A new "essential document" — the first in quite a while:

Gavin Putland wrote an article entitled Still on the Mountaintop: Economically Rational Racism, which was picked up by OpEd News. The article is available here both as a 6-page PDF file and in html, with links to the themes on this website which speak to related issues. I found it moving and thought provoking. Not only does it speak to issues of race, but it makes some important points with respect to immigration. It speaks to infrastructure spending, schools, bubbles and bursts, Old Testament land laws...

In the Promised Land of the Old Testament, there was no land speculation and no possibility of speculative bubbles, because you couldn’t sell land in perpetuity. According to the 25th chapter of Leviticus, every 50th year was to be a Jubilee, and you could only sell a lease on the land up to the next Jubilee. As the time remaining on the lease was always getting shorter, the lease was always falling in value, so you couldn’t make a capital gain on it. Nowadays, if we somehow don’t consider ourselves bound by the commandment that “The land shall not be sold for ever” (Leviticus 25:23), we need another method of preventing speculation. Land-value taxation not only discourages speculation, but also reduces inflationary pressure, allowing a reduction in the natural rate of unemployment, so that members of the dominant ethnic group face little risk of unemployment and have little to gain by trying to offload that risk onto some minority.

Alternatively, America can retain the present inflationary taxes, and the Fed can fight the inflationary pressure by creating unemployment, the burden of which will continue to fall disproportionately on Blacks. Meanwhile the opportunity to make capital gains on land, together with the lack of pressure to earn income from it, will maintain a permanent artificial demand for land, exacerbated by periodic speculative bubbles. The artificial demand will inflate rents and prices of residential land, which is a necessity of life, and for which workers will have to pay out of wages that have been depressed by the competition for scarce jobs, eroded by income tax, and devalued by indirect taxes. This is the Ownership Society, the caricature of the Promised Land offered by those who call themselves conservatives.

But let’s conclude on a more conciliatory note. In the present recession, which has been triggered by a collapse in land prices, land-value taxation would reverse the collapse — not by re-inflating a temporary speculative bubble, but by inducing investment in infrastructure that permanently enhances the utility of the land. So maybe it takes a recession to induce a conservative appreciation of land-value taxation as a substitute for existing taxes. Maybe that’s one way in which “only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

Check out the sibling to this website, the LVTfan blog! There are nearly 100 posts there -- both timely and timeless.

Something to think about: Exxon-Mobil set a new quarterly profit record of $39 billion. How much did they pay in royalties for the oil they drilled within the boundaries of the US? And to whom did they pay it? How much did they pay in corporate income taxes? Which is a fairer way to raise the revenue we need?

Wealthandwant is not enthusiastic about corporate — or individual — income taxes, but thinks we should be considering who is entitled to the royalties on our natural resources, and how those royalties should be calculated. Should individuals be entitled to royalties on natural resources? Tribal groups? States? The federal government? Corporate shareholders? Or all of us, as Alaska sees it?

Should we tax profits, or would we be smarter and more just to simply collect royalties on the natural resources that are removed from under our soil?

Check out Henry George's ideas on YouTube ... eight films, each from 8 to 10 minutes ... if you care about poverty, taxation, local services, wealth distribution, privilege, privatization, justice, sprawl, long commutes, conserving energy, reducing GG, public transportation ...

Progress & Poverty 1 • Progress & Poverty 2 • Progress & Poverty 3 • "Housing Bubble" is Really a Land Bubble • Exclusive Use of Land, the Law of the Conqueror • Value of Land is Created by the Community • Land Value and Free Lunch, Part 1 • Land Value and Free Lunch, Part 2

These come from the Henry George School of San Francisco, and succinctly explain many of the ideas on which this website provides detail.

And if you've arrived here because you googled "Henry George" after watching those videos, you might start with the links here. There's also a link to a page for printing out hardcopy bookmarks, if you're inclined to share the videos with others.

Boortz's "FairTax" proposes to get rid of income taxes, wage taxes, estate taxes and other federal taxes. Wealthandwant agrees with that goal — but we see a very different means to get there, a far more fair, just and desirable approach, which will lead to a very different society from what the "FairTax" would produce.

What's wrong with the so-called FairTax? Start here, and follow the links.

What's the better alternative? Taxes which meet the canons of taxation; taxes which are direct. Taxes on finite and scarce resources, whose efficient and effective use benefits all of us (and those taxes won't fall on the users). Land value taxation. Land includes a lot of things which currently aren't taxed at all — and which are held by corporations who didn't create them, and whose benefits therefore largely accrue to a small class of large shareholders. User fees.

Untax wages! Untax buildings! Untax sales! Create a just society and an economy in which all of us can prosper, without free lunches, without windfalls, without privilege. Reverse the perverse incentives inherent in our current system, and inherent in the FairTax. Wealthandwant points to a better way.

25 Years After the Mianus Bridge on I-95 Went Down: Where do we get the money required to build, maintain and upgrade America's infrastructure? The answer is under our feet. The logical source — largely untapped in some of its richest lodes — is in the value of our best land and our natural resources. Is it sufficient? It will go a long way to funding this very necessary spending, without burdening the economy — and without depriving anyone of something they are morally entitled to. See infrastructure, financing infrastructure, land includes, natural resources, privatization for some starting points.

Property tax caps — why intelligent states and communities should avoid them. Reform the property tax, by all means, but don't cap it. See the reform that shifts us from perverse incentives to logical, desirable ones. ... read more

Wealthandwant themes relating to issues of the day ... Iraq ... foreclosures ... homeownership ... income inequality ... wealth inequality ... environment and pollution ... ending poverty ... walkable, affordable, compact cities ... taxes — and they're all connected — find the common thread!

 

Peace, Justice and Economic Reform — Nic Tideman • pdf
How to Revive a Dying City — Mason Gaffney
Land and Justice — Lindy Davies
An Introduction to Henry George — Weld Carter
Economics in Support of Environmentalism — Mason Gaffney

The Lies of the Land: How and Why Land Gets Undervalued — Michael Hudson • pdf
Real Estate and the Capital Gains Debate — Michael Hudson and Kris Feder
Estimating Land Value — Ted Gwartney • pdf
Are You a Real Libertarian, or a Royal Libertarian? — Dan Sullivan • pdf
Henry George and the Reconstruction of Capitalism — Robert Andelson • pdf

For Want of a Landlord: A Thanksgiving Parable — Mason Gaffney • pdf
The Uncertain Future of the Metropolis — Walter Rybeck • pdf
The Fallacy of the "Three-Legged Stool" Metaphor — Bill Batt • pdf

The People's Land — Winston Churchill • pdf
Land Price as a Cause of Poverty — Winston Churchill • pdf
Slavery — A.J.O. • pdf

A Synopsis of Henry George's Progress and Poverty — Al Katzenberger
Thou Shalt Not Steal — Henry George • pdf
Thy Kingdom Come — Henry George • pdf
How to Help the Unemployed — Henry George • pdf
Property Tax - Cause of Unemployment — Herbert Bab • pdf
This World is the Creation of God — Henry George • pdf
True Christianity and My Own Religious Beliefs — Joseph Fels • pdf

The Earth is the Lord's — Robert Andelson • pdf
From Wasteland to Promised Land (synopsis) — Robert Andelson and James Dawsey • pdf
On Earth as it is in Heaven — Mason Gaffney and others, writing about Bill Vickrey

Where Do We Go From Here? — The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Still on the Mountaintop: Economically Rational Racism • 6-page PDF file — Gavin Putland

more documents

News and Notes:

Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

“The free market is the only mechanism that has ever been discovered for achieving participatory democracy.” — quote in NYT obituary, online November 16, 2006.

"Yes, there are taxes I like. For example, the gasoline tax, which pays for highways. You have a user tax. The property tax is one of the least bad taxes, because it's levied on something that cannot be produced — that part that is levied on the land. So some taxes are worse than others, but all taxes are bad." — interview, San Jose Mercury News, Nov 5, 2006

Wealthandwant.com disagrees with that last statement (praising with faint damns): land value taxation is not merely the least-bad tax, it is also the best tax. why?

21st Century Issues —

Tag, and other children's games — Tag doesn't worry me, but musical chairs does. see why!

300 million population — is population increase a problem, or a good thing? Who benefits? Does anyone lose? Why? How might it be changed into a win-win situation? see how!

Wealth, Poverty, Asset Poverty, Income Distribution, the Cost of Living — updated to include 2006 data for Virginia and Pennsylvania

How much does it cost a young family to live at the "all one's basic needs met" level?

• How does that level compare to the Federal Poverty Guideline?
• How many of us are living below that level? And how many of our children are living below that level?
• What does life cost in America's lowest-cost counties?
• What sort of compromises do those with incomes below that level have to make?

Wealthandwant has answers — and, more important, we have questions!

The Wealth Questions — This is a work-in-progress, but there's enough in place to explore already. Check back for updates!

Detailed data on Wealth Distribution — or, if you will, Wealth Concentration — from the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances (Currents and Undercurrents: Changes in the Distribution of Wealth, 1989–2004), with some additional calculations that shed more light on the underlying dynamics. There is detail here you won't find anywhere else! (See Table 7 in both of the next two links.)

Go directly to the aggregated tables | detailed tables | introduction | guided tour | Currents and Undercurrents in html | Currents and Undercurrents PDF (original) | SCF Definitions | wealth: median, mean and wobegon

Rent, Wealth and Want in the News ...