Comments Macrocompassion has made

Poverty and the Rich

"When will the poor of this world be able to stand up for their rights. Never, and they don't deserve to. 'Cause if nature had intended them to be rich and/or happy they wouldn't have been made poor in the first place. Poverty is not a happenning it is an illness and it brings with it squallor. If you don't like the poor in your city simply make it so damn expensive for them that they have to go and live elsewhere.

If you pass abegger in the street, kick him in the ribs from me. But if you believe in the ethics of sharing wealth (in other words the welfare state) then may you too become as poor as he."

The above view-point is not held by the present writer, and is written here to show that its so easy to take an attitude of selfishness and mistrust. Poverty will not go away with better times because these are the better times. Poverty will cease when the rich stop exploiting what they believe to be their right (of access to land that might otherwise be properly used), so that those without jobs can have the chance to produce goods more cheeply and make an honnest living. Poverty will cease when those who take the thing they did not create namely the land value and then don't pay for it, whether they use it properly or not. Tax land not people.

Land tax will allow tax relief of other taxes. It is easy to collect which means less governmental waste in fighting tax dogers. Tax on land will spoil the huge amount of corruption that results from land development plans and the associated speculation in it. It is not worth while to hold land out of use if the cost is high, so tax land and allow its price to fall. Then production costs will also be eased and employment grow. That how poverty will cease, not by hand-outs.  

Aim: to satisfy my unlimited desires with the least effort. David Chester

Poverty and the Speculation in the Environment

Yes I know and so do you, but you are not aware that you do.

The company that is exploiting the poor is the government and they do it by not changing the laws related to land ownership. This means that much valuable land is deliberately held out of use for speculation. These land owners exploit the public investment of the surroundings and wait for the land price to rise.

This action alredy causes high land prices on the rest that is being used, and the resulting high production costs result in relatively low demand for consumer goods. When the land is sold, the money (which should belong to the public anyway, after all the value of the land was not created by the land owner) should be used for tax relief, but instead all production based goods and labour that is needed are taxed.

This second channel also diverts money from being properly used for purchases that will enable entrepreneurs to more easily supply goods and to provide employment. The result is unemployment and poverty.

If the value of the land were taxed instead of the people producing the goods, there would be better use made of the land and the corruption of land speculation (through banks, city planners, lawyers and local politicians) would stop. Poverty is caused, it is not a natural phenomena.

When new countries start to be pioneered there is no poverty because no land is being speculated in, but ask an old pioneer whose land is now in the centre of town what he wants for it and it will exceed what he first paid a thousand fold.

Aim: to satisfy my unlimited desires with the least effort. David Chester