Another problem with a universal code based on land values is that
high land values are often the result of political action. See Randal
O Tooles article in Liberty magazine's February 2006 issue, the
article is titled " Why Do Houses Cost So Much?", Randall and the
Heritage Foundation did have a link from their respective websites on
a study conducted at Harvard on the cost of a buildable quarter acre
lot in 30 major US city, the political driven costs are refered to as
the Zoning tax for example two cities had a zoning tax of over
500,000 dollars for a buildable quarter acre lot, several cities were
in the 100,000 to 250,000 zoning tax range, a few midwest cities
zoning tax was less than 40,000 dollars, the lowest was Kansas city
at best I remember 12,000 dollars. Actually Baltimore, Maryland had a
negative 8,000 dollar zoning tax but the details are in a long pdf
file so I don't know why. Is the city paying people to build in
Baltimore? Houston which has no zoning laws still has a zoning tax
above 20,000 dollars so the zoning tax covers more than just zoning
laws, it covers other regulations and government land use
policy.
Randall gives examples on why some of this cost is created by
homeowners trying to maintain or increase their property values, he
quotes David Dowalls 1984 book The Suburban Squeeze that a developer
wanted to build 2,200 homes on 685 acres in Oakland, CA, selling the
homes for 25,000 to 35,000 each, homeowner and political opposition
force the scale back to just 150 homes that sold for 150,000 to
200,000 each. Growth plans and Propposition 13 in CA. actually helped
increase the price because cities wanting tax revenue artifically
encouraged commercial developing and discouraging residential. Oregon
and Florida also passed state growth plans in the 70s. My state of
Tennesee has pushed state wide growth plans on the county and local
governments, they even have a state government man setting on the
county zoning board telling them what to do. Part of this is an
Elitest Central Planning International Agenda, google Agenda 21 and
read the agenda from a major UN backed NGO's
website.
The US department of agriculture and the census bureu back
around 2,000 show around 6% of the land in the lower 48 US is
developed, In eastern states like NY and PA it was around 20% or
less, Marylands developed land was around 30%, even the two most
densely populated state NJ and RI developed land was 40% of the
states
land.
The government defined developed land to include power plants,
powerlines, gaslines, dams, levies, railroad tracks and state and
federal highways. When the defination of developed was expanded to
include 1 house per 10 acres of land developed land was still less
than 8% of the total land in the lower 48 states. Total land not
counting water in the US is around 3.5 million square miles, a suare
mile is 640 acres, that is 2 billion 240 million acres, Alaska has
571,951 square miles or around 366 million acres, Hawaii 6,423 square
miles or less than 4.2 million acres, so the lower 48 has around 1
billion 872 million acres if the governments fiqures are off and
developed land is 10% then only 187 million acres is developed and
over 1.6 billion acres are not
developed.
Department of Agriculture fiqures show about 936 million
acres in farms, value of land and improvements averages around 3,500
dollars an acre, Timber land averages 800 dollars an acre or less, I
think that careful studies would show that more than 70% of total US
land value is on the 6% of land called developed land and a majority
of that land value is in urban/ suburban areas that have a zoning tax
that is above
average.
Farmland prices are also kept up by government price supports
and quotas, Auburn University studies show these may increase farm
land prices by 20% or more.--- In
[email protected], "terry12622000" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> --- In [email protected], "terry12622000" <cottondrop@>
> wrote:
> >
> > Basically many land value single tax theorist say that all taxes
on
> > labor and capital should end and replaced with a single tax on
the
> > unimproved value of land. Henry George wrote down much of the
> theory
> > in the late 19 century in his book Progress and Poverty, he
> suggested
> > collecting per year the great majority of the economics rental
> value
> > of land, he suggested the owner could keep 10% of the unimproved
> > value for managing it. Often the rental value is based on the
> average
> > interest rate times the unimproved value. Say your home is valued
> at
> > 230,000 dollars which is about the median in the US, say the
> > unimproved land value is 25% of that, then the unimproved value
> would
> > be 57,500 dollars, if the assement value for tax purposes is 90%
of
> > that, then it would be 51,750 dollars, if the average interest
rate
> > is 7% your single and only tax would be 3,622 dollars and 50
cents
> no matter if
> > your income was 5,000 a year or 5 million a year, no sales tax,
no
> > social security tax, no income tax, no beer tax, no whisky tax,
no
> > gas tax, no licence plate fees, no custom duties above inspection
> > costs at least, no cigarette tax, no tax on your home, fence,
> > swimming pool, driveway pavment, store building, equipment and
> > supplies or factory buildings, equipment or product, only a tax
on
> > the value of land that the owner did not improve. Not a bad deal
> for
> > the vast majority of people and businesses. Some land tax
theorist
> > suggest offering a lien to people or businesess than can not
afford
> > to pay the tax, the lien could be collect upon sale or tranfered
to
> > an heir upon an owners death. That would be be much better than
> what
> > most local governments offer these days, if they offer a lien at
> all
> > it appears it is usually only for seniors or
> > veterns.
>
>
>
> >
> > Many land tax theorist base their ethical stand on Lockes
> > leaving as good and enough when taking land out of the commons.
> > Personally I agree that if someone encloses land that is being
> > commonly used he owes compensation to the other users if he did
not
> > leave as good and enough but I do not think this prniciple of
> > compensation should apply to outsiders or those who had not being
> > using the land plus I think if a person finds land not used or
> > claimed and puts it to use he does not owe anyone
> > compensation.
> > One of the main problems of how the land value tax
> > fiqure value is not taking to account that often if not most of
the
> > time most of the land value is created by labor and capital,
> natural
> > value is usually a small percentage of the value. True the owner
of
> > the apprased plot did not create this " unimproved value" but
> others
> > did. Really the land value tax theorist usually do take into
> account
> > the improvement by others but they tend to assume it was created
by
> > government or the community, yet a minority of land owners in an
> area
> > can create most of the land value in the area, possibly in some
> cases
> > only 1 landowner. For example say a private hospital or a
private
> > shopping mall builds on a small portion of the land area in a
given
> > area and the land value more than doubles in the area. Was that
> value
> > mostly created by nature, by roads, water systems, bridges etc?
No
> > those things were there before. Was the value mostly created by
the
> > total community or all of the land owners? No it was created by 1
> > land owner. Does the land tax theorist think all the
surrounding
> > land owners should pay rent to the hospital or shopping mall? I
> doubt
> > it, so why should a landowner pay rent to a community or the
> > government?
> >
>
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