in all new investments. With such a tax the government provides, through tax credits, the same share of costs that it later receives in revenues. However, the tax does diminish the incentive for entrepreneurial activity, and it raises no revenue when investment is expanding rapidly. Furthermore, the efficiency of such a tax requires that everyone believe that the tax rate will never change. Thus it is best not to tax the profits of corporations at all. If the people of St. Petersburg want to share in the profits of corporations, then they should invest directly in the corporations, either privately or publicly. The residents of St. Petersburg would be best served by refraining from taxing the profits of corporations. Creating a place where profits are not taxed can be expected to attract so much capital that the resulting rises in wages and in government-collected rents will more than offset what might have been collected by taxing profits.

The taxes that promote urban growth have at least one of two features.

  • The first feature that a growth-promoting tax can have is that it can serve to allocate a naturally occurring resource among competing potential users. Charges for the use of land, for the use of the frequency spectrum and for depleting natural resources share this feature.
  • The second feature that a growth-promoting tax can have is that of being a charge for the costs imposed on the city by the person who pays the tax. This feature is shared by taxes on pollution, taxes on other activities that reduce the value of surrounding land, taxes on imposing congestion and other costs on other residents of the city, charges for the marginal cost of publicly provided services, and a self-assessed tax on property, reflecting the hindrance to future growth represented by existing development.

A city that confines itself to these taxes can expect to attract capital rapidly, and therefore to experience rapid growth, raising the wages of its citizens and the publicly-collected rent of its land. ...Read the whole article

 

 

Henry George, author of Progress and Poverty, argued that, while some forms of wealth are produced by human activity, and are rightly the property of the producers (or those who have obtained them from the previous owners by voluntary gift or exchange), land and natural resources are bestowed by God on the human race, and that every one of the N inhabitants of the earth has a claim to 1/Nth of the coal beds, 1/Nth of the oil wells, 1/Nth of the mines, and 1/Nth of the fertile soil. God wills a society where everyone may sit in peace under his own vine and his own fig tree.

The Law of Moses undertook to implement this by making the ownership of land hereditary, with a man's land divided among his sons (or, in the absence of sons, his daughters), and prohibiting the permanent sale of land. (See Leviticus 25:13-17,23.) The most a man might do with his land is sell the use of it until the next Jubilee year, an amnesty declared once every fifty years, when all debts were cancelled and all land returned to its hereditary owner.

Henry George's proposed implementation is to tax all land at about 99.99% of its rental value, leaving the owner of record enough to cover his bookkeeping expenses. The resulting revenues would be divided equally among the natural owners of the land, viz. the people of the country, with everyone receiving a dividend check regularly for the use of his share of the earth (here I am anticipating what I think George would have suggested if he had written in the 1990's rather than the 1870's).

This procedure would have the effect of making the sale price of a piece of land, not including the price of buildings and other improvements on it, practically zero. The cost of being a landholder would be, not the original sale price, but the tax, equivalent to rent. A man who chose to hold his "fair share," or 1/Nth of all the land, would pay a land tax about equal to his dividend check, and so would break even. By 1/Nth of the land is meant land with a value equal to 1/Nth of the value of all the land in the country.

Naturally, an acre in the business district of a great city would be worth as much as many square miles in the open country. Some would prefer to hold more than one N'th of the land and pay for the privilege. Some would prefer to hold less land, or no land at all, and get a small annual check representing the dividend on their inheritance from their father Adam.

Note that, at least for the able-bodied, this solves the problem of poverty at a stroke. If the total land and total labor of the world are enough to feed and clothe the existing population, then 1/Nth of the land and 1/Nth of the labor are enough to feed and clothe 1/Nth of the population. A family of 4 occupying 4/Nths of the land (which is what their dividend checks will enable them to pay the tax on) will find that their labor applied to that land is enough to enable them to feed and clothe themselves. Of course, they may prefer to apply their labor elsewhere more profitably, but the situation from which we start is one in which everyone has his own plot of ground from which to wrest a living by the strength of his own back, and any deviation from this is the result of voluntary exchanges agreed to by the parties directly involved, who judge themselves to be better off as the result of the exchanges.

Some readers may think this a very radical proposal. In fact, it is extremely conservative, in the sense of being in agreement with historic ideas about land ownership as opposed to ownership of, say, tools or vehicles or gold or domestic animals or other movables. The laws of English-speaking countries uniformly distinguish between real property (land) and personal property (everything else). In this context, "real" is not the opposite of "imaginary." It is a form of the word "royal," and means that the ultimate owner of the land is the king, as symbol of the people. Note that English-derived law does not recognize "landowners." The term is "landholders." The concept of eminent domain is that the landholder may be forced to surrender his landholdings to the government for a public purpose. Historically, eminent domain does not apply to property other than land, although complications arise when there are buildings on the land that is being seized.

I will mention in passing that the proposals of Henry George have attracted support from persons as diverse as Felix Morley, Aldous Huxley, Woodrow Wilson, Helen Keller, Winston Churchill, Leo Tolstoy, William F Buckley Jr, and Sun Yat-sen. To the Five Nobel Prizes authorized by Alfred Nobel himself there has been added a sixth, in Economics, and the Henry George Foundation claims eight of the Economics Laureates as supporters, in whole or in part, of the proposals of Henry George (Paul Samuelson, 1970; Milton Friedman, 1976; Herbert A Simon, 1978; James Tobin, 1981; Franco Modigliani, 1985; James M Buchanan, 1986; Robert M Solow, 1987; William S Vickrey, 1996).

The immediate concrete proposal favored by most Georgists today is that cities shall tax land within their boundaries at a higher rate than they tax buildings and other improvements on the land. (In case anyone is about to ask, "How can we possibly distinguish between the value of the land and the value of the buildings on it?" let me assure you that real estate assessors do it all the time. It is standard practice to make the two assessments separately, and a parcel of land in the business district of a large city very often has a different owner from the building on it.) Many cities have moved to a system of taxing land more heavily than improvements, and most have been pleased with the results, finding that landholders are more likely to use their land productively -- to their own benefit and that of the public -- if their taxes do not automatically go up when they improve their land by constructing or maintaining buildings on it.

An advantage of this proposal in the eyes of many is that it is a Fabian proposal, "evolution, not revolution," that it is incremental and reversible. If a city or other jurisdiction does not like the results of a two-level tax system, it can repeal the arrangement or reduce the difference in levels with no great upheaval. It is not like some other proposals of the form, "Distribute all wealth justly, and make me absolute dictator of the world so that I can supervise the distribution, and if it doesn't work, I promise to resign." The problem is that absolute dictators seldom resign. ... read the whole article

 

 

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