So if this is not the thing to do what Is??
I'm a
Georgist, so naturally I advocate
shifting our tax burden to the greatest extent possible off the processes and products of
labor and onto the annual
rental value of land (minus the value of houses, buildings and other improvements):
----------------------------------http://savingcommunities.org/foundersplan/whyfounders.htmlWhy America's Founders Wanted
A Property Tax on Land Value,
And NOT a Sales Tax!Why a Land Value Tax?Land for ordinary citizensWilliam Penn wanted to keep aristocrats from grabbing up land as they had in Europe. He declared Pennsylvania a "commonwealth" where each landholder would pay a modest rent that "would put an end to taxes, leave not a beggar, and make the greatest bank for national trade." The first tax in Pennsylvania was a land value tax.
Thomas Jefferson also saw that land monopoly made ordinary Europeans poor, while cheap land made Americans rich. He also proposed taxes on real estate to prevent land grabbers from driving land prices up.
Keeping taxing power localUnder the
Articles of Confederation, the federal government taxed each state on its land value. Each state would tax each county, and citizens would never have to deal with state or federal tax collectors. Our founders did not trust strong central governments. They believed that people govern their own communities better than powerful states can govern them.
A stipend for senior citizensTom Paine proposed to give each citizen over 50 an annual stipend from land value tax for the rest of his life. Paine' proposal was the first (and probably the best) social security proposal.
Today's corporate aristocracyThe shift to sales and income taxes have helped corporate conglomerates drive out out family farms, small manufacturers and local merchants.
Fewer than 3% of the landowners own more than 97% of the privately held land, including most of the valuable land in central business districts and at the convergence of major highways. Land grabbing has driven up real estate prices so much that fewer people own their homes free and clear than ever before.
Land value tax reduces the tax burden on ordinary citizens and gives the competitive edge back to small farmers and small businesses. It makes housing more affordable by driving speculators out of the housing market. It costs senior citizens far less than property tax, even without the stipend that Paine proposed.
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http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/fremery-robert_on-tax-reform.htmlOur Unsound Tax Laws And Measures for Reformby Robert De FremeryDaniel Webster once said: "A free government cannot long endure where the tendency of the laws is to
concentrate the wealth of the country in the hands of a few, and to render the masses poor and dependent."
An objective analysis of the tax laws used in most countries will, I believe, lead any fair-minded person to the conclusion that these laws do just that. They tend to concentrate wealth in the hands of a privileged few--taking from those who produce and giving to those who do not.
The basic defect in our tax system is that we allow our local, state, and Federal governments to tax away
privately created values while at the same time an enormous amount of
publicly created value remains in private hands.
Many are surprised to hear of publicly created value as distinct from privately created values. Victims of unjust taxation all their lives, they are shocked by the suggestion that it is possible to have an essentially burdenless tax system--that there is a natural reservoir of publicly created value, over and above all privately created values, which could pay for all legitimate activities of government. Yet many economists have recognized this fact for more than 200 years. And although we draw to some extent upon this source of revenue, the extent to which we do not is responsible for many of our economic ills today.
The difference between publicly created and privately created values, once seen, is never forgotten. Both result from the competitive bidding within society for the right to consume or use something. But it is of utmost significance that privately created values result from competitive bidding for goods and services produced by man, whereas publicly created values result from competitive bidding for something no man produced--the land upon which we live and work and whose value increases as the community in which it is located grows. In the one case men are bidding for goods and services produced by each other as private individuals. In the other men are bidding for the important right to use part of the earth's surface. In the one case you have privately created values. In the other you have a publicly created value.
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----------------------------------That would be my ideal tax reform. But if I had to compromise, I would choose a reform that, for starters, replaces the horribly regressive
payroll tax to the greatest extent possible with an annual tax on the fair market value of the
public airwaves:
----------------------------------http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0531-05.htmMedia Moguls Pay No Rent for Using Our Airwaves by Ralph Nader
CommonDreams.org
May 31, 2003
There is little doubt that the Federal Communications Commission, by a split 3 to 2 vote, will open more doors for the giant media moguls to acquire more radio, television and newspaper properties in cities, towns and rural areas of this country. By the same decision, they will close more doors on ideas, speakers, writers, artists and small businesses either because doing so makes them more profits or the moguls disagree with these various viewpoints.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell refused to hold more than one public hearing on this rule-making proceeding outside of Washington, D.C. So two other FCC Commissioners - Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein - held over one dozen unofficial public hearings in numerous cities, including a recent one in Washington, none of which were attended by Chairman Powell.
The hearings were packed. People care. Whether they are the National Organization for Women or the National Rifle Association, or media magnates, Barry Diller or Ted Turner, or Common Cause or William Safire, none want five or six chief executives to decide what they hear, read or see.
Viacom's CEO Sumner Redstone once said on television that what keeps him and his often obstreperous number two man at Viacom, Mel Karmazin, together is their common interest in boosting the company's stock price. Not the company's programming, news staff diversity, localism and innovative content for a more informed and enlightened audience. They sneer at such yardsticks, especially Karmazin - the ultimate monetary mind.
But the CEO of Clear Channel (owner of over 1200 radio stations) - Lowry Mays - is just as monetized. He once said: "We're not in the business of providing news and information. We're not in the business of providing well-researched music. We're simply in the business of selling our customers products."
Such commercialism would not be so appalling except that these media moguls are doing all this on our property - the public airwaves - and paying us no rent for exclusive use of our property. Yet they are deciding who says what and who doesn't say what 24 hours a day. The public airwaves are the property of the American people. The FCC is our hapless, industry-indentured (paid junkets are a way of life for FCC officials) real estate agent that gives away the spectrum.
There is an historic safeguard written into the Communications Act of 1934 which requires the FCC to regulate these radio and television stations according to the "public convenience, interest or necessity." Chairman Powell will finish out his term without putting any modern content to this mandate for exercising the public trust in his deliberations as the chief manager of the public airwaves.
Interestingly, the broadcast and newspaper industry split on these concentration rules. Usually their trade association lobbies speak with one voice as they swarm over Congress and the FCC. Family owned newspapers took a different position than that taken by Gannett or other newspaper chains, while locally owned independent TV and radio stations did not like these monopoly enhancements. They believe, as Ted Turner wrote recently, that "when you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas."
But the National Federation of Independent Business, which brags about its power to defend and promote small business, took no position. Apparently, their leaders are spending too much time huddling with big business to listen to the cries of small businesses whose cost of advertising on radio goes up in direct relation to the concentration of ownership of radio stations, such as in New York City.
This is no obscure regulatory rule-making. Hundreds of thousands of comments have arrived at FCC headquarters; there have been demonstrations and protests by groups who usually disagree on public policy issues. What they have in common is that they want a voice. They want to hear other voices beyond the canned entertainment and political party lines that they are receiving.
Were it not for the national absorption with the war in Iraq, the mushrooming opposition to Chairman Powell and the media moguls might have been decisive. As it was, the challenge moved toward critical mass too late for the June 2, 2003 decision which Chairman Powell refused to postpone.
There remains the base of a large movement for recovering some diversity, localism and competition from the mass media. It is bad enough that about 90 percent of what is carried on television and radio is advertising and entertainment. Our country needs serious talk, more good reporters, and citizen access to the great but unseen and unheard talent in our land - from artists to candidates for office.
Above all, the people need to stop having to beg. We own the public airwaves and, after charging the radio and TV stations rent, there will be ample funds for a return to the people of their public airwaves for some time every day in the form of their own audience network.
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