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Quotes on Land Ethics and Land Value Capture
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| Argentina | France |
Nigeria
Republic of South Africa |
Argentina
Argentina SWOT Analysis"While profiting of the land as a trade object and not collecting land rent, property rights become a mechanism to live off other people's work.... the monopolizing of lands and the private appropriation of land rent are extremely violent acts."
Héctor Raúl Sandler, Director, Instituto de Capacitacion Economica - Para la constitucion de una nueva economia nacional http://www.icepal.com.ar/
Argentina: Country of the Permanent Crisis
Unveiling the Mystery: Roots of the Argentinean Crisis
Develando El Misterio Para El Libro
Australia
Alfred Deakin said (first Prime Minister of Australia)"The whole of the people have the right to the ownership of land and the right to share in the value of land itself, though not to share in the fruits of land which properly belong to the individuals by whose labour they are produced."
Walter Burley Griffin (1876 - 1937), designer of Canberra, and member of Chicago Single Tax Club:
"Without being familiar with political affairs in Australia, I cannot refrain from extending congratulations to your Government on the stand it has taken to maintain for the Commonwealth in perpetuity the rental value of the capital site. Failure to do this everywhere is largely responsible for distortion and prevention of natural city growth, nowhere better exemplified than in our own capital, Washington, where speculative holdings perverted the development from a splendid start with far-seeing plan, and where the financial benefits of the nation's backing are now accruing to private individuals." (In a letter to the Minister of Home Affairs in September 1912)
Clyde Cameron (Federal Minister for Labour in the 1972- 1975 Whitlam government):
"Rent is not a tax! It is merely giving to the community a rental equivalent of the special advantage of being allowed to hold the exclusive possession of a piece of land which due to its location or productivity, gives its possessor an advantage others don't enjoy."
"It is better to pay a small amount of land tax (rent) on your block of land than to pay a large amount in income tax and indirect taxation."
I do not deny that all taxes, with the exception of those on economic rent and inherited wealth, have some [adverse] employment and economic growth effects.
John Howard, Liberal, Prime Minister of Australia
"We of the Australian Labor Party have always believed that the land is the patrimony of the people and that nobody has a complete and absolute title to it. ...The land belongs to the people, and its use must be safeguarded and protected at all times ...
"We have always believed in the land tax, and when happy days come again we shall restore the measure imposing the tax to the statute book of this country."
Arthur Calwell, Leader, Australian Labor Party, Hansard, Vol 221, pp 165-170 passim
"Around the world the demand for land rights becomes ever more strident. The possibility of eventual confrontation between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' on the land question awaits only an awakening by the landless masses to the enormity of the crime involved in the denial of what must be surely the most basic of human rights to share equitably in the bounty of the earth"
Sir Allen Fairhall, Liberal, Federal MP 1949-1969 and Minister in Menzies, Holt, McEwen, and Gorton governments.
"Was ever so simple a remedy offered to a sick world? Cease imposing taxation on anything that is the result of human effort, and collect your public revenue by taking the only element of value that remains, i.e., the rent of land - then expect to see poverty disappear and an equitable distribution of wealth established. Such in brief is the message of him in whom the force of a powerful intellect was joined to fervid passions."
Edward John Craigie, Independent, SA MP (1930-1941
The Australian aborigines, many of whom lived in harmony with nature, testified at a British Parliament hearing in 1988: "our land claim doesn't take one piece of land from anybody." How? They instead claimed a share Rent – from which they could restore their culture.
Austria
Austrian Green Party (below in “From Taking to Sharing”) advocates the Environmental Tax Shift and a social salary.Bangladesh
Bangladesh business news on land taxBy F. H. M. Masoom, Financial Express, March 20, 2007
The owners of the properties whose value increase year to year enjoy the unearned increment without contributing anything towards the development of the country. To tax them is most justified and not to tax them is unethical.
Brazil
John Paul II said in Brazil in 1991, "The high concentration of land ownership demands a just agrarian reform. It has no justification whatsoever."Canada
David Suzuki, the British Columbia geneticist and TV show host, authored an article distributed thru-out Canada (1995 Feb 11) that seconded Herman Daly (#s 15, 43, 116, & 121): "Raise the bulk of public revenue from taxes on thru-put either at the depletion or pollution end. Keep progressivity by taxing very high incomes and subsidizing very low incomes."The Green Party (Canada) believes that taxation is a tool that should be used to achieve policy objectives. Resource use taxes and land value levies should be used to provide incentives to businesses and citizens to conserve energy and resources and to use land more efficiently.
Green Party of British Columbia leader, Tom Hetherington, in spring 2000 said, “Our tax shift program is built on five points: by taxing pollution we would scrap small business taxes; by taxing resource consumption we would slash income tax; by taxing land values we would control urban sprawl; by taxing high energy draw development projects we would encourage sustainable town centers; by taxing automobile use we would ease grid lock and encourage public transit.”
British Columbia's Victorian Transportation Policy Institute, run by Todd Litman lists a bibliography of over 70 entries on funding transit from rent in the Online TDM Encyclopedia (www.vtpi.org).
"The six eastern provinces in Canada have always used the capital system. The four western provinces have adopted the site valuation system in part. The rural areas in the three prairie provinces reduced the taxes on improvements a full 100% early in this century. Between 1903 and 1913 western Canada, under the capital system, experienced a boom of disastrous proportions. During that period land values in Regina increased from $10,490,720 in 1909 to $82,490,720 in 1914 - increase $71,718,390, or 684%; in Edmonton from $5,314,405 to $191,283,979 - increase $185,969,575, or 3500%; in Calgary from $2,289,655 to $120,801,588 - increase $118,511,933, or 5180%. During the boom both rural and urban municipalities in a frantic but belated effort to check it began to adopt the site value system. It was too late. All four provinces reeled under the shock of the depression. There was a disastrous crash in both land and improvement values. Its effects lasted until well into the thirties. During this period some municipalities increased their taxes on improvements in part. It has been claimed that these developments prove that the site value system was a failure. The facts are that in its early days it never had a chance to succeed. Most of the urban municipalities have continued to exempt improvements from taxation by percentages that run from small to as high as 70%."
For more information or copies of reports and studies by the Canadian Research Committee on Taxation, contact us.
Chartered by the CanadianGovernment since 1964 as a non-profit organisation.
China
Xun Quang Xunzi, 3rd c. BC "Heaven has its reasons, Earth has its resources, Man has his political order, thus forming with the first two a triad. But he would err if he failed to respect the ground rules of this triad and infringed on the other two."Confucius (BC 551-479), Chinese philosopher, said, "When the Great Way prevailed, natural resources were fully used for the benefit of all and not appropriated for selfish ends... This was the Age of the Great Commonwealth of peace and prosperity."
Mencius, the philosopher and contemporary of Confucius in ancient China, said: “In the market places, charge land-rent, but don't tax the goods; or make concise regulations and don't even charge rent. Do this, and all the merchants in the realm will be pleased and will want to set up shop in your markets. At the borders, make inspections but don't charge tariffs, then all the travelers in the realm will be pleased and will want to traverse your highways." 2A: 5. A new translation by Charles Muller. www.human.toyogakuen-u.ac.jp/~acmuller/contao/. (Tom Sherrard.)
Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), father of modern China, wrote, "The teachings of Henry George will be the basis of our program of reform... The (land tax) as the only means of supporting the government is an infinitely just, reasonable, and equitably distributed tax... The centuries of heavy and irregular taxation for the benefit of the manchus have shown China the injustice of any other system of taxation."
When modern, enlightened cities levy land taxes, the burdens upon the common people are lightened, and many other advantages follow. If Canton city should now collect land taxes according to land values, the government would have a large and steady source of funds for administration. The whole place could be put into good order.
But at present, the rising land values in Canton all go to the landowners themselves -- they do not belong to the community. The government has no regular income, and so to meet expenses it has to levy all sorts of miscellaneous taxes upon the common people. This burden upon the common people is too heavy; they are always having to pay out taxes and so are terribly poor -- and the number of poor people in China is enormous. The reasons for the heavy burdens upon the poor are the unjust system of taxation practiced by the government, and the unequal distribution of land power and the failure to solve the land problem. If we can put the land tax completely into effect, the land problem will be solved and the common people will not have to endure such suffering.
Sun Yat Sen, Chinese revolutionary, "Father of the Nation", first president of the Republic of China, co-founder of the Kuomintang
China raises one of its rates on some land
China Information Daily, 2007
The rate for annual land-use taxes was increased to triple the previous rate, which varied depending on the city size and type of land use. The reason for the increase, according to government sources, was an attempt at "bringing better control and better planning to the development and redevelopment of land." Property prices have skyrocketed because of run-away land investment, and these, as well as other measures, are the government's attempt to cool investment and thereby avoid a potential market crash.
Cuba
...one of the most cogent and audacious thinkers, ...George's book was a revelation not only for the workers, but also for the intellectuals. Only Darwin, in the natural sciences, left an impression comparable to that of George in the social sciences. ...His devotion can be compared to the love of Nazareen, expressed in the language of our times. ...José Martí, leader of the Cuban independence movement and noted poet and writer
France
"Thus the form of assessment which is the most simple, the most regular, the most profitable to the state, and the least burdensome to the tax-payers, is that which is made proportionate to and laid directly on the source of continually regenerated wealth (land)."- Francois Quesnay, (1694 - 1774), French physician and economist around whom the Physiocrats were formed.
The French physiocrats, (27) Dr. Francois Quesnay (1694-1774) and (28) Baron A. R. Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) simplified this thought and coined the phrase "l'impot unique" ("the single tax"). One of the Enlightenment's wise men, Mirabeau the Elder, held that their discovery would be a "social advance equal to the inventions of writing and money."
Voltaire (1694-1778) had his character Candide say, "The fruits of the earth are a common heritage of all, to which each man has equal right."
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), said, "You are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to no one."
Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), French journalist/anarchist, elaborated: "As long as land monopoly is maintained, the few can take possession of what Nature free of charge has granted to everyone, and usury will penetrate the whole society, and we will have banks, which instead of being servants for the exchange of goods will become powerful extorters."
Germany
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher, noted, "Whether it is the man or the earth I own, the bird or its food, it is essentially the same thing."Silvio Gesell (1862-1930), German reformer, earned fame for the successful application of his monetary reform in Austria between the world wars. John Maynard Keynes and Irving Fisher cited his proposal of allowing local currencies and requiring savers to buy stamps for their savings, so people would spend instead, keeping bills circulating. In his main work, The Natural Economic Order through Free Land and Free Money, Gesell rejected the association of "blood" with "land". The whole earth is an integral organ; everyone should be free to travel and settle anywhere. Gesell advocated an open world market without monopolies, customs frontiers, and colonial conquest. Inspired by Henry George, whose Single Tax on land value had become known in Germany, Gesell called upon government to buy land and lease it to the highest bidder and to forgo taxation. Since the amount of Rent depends on population density, Gesell would distribute Rent to mothers, freeing them from working fathers, letting the sexes relate for love. Gesell's reform is a third way, "a market economy without capitalism".
The German Institute for Economic Research, contracted by Greenpeace, concluded in their Economic Bulletin (v 31, n 7) that "an energy tax returned to firms as a reduction in employers' social insurance contributions and to private households as a per capita allowance ("eco bonus") would be feasible in legal terms and have positive effects even if implemented in a single country."
German Green Margrit Kennedy (#128) in Interest And Inflation Free Money (1988, p 32) elaborates: "a combination of private use and communal ownership would be the most advantageous solution for achieving social justice and allowing individual growth... (society) would buy up all its land and lease it out to its inhabitants... The constitution of ... Germany describes land as an asset which carries a 'social' responsibility.” (Editor comment: But why buy the land? If society is to compensate landholders, why not the landless?)
Dr. Margrit Kennedy (cited above in “Property of whom?”) claimed that the increase in German land and building value from 1950 to 1980 was enough to give every German DM800 a month for life. (Editor note: One wonders how much the dividend would be from only the land value.)
Greece
Princess Alice of Greece (1885-1967), mother of Prince Philip, the consort to the Queen of England, wrote, "I have studied Henry George. The idea of a Single Tax could contribute to the economic restoration of our country." (Athens daily paper, Proia, 22 May 1927)India
Punjab News, 28 January 2007By G.S.Bhalla, professor in the department of Commerce and Business Management, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar
"Taxing unearned income is preferable to taxing earned income. The tax shift to resource use and community-generated land values will distribute income more fairly without dependence on income and business taxation to redistribute income. Taxing unearned income (resources, land) and not earned income (jobs, profits) will reduce the rich-poor gap since the rich are always in a better position to capture unearned or windfall income by their ability to hold assets that they do not have to consume. Pay for what you take, not for what you make. Businesses should not be taxed for hiring people or for earning a profit, but should be charged for using resources and polluting the planet. People should not be taxed for earning an income or purchasing products but should be charged for the value of land they own and the resources used in the products they buy. Resource use and polluting are privileges not rights, and businesses and consumers should pay for these privileges."
Ireland
"The Irish Famine of 1846 is example and proof. The corn crops were sufficient to feed the island. But the landlords would have their rents in spite of famine and in defiance of fever. They took the whole harvest and left hunger to those who raised it. Had the people of Ireland been the landlords of Ireland, not a human creature would have died of hunger, nor the failure of the potato been considered a matter of any consequence."- James Fintan Lalor, (1807 - 49), Irish patriot
The Irish Green Party's Manifesto (1989) states, "The land tax, used together with energy and other ('sin') taxes (and user fees) as a source of funding of guaranteed basic income, is a means of ensuring that everyone shares in the wealth of the land by virtue of citizenship."
FEASTA LAND & HOUSING GROUP - Rampant inflation in land and house prices has been a defining characteristic of Ireland's 'Tiger Economy'. This trend has in several ways been beneficial for the Government parties, for developers, landowners, mortgage lenders, estate agents, private sector landlords and many property owners. At the same time the younger first-time buyer, tenants and the poor have suffered. Many young families are now heavily indebted for cheaply built houses located far from their workplace and from public/community facilities. Tenants are also paying exorbitant rents to live near their college or place of employment. Though much has been written about the housing crisis our policy makers and mainstream commentators have little to offer in terms of solutions it would seem.
Land Value Tax: Unfinished Business November 2004 by Emer Ó Siochrú This paper is reprinted, with permission, from the book A Fairer Tax System For A Fairer Ireland, published by the CORI Justice Commission. The book also contains papers by Tom Dunne and Richard Douthwaite. It can be downloaded in its entirety from the CORI website, in PDF format, at www.cori.ie/justice/publications/papers/A_Fairer_Tax_System.pdf.
Quotes found in Land Value Tax: Unfinished Business
I would abolish land monopoly by simply taxing all land, exclusive of improvements, up to its full value...In other words, I would recognize private property in the results of labour, and not in land.
Davitt, Michael, Some Suggestions for the Final Settlement of the Land Question(1902)
Thus the land question remained possibly the most potent political issue in rural Ireland long after independence and one of the great determinants of political survival and decline" (P229-30 Dooley.)
Dooley, Terence, Land for the People; The land Question in Independent Ireland, 2004, UCD Dublin
This common right of each human being to benefit from the Earth's natural capital should be protected and respected by legitimate governments at the appropriate level.
- Emer Ó Siochrú
In Ireland, one of the reasons why it is expensive to buy a house is that it is cheap to own one, there being no property taxes (rates) on residences and the exchequer (or, rather, taxpayers who do not have a mortgage) pays some of the interest relief. This subsidized ownership raises the demand for housing, to the benefit of builders, landowners and mortgage lenders. 32 (P118, Bristow)
Bristow, J, Taxation in Ireland : An Economist Perspective, 2004, Institute of Public Administration, Dublin
When the particular identity most of us inherited was taking shape in the later 19th century, affinity with the land was at the heart of it. Perhaps this is an opportune time to look back at the ideals that shaped that evolving modern Irish sense of identity. If we can recover it and bring it to fruition it perhaps never fully attained in the past, perhaps we may be able to shape it to an authentic mode of bioregionalism appropriate to Ireland: authentic in the way it is grounded in tradition, but fuelled by the advances and insights of modern ecology and modern agricultural principles of sustainability and environmental responsibility. 36 (Feehan, John, P. 526)
Feehan, John, Farming in Ireland, 2003, Faculty of Agriculture UCD
For contacts with those interested in land value taxation for Ireland connect with FEASTA - The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability. Contact the FEASTA Land and Housing Group Chair, Emer O-Siochru. Email: land at feasta dot org
Japan
Gen. Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964), commander of the US occupation force in Japan after World War II, hired Carl Shoup to help him reform land holding and thereby rebuild Japan. Their revision of the Japanese Constitution reversed the rent ratio between owners (whose portion dropped from 2/3 to 1/3) and tenants (whose rose from 1/3 to 2/3).Kenya
"When the white man came we had the land and they had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed and when we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible."- Jomo Kenyatta, (1889 - 1978), prime minister of Kenya
Netherlands
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), Dutch philosopher, wrote, "The whole soil should be public property."Nigeria
A method described in Native Races and Their Rulers, a book explaining the scheme of land tenure introduced by the "Land and Native Rights Proclamation" of Northern Nigeria, 1910, shows how this can be grafted on to tribal custom to confer complete security of tenure and avoid exploitation of workers and land speculation.The Philippines
Philippines business news on land taxBy Antonio V. Osmeña, Sun Star, April 11, 2007
In many urban areas, particularly those of high population concentration, vacant land or lots with blighted structures should be assessed and taxed in excess of their contribution to overall real estate market value, in order to stimulate its use, to discourage the holding of vacant urban land for speculative purposes, and to encourage improvement of blighted structures.
Filipino writer and theologian Charles