Michael Scott Moore writing in research journal Miller McCune revisits an olden and golden idea – land value taxes. This time land value taxes are considered as a way to fund health care without putting a brake on economic recovery. Much of this argument could equally apply to Ireland. Here is an excert..
Taxes don’t need to be pulled from your income.
Before the world had ever heard of Karl Marx, an American journalist from San Francisco named Henry George wrote a radical and popular work of political economy called Progress and Poverty, the first serious economic manifesto to become an American best-seller. He argued for a “single tax” on the value of land. The book made him world-famous near the end of the 19th century, and figures from Tolstoy to Einstein declared their admiration.
Land, to George, was the resource for earning money, or just living: Only hoboes could get by without renting a slice of it. Land was not just natural but limited, so it belonged, in the truest sense, to the nation. Other taxes put an undue burden on human activity: Income tax weighed on productivity (wages and profits); a sales tax put a burden on trade; a “property tax,” which involves not just land but the structures on top of it, burdened development. To George, it was simple logic that a government should raise taxes from the value of land.
In a booming city, land values rise with the tide of human activity, so the power of a government to build subways and schools would rise, too. At the same time, a land tax would curb speculation. If a bank had to pay for sitting on acreages of unused land as an investment, or on every new high-rise apartment building it financed, real estate bubbles would vanish. The most recent recession started as a real estate bubble, of course, so George has a painful new relevance. Link to article.
