09-08-2017, 06:41 PM
(09-08-2017, 09:26 AM)David Horn Wrote:(09-07-2017, 04:51 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: David George's idea is that of all the ways of making money, taking advantage of a permanent scarcity of real estate in a captive clientele, is the easiest. Heavily taxing income that people earn with great difficulty can drive people out of a marginal activity, but heavily taxing 'easy money' isn't going to drive people out of it.
OK, but land no longer holds the intrinsic worth it once did. Sure, every square inch of Manhattan is worth enough to offset any taxation cost, but what about the prairie? If I'm a farmer with 5 sections of land growing row crops, I own a large percentage of the taxable assets within my taxing authority, but the utility of the land is not high.
This was a good idea that may have seen the limit of its value.
A plot of land large enough to hold a farmhouse in a giant city might be worth more than five sections of farmland growing row crops or a few square miles of range land. In the county in which I live (which has much lake property) farmland is taxed almost at a zero rate and lake properties are taxed heavily.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.