Here is the updated website of the UI, a useful organisation that we didn’t know even existed. Smart Taxes has forged its own course for site value and land value taxation from first principles. It is nice however, to see that we are not alone. Please take time to read the petition which takes a rather purist position on the 100% taxation of all land rent and the abolition of all other taxes. Still, makes our modest proposals look positively pragmatic and mundane.
…The International Union for Land Value Taxation or IU was established in 1926. Now a global Non-Governmental Organisation it operates independently free of any government funding. This allows us to remain totally impartial and objective. The IU seeks to engage in activities which strategically support our objectives. The International Union maintains that, to end the great inequities in the world and the trouble they cause, people need Economic Equal Rights of access to the values of Nature and Society. This philosophy is based on the conviction that human beings are born with equal rights to life and freedom, including equal rights to the gifts of Nature.
Natural resources are the Common Heritage of all human beings, and the values of these resources are Common Property belonging equally to all citizens.
Society provides benefits that are vital to people’s welfare. These advantages are those not created by any individual person or by a specific group of individuals. They are created by the synergy of all citizens’ working together, in partnership with government.
Today the IU lobbies the UN to change section three of the Declaration to:
Everyone has the right to life, liberty, land and security of person.
The International Union for Land Value Taxation declares:
The economic, political and consequently the intellectual and moral conditions of any people are ultimately determined by the system of land tenure under which they live.
Since everyone has an equal right to it follows necessarily that everyone has an equal right to the use of land. Without this birthright life cannot be sustained.
The privatisation of rent or value of land constitutes a violation of those equal rights, and its consequences are that holders of privilege exact a monopoly price for access to land, the community is deprived of its natural revenue, taxation is heaped upon trade and industry, production is harassed and growth arrested. Inevitably industrial depressions and unemployment occur.
The more completely land is monopolised, the greater is the insecurity of employment and the nearer are wages driven down to mere subsistence level. This is true of all countries, no matter how they may differ in their forms of government, nature or development of their industries.
We advocate:
Every human being has an equal right to land and from the benefits flowing from the land.
That equal right to land be secured by requiring all landholders to pay an annual payment to society. This can be done by approximating the full rental value of the land held, whether it is in use or not and it must exclude the value of the improvements made to the land.
This means that taxes on earnings and consumption, taxes on improvements, customs tariffs, exchange controls and other burdens and barriers that restrict sustainable production and obstruct the free movement of men and goods would be reduced and be concurrently abolished.
And we maintain:
The public collection of the annual value of land and the abolition of taxes that are repressive on industry, employment and commerce would enable the producer to enjoy the full fruits of their labour. It would make the withholding land from use unprofitable and put an end to the monopoly of land.
This is the foundation to global Human Rights.
Sign the petition here www.unpetition.net
