(May-June 2009 GroundSwell)
DEMOCRATIC FREEDOM CAUCUS ENDORSES LVT
Your GroundSwell editor was among the 44 Georgists
to whom Jason Bessy, Skowhegan, ME, emailed his editorial, "Georgism and the
Single Tax on Land: Why the 130-year-old Idea Is Still Relevant
Today." The editorial is posted online at
http://www.newsflavor.com/Opinions/Georgism-and-the-Single-Tax-on-Land-Why-a-130-Year-Old-Idea-is-Still-Relevant-Today.663165.
The purpose of the article is "to outline why the idea of land value taxation
argued by 19th century political economist, Henry George, is still relevant to
many of today's pressing issues, including poverty, economic growth, the
environment, and responsible government." Subsections are "What Is
Economics?", "The Fruits of Productivity as Reward, Taxation as
Punishment," "Land -Value-Taxation Versus Property Taxation", "The
Benefits of a Single Tax", and "Conclusion".
In a subsequent email between your GroundSwell
Editor and Jason (email
nysa71@yahoo.com), he brought to our
attention the Democratic Freedom Caucus. They are a small but growing
caucus within the Democratic Party that supports (as part of their platform)
land value taxation. Quoting Section 2a of their platform:
"Out of justice and practicality, it is proper to
allow an individual to keep the rewards from his or her labor. So, there should
be the least taxes possible on labor, because taxes on labor take the fruits of
labor. Such taxes are not only unjust, but also lower the incentive to be
productive. Taxes on income, sales, or buildings all take away the rewards of
labor and productivity, so they are the most harmful kinds of taxes. The least
harmful tax is a tax on land location value or on extraction of natural
resources, because those are not products of labor, but are fixed resources.
"Land is fundamentally different from products made
by human effort, because no person can produce land, meaning locations and
natural resources. So, property in land needs to be treated somewhat differently
from other types of property, in order to prevent over-concentrated ownership of
land and natural resources."
Mike O'Mara, York, PA, is one of the founders
of the Democratic Freedom Caucus (DFC), a current National Committee
member, and he is the State Chair of the Pennsylvania DFC. Mike is
also one of the moderators of the DFC discussion group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dfc_talk/.
A HGFA director, and formerly of Maryland, Mike wrote the "A
Landlord Is Really a Type of Tax Collector" brochure that was distributed at the
Libertarian Party convention in Washington, DC in 1996 (and was inserted
in the July-Aug. 1996 GroundSwell.)
Brooks Nelson, Gainesville, FL, is the
Florida state chair and current DFC National Director.
Paul Gagnon, Franconia, VA, joined the DFC
not long after it was founded. He is the chair of the DFC in
Virginia. (Paul also is the chairman of the Metro DC/VA/MD chapter of
Common Ground-USA.)
In March 2005 Free Liberal's contributing editor
Robert Capozzi conducted an interview with Paul Gagnon, member of the Democratic
Freedom Caucus (DFC) National Committee. (The entire interview is published in
the April 2005 Free Liberal, and can be accessed at
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/001005.html.)
Portions of the interview are quoted
below.
... Paul "and his colleagues on the DFC have
been working from within to inject libertarian ideas into the Democratic Party.
The DFC 'is a progressive, pro-freedom caucus, which promotes the values which
the Democratic Party was founded upon: individual liberty, constitutional
democracy, and social responsibility.'
"The DFC was formed in 1996 by three
gentlemen: Andrew Spark, Hanno Beck, and Mike O'Mara. I (Paul) and two others
joined shortly thereafter. It became a place for libertarians who couldn't live
with some of the ideological strictness of the Libertarian Party, but, at the
same time, were a little unhappy with how the Democratic Party had gone. Now we
see that the Democratic Party is open to change. ... The Democrats have become
more adept at appealing to the mainstream. . . .
"One of the good things about the DFC is that
we're open to a lot of new ideas. Many of us are Georgist. ... Most
economists would agree that a land-value tax is the least harmful to the
economy. People have trouble separating out a tax that's put on land and a tax
that's put on buildings. Georgists would say that the human body is owned
by the individual; and our labor belongs to us. That's pretty much standard
libertarian philosophy. We point out that the land - which includes
airwaves, air, water, soil, minerals, all of that, plus the site value itself -
was not created by man. It comes from nature, it belongs to nature, and it does
not come from human labor or the human mind. The land itself is for everyone.
(Henry) George called for a single tax on the land.
"DFCers go one step further. We say, 'Take the
unearned revenues from land value - which would be roughly half of your
real estate tax - and that money would be divided up as a citizen's
dividend.' Every year, [every citizen] would get a check for your
ownership in the land. Some might call that 'socialism,' but we don't think so.
It's simply giving each person their due.?