Jeffery J. Smith, President, Forum on Geonomics
[A paper submitted to the BSA of the AIA, 2003]

Around the world, a few dozen cities collect ground rents – some of the money that people spend or are willing to spend on a location – rather than tax buildings and other economic goods. Besides raising public revenue more efficiently, these places also motivate efficient use of urban land. No longer taxed for improving their property, while prodded by a rent levy to make improvements, owners who had been speculating or procrastinating get busy and put their once under-utilized land to better use. Overall, better land use raises density in particular and livability in general – goals that other jurisdictions still long for.

We will never make poverty history until we rip up the tax system

Mark Braund, Saturday December 3, 2005 The Guardian

Despite the prime minister’s resolve, the year in which Britain was to lead the world in making poverty history has achieved little. This month there is one last opportunity as the World Trade Organisation gathers in Hong Kong. But even if this meeting throws up some surprises, we will end the year little closer to ending poverty. Increased aid, debt cancellation and fairer trade would certainly have some impact, but they would not address the underlying causes of poverty.

By Lev Lafayette.

Derived from the presentation at the Hume Global Learning Centre, June 28, 2006

Introduction

Tonight I am representing Prosper Australia, an organisation which has, in various guises, been a part of Victoria for over one hundred years. One key objective of the organisation is the reduction, as much as possible of taxes on labour and capital, and for public finances to be derived instead from site rental. Because when it comes down to it, there are only two sources for public revenue; the goods and services which are produced or the resources that are used.

The idea of public financing through site rental was extremely popular in the early days of Australia, supported by both the Liberal Party of Alfred Deakin and his Labor opponent Andrew Fisher. Indeed Alfred Deakin illustrated the case quite succinctly when he said;

* FOUR of the West’s top economists – Nobel prize-winners Franco Modigliani, James Tobin, Robert Solow and William Vickrey – were among the signatories to an open letter to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990/1991. The economists urged the Soviet President to retain land in public ownership, and to raise government revenue by charging rent for the use of land.

* Had he acted upon their advice Gorbachev may have strengthened his hand, but was unceremoniously dumped in favour of Boris Yeltsin. The Russian people have an especially deep feeling for their motherland, and socialising land rents for revenue and slashing all other taxes may well have struck a sympathethic chord. Yeltsin too, however, has been told by western powerbrokers that he must sell Russia’s patrimony – ‘freehold’ her land – as a pre-condition for western assistance.

FWG Foat, MA, DLit

There is a Secret of History. The mot de l’enigme is Land. The great historians of the rank, for instance, of Mommsen, say the word, but then pass on, as though in haste to leave a dangerous ground. Lesser historians shun the mention of it altogether, or mention it in faltering accents. Time, with its effacement of old meanings, helps this obscurantism and oblivion falls upon the theme.

What is the cause of this conspiracy of silence? The answer is again in one word, landlordism. Historians are proteges of those whose interest lies in keeping dark concerning land. Now a protege must not discuss what patrons do not wish to mention. But that would come to writing nothing of man’s greatest struggles, longest wars, and bitterest distress. “Well, then, let the historians write of wars, political struggles, and distress in social life. Let them write freely of the things that happened, and the suffering endured. But let them never mention land and the ownership of land as being the ultimate causes of these happenings. They can write out the story, showing their knowledge of the facts; and if they are pressed for explanations they can point to intermediate collateral causes: man’s natural pugnacity, notions of honour, foolish mistakes, wild aspirations towards political freedom, and the like. That will satisfy the few inquiring minds, and the rest will never question. Only no mention of the land and the landlords!”