The Malicious Plan to Abolish Home Ownership

[BarnacleBob]

The Malicious Plan to Abolish Home Ownership

Article posted by Health News on Midlands Directory.

www.midlandscbd.com

 

[chieftain]

Fun fact, no one really owned their house and land, they own a title to it.

 

[Wellsburg]

Fun fact, no one really owned their house and land, they own a title to it.

Correct. Read the fine print on a deed. You are a tenant.

 

[nickndfl]

I have owned so many homes that wife unit stuffs them full of umteen boxes and other useless crap. I would like to rent when I retire because I'm tired of the constant maintenance. Or maybe build a small concrete bunker on an island instead?

 

[Goldhedge]

the only reason to own a home is to lock your monthly payments into the future.

As an 'investment' it's pretty much the only thing that keeps abreast of inflation.

Not that inflation is a good thing. It merely indicates the money is really depreciating and when you sell the home you get more pieces of fiat than what you put in... usually.

 

[DodgebyDave]

Ok. Can I at least keep the horse I rode in on?

 

[Avalon]

"You will own nothing and you will like it." Did we ever doubt they meant it.

 

[TAEZZAR]

The Malicious Plan to Abolish Home Ownership

Article posted by Health News on Midlands Directory.

www.midlandscbd.com

From your link
By now you may be familiar with the World Economic Forum slogan, "

Ooooh, I will still own something !!

 

[dacrunch]

In London, even though a tiny apartment costs over $1M... you do NOT "own" it... It's under a "99 year lease" from the "Crown"... or the "City", don't remember which...

 

[jrog100]

Property tax is a huge scam. it's because of this that no one "owns" their property.

But when you think about it, property taxes are the dues that we pay to keep undesirables out of your neighborhood and and schools. so is it really a bad thing? In some cases no, some cases yes.

 

[arminius]

In all cases it's a criminal action when you are led to believe that you are the owner, but aren't.

It's pure fraud.

 

[Casey Jones]

Well...collectivism, and State ownership of all real property...will do for us about what it did for the USSR...Cuba...Venezuela...every other Marxist Utopia.

I don't know how to stop this insanity. I can lay in stores (I have) but not for the 15 years or so that I may have left. So there's nothing to do but ride it out, and figure out the least-painful way off the planet when that time comes to self-exit.

 

[RebelYell]

In London, even though a tiny apartment costs over $1M... you do NOT "own" it... It's under a "99 year lease" from the "Crown"... or the "City", don't remember which...

Depends on the property. Many properties in England are indeed leasehold (some are 99 years, but 999 year leases exist too). But even so, most are freehold.

 

[DodgebyDave]

Property tax is a huge scam. it's because of this that no one "owns" their property.

But when you think about it, property taxes are the dues that we pay to keep undesirables out of your neighborhood and and schools. so is it really a bad thing? In some cases no, some cases yes.

for 600 a year I get dead nigg er removal and storage

 

[RebelYell]

Property tax is a huge scam. it's because of this that no one "owns" their property.

But when you think about it, property taxes are the dues that we pay to keep undesirables out of your neighborhood and and schools. so is it really a bad thing? In some cases no, some cases yes.

I think property taxes are essential. Not because they keep undesirables out, but because without them landowners become a ruling class of unchallengeable monopolists - a feudal aristocracy.

They need implementing very differently - the way we have implemented them now makes them a fuel for corruption - but the essential idea is more than sound. In my view property taxes should be
- assessed only on the land, not on any development on it (1. because the devlopment you built yourself - there is no reason that should be taxed, the land was there before and you had no obvious right to it, the tax covers what you owe to society because you deny them access to the land which previously belonged to no-one. 2. because otherwise you become a hostage to governments who increase taxes once the house is built because you won't walk away from the investment you just made)
- assessed according to the intrinisc characteristics of the land (fertile, great natural view, waterfront, beach etc. all mean higher tax)
- assessed by a mechanical process without human intervention
- payable directly to other citizens (similar to the Alaska oil revenues). This ensures that governments don't get to steal property tax money. Somebody owning less than the average amount of land would actually get a payment, somebody owning a larger amount than average would make a payment.

Lots of advantages to a system like this.

 

[viking]

I think property taxes are essential. Not because they keep undesirables out, but because without them landowners become a ruling class of unchallengeable monopolists - a feudal aristocracy.

They need implementing very differently - the way we have implemented them now makes them a fuel for corruption - but the essential idea is more than sound. In my view property taxes should be
- assessed only on the land, not on any development on it (1. because the devlopment you built yourself - there is no reason that should be taxed, the land was there before and you had no obvious right to it, the tax covers what you owe to society because you deny them access to the land which previously belonged to no-one. 2. because otherwise you become a hostage to governments who increase taxes once the house is built because you won't walk away from the investment you just made)
- assessed according to the intrinisc characteristics of the land (fertile, great natural view, waterfront, beach etc. all mean higher tax)
- assessed by a mechanical process without human intervention
- payable directly to other citizens (similar to the Alaska oil revenues). This ensures that governments don't get to steal property tax money. Somebody owning less than the average amount of land would actually get a payment, somebody owning a larger amount than average would make a payment.

Lots of advantages to a system like this.

I think there should be some exemptions. Like homesteading. Maybe in a city one lot, rural 5 acres, etc. So no government can basically force you off your place of habitat thru taxation.

 

[Bigfoot]

I think property taxes are essential. Not because they keep undesirables out, but because without them landowners become a ruling class of unchallengeable monopolists - a feudal aristocracy.

I actually think it works the other way around. High taxes won't stop Bill Gates from owning tens of thousands of acres, but high taxes will prevent
the common man from owning property. It's like inflation, the people at the bottom are hurt more than the people at the top.

 

[RebelYell]

I think there should be some exemptions. Like homesteading. Maybe in a city one lot, rural 5 acres, etc. So no government can basically force you off your place of habitat thru taxation.

There wouldn't need to be an exemption. As long as you are using less than the average amount of land you would actually receive a payment. You would only pay if you were using more than the average amount of land - at which point it seems entirely reasonable to me that you should pay for the privilege of taking more than your fair share of land away from everyone else. If you use the land productively you will generate a profit from it over and above your taxes - but if you just want to keep other people out then you have to pay for the privilege.

 

[RebelYell]

I actually think it works the other way around. High taxes won't stop Bill Gates from owning tens of thousands of acres, but high taxes will prevent
the common man from owning property. It's like inflation, the people at the bottom are hurt more than the people at the top.

In a free market Bill Gates would never have been able to acquire as much wealth as he did. He was only able to do so by exploiting government regulations. Initially with Microsoft his wealth was derived from patent protection, and patents are simply mechanisms to create legal monopolies. Injustice is created whenever special privileges (which usually result in monopolies) are granted whether that is the right to stop other people from copying your ideas (or worse coming up with obvious ideas for themselves which is far more often what is achieved by patents), the right to limited liability (or worse immunity from prosecution). Land ownership is a special privilege of the same sort - the power to exclude others from "your" land. And the value of that privilege must be offset by a fair value payment to those you are excluding, to prevent that special privilege becoming an unfair advanatge which in turn would become a permanent, entrenched, growing disparity in wealth.

I also agree that under the current system you are correct that higher taxes would lead to greater disparity, because these taxes are concentrated in the hands of the thieves known as government - and oligarchs seize control of government and divert both taxes and policy to their own benefit and everyone else's cost. Taxes themselves become a form of special privilege for anyone lacking morals and willing to steal them via the political process. Thus taxes which are claimed to be for the purpose of redistributing wealth (of course they were never actually for this purpose) end up achieving the opposite.

That is why under my proposal the taxes are not routed through any government - they are a direct transfer to all citizens in the state. If you use less land than the average bear you receive a payment, if you use more, you make a payment. The tax rates are not set by any crooks, nor are the funds ever under their control. The oil royalties in Alaska work a bit like this, and it's a very good system.

Of course our oligarchs don't depend entirely on property taxes for their wealth, they steal through all forms of taxation - so this would not solve all our problems by itself. We would need to eliminate the income and sales taxes as well for that, and the government's power to regulate non-criminal behavior (which is abused to create monopolies for oligarchs).

Under a system of no property taxation at all, but retaining other taxes then oligarchs would rapidly control all the land and there would be no cost to them to own it in perpetuity - a landowning aristocracy is created. Under a system of no taxation at all, land owners would be able to exploit their monopoly of the land they own to derive rent and would slowly (more slowly than the system where other taxes are maintained, but nevertheless it would still happen) and irreversibly become wealthier than non land-owners.

The only "fair" system is to charge a tax equivalent to the "monopoly value" of the land to ensure that people profit from productive labor (working the land) but not simply from "owning land" (renting it out, or just leaving it idle and excluding others). In other words it is necessary that owning the land does not confer an enduring advantage to the land owner over competitors who do not own land - otherwise the system would lead to a permanent transfer of wealth to landowners from everyone else as it has in the past and analagously to the way a monopoly of money siphons everyone's wealth to bankers today.

 

[ttazzman]

I think property taxes are essential. Not because they keep undesirables out, but because without them landowners become a ruling class of unchallengeable monopolists - a feudal aristocracy.

They need implementing very differently - the way we have implemented them now makes them a fuel for corruption - but the essential idea is more than sound. In my view property taxes should be
- assessed only on the land, not on any development on it (1. because the devlopment you built yourself - there is no reason that should be taxed, the land was there before and you had no obvious right to it, the tax covers what you owe to society because you deny them access to the land which previously belonged to no-one. 2. because otherwise you become a hostage to governments who increase taxes once the house is built because you won't walk away from the investment you just made)
- assessed according to the intrinisc characteristics of the land (fertile, great natural view, waterfront, beach etc. all mean higher tax)
- assessed by a mechanical process without human intervention
- payable directly to other citizens (similar to the Alaska oil revenues). This ensures that governments don't get to steal property tax money. Somebody owning less than the average amount of land would actually get a payment, somebody owning a larger amount than average would make a payment.

Lots of advantages to a system like this.

I am curious as to your point of reference......do you own any significant land?

i fundamentaly disagree with the property tax system.....my point of reference is i do own and maintain a significant amount of raw land

 

[Casey Jones]

I am curious as to your point of reference......do you own any significant land?

i fundamentaly disagree with the property tax system.....my point of reference is i do own and maintain a significant amount of raw land

It's worth noting that while income taxes are a relatively-recent innovation - after being promoted by Marx and later Lenin - PROPERTY taxes are older than the United States.

Taxes are a necessary evil; and anyone who pays them, will feel pain.

What stands between our current situation and BlackRock and Gates Foundations from owning ALL THE LAND...is, you guessed it, property taxes.

The important thing is to keep the tax rates reasonable - and the way to do that is keep GOVERNMENT reasonable, small and Constitutionally limited.

 

[RebelYell]

I am curious as to your point of reference......do you own any significant land?

No. I probably own about my fair share. I doubt this proposal would leave me significantly better or worse off except that it would keep the tax money out of the hands of my local government which would likely make make better off indirectly by reducing corruption and waste.

i fundamentaly disagree with the property tax system.....my point of reference is i do own and maintain a significant amount of raw land

Well it's not especially surprising you would like to lower your taxes then is it? :-) The question is whether that is fair to everyone who doesn't own a significant amount of raw land.

 

[Voodoo]

It's worth noting that while income taxes are a relatively-recent innovation - after being promoted by Marx and later Lenin - PROPERTY taxes are older than the United States.

Taxes are a necessary evil; and anyone who pays them, will feel pain.

What stands between our current situation and BlackRock and Gates Foundations from owning ALL THE LAND...is, you guessed it, property taxes.

The important thing is to keep the tax rates reasonable - and the way to do that is keep GOVERNMENT reasonable, small and Constitutionally limited.

Yeah, no. Very little of that is accurate.

 

[Casey Jones]

Tell me what's not accurate, then.

You think property taxes are a new thing, somehow?

Or, don't you think that Marx advocated Income Tax as a way to destroy the bourgeoisie?

 

[chieftain]

CJ is right, property taxes have been around for a VERY long time, and alludes to the fact that no one owns land, rather the title to it.

Allodial title whilst noble in that it is supposed to give absolute ownership of land, still requires a governing body of some variety along with a register of who owns what. The kicker is how to have absolute ownership without governance (real, corrupted or outright false).

 

[ttazzman]

No. I probably own about my fair share. I doubt this proposal would leave me significantly better or worse off except that it would keep the tax money out of the hands of my local government which would likely make make better off indirectly by reducing corruption and waste.

Well it's not especially surprising you would like to lower your taxes then is it? :-) The question is whether that is fair to everyone who doesn't own a significant amount of raw land.

The thing that I severely dislike about prop taxes.. is the fact non-prop owners vote the tax structure which personally I think is unfair.....which in your thought process is one of the controls in place....I also dislike that in real world practice prop taxes are very punitive on the retired fixed income people sometimes rendering the properties un sustainable...I am against taxes simply for ownership especially land.....I do realize funding for services has to come from somewhere

 

[RebelYell]

The kicker is how to have absolute ownership without governance (real, corrupted or outright false).

Absolute land ownership was perhaps (I'm willing to be told there were other monopoly scams first, but I think land was the first) the first great monopoly scam by which one class was able to control all the wealth of society. It lasted for millenia and resulted in massive wealth disparity as anyone who owned land received rent for doing nothing while others worked the land and produced the food.

This model devolves into feudal aristocracy. It always will. I own the land, and I get money for nothing. Unless I am an absolute fool and sell the land to pay gambling debts or drug bills or some other idiocy, I never sell my land and you will always work for me.

Property taxes are a defense against this.

 

[Voodoo]

Tell me what's not accurate, then.

You think property taxes are a new thing, somehow?

Or, don't you think that Marx advocated Income Tax as a way to destroy the bourgeoisie?

Taxes are Not necessary first of all. That's complete BS.

Property taxes as they exist now in the US are relatively new inventions. IE going back to the origination of Warranty Deeds and the like.

Property taxes are certainly NOT the thing keeping Blackrock from all the land. The HUGE amount of Capital that would take is.

Also, "reasonable" or "fair" are complete cop outs. As soon as you bring that to the arguement it's out the window. There is no possible way to determine "reasonable". It's either my property or not.

The Federal Government ran just fine before property and income taxes.

 

[ttazzman]

Absolute land ownership was perhaps (I'm willing to be told there were other monopoly scams first, but I think land was the first) the first great monopoly scam by which one class was able to control all the wealth of society. It lasted for millenia and resulted in massive wealth disparity as anyone who owned land received rent for doing nothing while others worked the land and produced the food.

This model devolves into feudal aristocracy. It always will. I own the land, and I get money for nothing. Unless I am an absolute fool and sell the land to pay gambling debts or drug bills or some other idiocy, I never sell my land and you will always work for me.

Property taxes are a defense against this.

I cannot identify any other period of time in the past that taxes defended against monopolistic land ownership........seems like in the past ...death/conquest/revolt /violence etc were the defensive mechanisms.....
Edit to addit seems in the past taxes were used to subjugate people and take their land

 

[RebelYell]

The thing that I severely dislike about prop taxes.. is the fact non-prop owners vote the tax structure which personally I think is unfair

I haven't figured out the exact mechanism for setting the tax rate. It needs to be as mechanical as possible (i.e. not open to arbitrary changes) and should be related to the profit which can be generated from the land. It absolutely should not be at the whim of politicians or other voters attemtping to feeload who merely calculate what they think they can get away with. Nor should the tax be higher just because someone built a house or a barn or a factory on the land - that happens in our current system because people who build on land are not in a position to walk away from the land when the tax is raised because they have sunk money into the buildings upon it.

.....which in your thought process is one of the controls in place....

Another control is that the taxes are transfer payments. They are not collected by governments so this should eliminate a lot of corruption. It won't elminate freeloaders who don't own property and want to raise the rate to gain a larger transfer payment - but at least you don't get a crooked politician who aims to take waste the money for his own goals, or to secure votes, ot to take a backhander (say 1% of the whole tax haul).

I also dislike that in real world practice prop taxes are very punitive on the retired fixed income people sometimes rendering the properties un sustainable...I am against taxes simply for ownership especially land.....I do realize funding for services has to come from somewhere

I don't believe property taxes should be used to fund services - they should be a very simple, and fairly small, transfer payment to compensate people who you wish to exclude from the land. They basically should be set so that the land ends up being owned by the man working it (who pays the taxes out of his profits), and there is no profit to be gained by just owning it and being a landlord with no responsibilities whatsoever.

 

[Bigfoot]

I don't believe property taxes should be used to fund services - they should be a very simple, and fairly small, transfer payment to compensate people who you wish to exclude from the land. They basically should be set so that the land ends up being owned by the man working it (who pays the taxes out of his profits), and there is no profit to be gained by just owning it and being a landlord with no responsibilities whatsoever.

But following that logic, people would have to pay annual taxes on cars, boats, tractors, computers, hammers, pliers, and so on. You're saying if I'm not "working" my land, someone else is entitled to it. Then, it follows that if I'm not driving my car, someone else is entitled to it, no?

 

[RebelYell]

Property taxes are certainly NOT the thing keeping Blackrock from all the land. The HUGE amount of Capital that would take is.

I disagree with this. Absent property taxes, land ownership acts much as the fiat money system works today. It slowly siphons money from the rest of society to the monopolists. Sure they don't own everything immediately, or next year, or even next decade. But after a hundred years or two, then they do.

It's a one-way flow.

Unlike money, land ownership always has monopoly characteristics - so it has to be taxed to prevent this from happening.

 

[Casey Jones]

Property taxes are certainly NOT the thing keeping Blackrock from all the land. The HUGE amount of Capital that would take is.

They're getting the money essentially free. They could float stock, and the banksters buy it with ZIRP-QE money...and they have the capital.

But taxes, are what keeps persons or corporations from holding large amounts of land, fallow. Prevents persons like Gates from buying private game preserves, barring the public from huge swaths.

I'm not saying that is a good reason to tax lands, but it's a moderately-beneficial side effect.

As opposed to the Income Tax, which makes climbing out of the mire, to rise to financial independence, all the harder, and often impossible.

 

[Casey Jones]

Allodial title whilst noble in that it is supposed to give absolute ownership of land, still requires a governing body of some variety along with a register of who owns what. The kicker is how to have absolute ownership without governance (real, corrupted or outright false).

No way, short of setting up your own sovereign nation or duchy...or at least, a protectorate. Otherwise, title to the land or not, you are beholden to the political system that claims jurisdiction.

 

[Stop Making Cents]

Property tax is a huge scam. it's because of this that no one "owns" their property.

But when you think about it, property taxes are the dues that we pay to keep undesirables out of your neighborhood and and schools. so is it really a bad thing? In some cases no, some cases yes.

maybe, but it's only a matter of time until a white liberal doosh bag 'do gooder' will demand compact "subsidized" housing be developed next to your property to make it "fair".

 

[Casey Jones]

maybe, but it's only a matter of time until a white liberal doosh bag 'do gooder' will demand compact "subsidized" housing be developed next to your property to make it "fair".

It's not even a do-gooder.

THE GOVERNMENT demands this. This is close to my own world, of some years back.

Parma, Ohio. An inner-ring suburb of Cleveland. It was ethnically over 60-percent Polish-American, with many residents, postwar DPs who came to the Parma area, working at the Chevrolet body and Ford engine plants, close by.

They lived quietly and well, maintaining their property. Parma was a declasse area, mocked as White-Sox City...but it was one of the safest place in the state.

Race pimps brought a lawsuit to FORCE...PUBLIC HOUSING in the city limits. They sued, in Federal Court...and won.

Public Housing was duly constructed and given to the usual suspects.

What had been a safe area, including the fourth-largest mall in the Cleveland area...became, in the space of five years, a dangerous crime-ridden area. Several women's bodies were found in dark corners of Parmatown Mall's parking areas. Anchor tenants left, and the mall was closed and leveled.

And the children of Parma ethnic residents...don't want to live there, anymore. They're part of the diaspora, moving West, to Boise, Salt Lake City...formerly, Denver, and now, little urban areas like my own, here.

SOCIAL ENGINEERING - by government, NGO agitation groups, and the Fuddrel Kourts.

 

[Thecrensh]

We'll own nothing and be happy....

 

[RebelYell]

They're getting the money essentially free. They could float stock, and the banksters buy it with ZIRP-QE money...and they have the capital.

But taxes, are what keeps persons or corporations from holding large amounts of land, fallow. Prevents persons like Gates from buying private game preserves, barring the public from huge swaths.

Yes. Exactly.

I'm not saying that is a good reason to tax lands,

I am :-) - and you nailed it right there in the previous sentence.

but it's a moderately-beneficial side effect.

As opposed to the Income Tax, which makes climbing out of the mire, to rise to financial independence, all the harder, and often impossible.

Indeed. There is no good reason for the slave tax.

 

[Casey Jones]

An interesting illustration of this, is, Whitney Park - a century-old private preserve held in the central Adirondack Preserve, in Hamilton County, New York.

The Whitney Paper Company (Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, last direct heir) owned this land for a century...with the environmental movement in the 1970s drastically-restricting logging within the Adirondack Preserve borders, converted it to a "private park, created for the preservation and promulgation of game and fish species." A tax write-off. Marylou Whitney, Cornelius' last wife and a gold-digger, gifted the land for tax credits, in 1997, to the Adirondack Park Agency. But prior to that, it was held, essentially tax free...fallow and unused, and with trespassing prohibited...by a family of Saratoga socialites.

Tried to find an image of the old signs, every 500 feet from every road...scrubbed. Like former Soviet officials sent to the camps...history, and photographs, rewritten and redone.

 

[RebelYell]

I cannot identify any other period of time in the past that taxes defended against monopolistic land ownership........seems like in the past ...death/conquest/revolt /violence etc were the defensive mechanisms.....

I'm not aware of that occurring either, but then again for most of history there was a land-owning aristocracy that maintained their position through control of all the land. So the converse is true - there are plenty of examples of what happens without this.

Edit to addit seems in the past taxes were used to subjugate people and take their land

I think you are putting the cart before the horse. In general the people got subjugated and then they got taxed afterwards. But taxes applied in this way are very different from what I am proposing.

It is absolutely the case that a great deal of taxation is simply theft. The taxes extracted by a victor after a war are (almost?) always theft whatever they are levied against. And it is absolutely the case that property taxes can act in exactly that way, and most of them do today. That is why it is vital that
(a) the tax is levied at a rate which offsets the "monopoly value" gained from owning the land - a rate which means that there is no profit to be gained from simply renting the land without providing any additional services or buildings/other development to a tenant - but no more than that
(b) there is a mechanism which doesn't involve politicians, or fellow citizens, which determines this rate (some form of auction is likely best)
(c) the money does not flow to a government, but flows directly to other citizens.

Those rules are intended to prevent both the rate being jacked up to allow others to extract too high a payment from the landowner, and to prevent governments from spending the money corruptly and/or inefficiently. Without those rules (or others designed to achieve the same) property taxes would be no better than other taxes. With them, they should be able to offset the monopoly advantage but no more.

The idea here is not to raise revenue with this tax, but to transfer a compensation payment from the landowner to everyone else in the exact amount (but no more) which ensures that the there is no free profit to be made by the landowner from a tenant by virtue of the sole fact that he is the owner.