The Tyranny of Land Ownership
& the Ignored Solution
The Tyranny
of Land
Ownership
& the Ignored Solution
Across the length and breadth of the planet people have lost their communities. We seem to be drowning in corporate domination, government indifference, and a desperate social system that is plunging the world into war for profit, creating insidious poverty and eroding democracy. Capitalism is out of control.
LAND VALUE TAX (LVT) aka
ANNUAL GROUND RENT (AGR) is a proven solution to social inequality, and will restore the proceeds from land values to the public purse. LVT will drastically reduce property speculation, rent hikes and spontaneous evictions, and mortgages and rental prices will drop. This single tax solution will address urban sprawl and encourage owners of empty buildings to make them more productive. This single tax solution is a proven success and a win win situation for everyone, and it is more than frustrating to see it ignored by self-serving politicians so often compromised by corporate pressure groups or simply afraid to initiate such a radical change in the face of a fickle electorate.
As no man made the land, so no man can claim a right of ownership in the land. The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air, it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence.
Henry George
This page addresses the single greatest injustice perpetrated on humanity in the history of the world. It is also about the solution to this gross injustice. A solution that will restore social equality and prosperity, and will remove property speculation that so often steals homes and ruins lives.
Land Value Tax, otherwise known as
Annual Ground Rent.
More money can be raised through this single tax solution than all other taxes put together!
When I discovered this it preoccupied me for some time. I was angry. As I dug deeper, I discovered many other individuals, organisations and groups focussed on this issue and the most obvious solution which to this day is ignored by governments and those in power.
This single tax solution will quell the rampant greed that is destroying the lives of millions of individuals and families.
This single tax solution will allow rents, mortgages, interest rates and retail prices to fall restoring moderation to the cost-of-living and perhaps even enabling people to build savings.
This crime against humanity goes back as far as Mesopotamia (2000 BC), But more recently, around the middle ages, a military aristocracy appropriated land including the commons, and, as in Mesopotamia and days of the Roman Empire around 200 BC, communities ruptured, families broke apart and poverty gripped society.
Land is static. Unlike businesses and other profit-making activities, land cannot be squirrelled away to tax havens depriving hard-working people of public service improvements.
To this day the oppression of society continues under the yoke of wealthy and powerful oligarchs supported by governmemt policies, who reap the benefit of increasing land values produced by the rank and file workforce who receive nothing in return for their labour, except a huge income tax burden. What's left, the net income, is then taxed again and again in the form of VAT on even essential goods, energy for our homes and massive taxes on automotive fuel. What's left barely covers living until the next pay packet is swallowed up by an impenetrable system of corruption and oppression.
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured. Kurt Vonnegut
In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival. Noam Chomsky
Anguish stalks good honest families of young people and children whose lives have become a prison of uncertainty and torment! A relentless merry-go-round of escalating prices for essential, life sustaining commodities causing a profit bonanza for corporations and a cost-of-living crisis for the rest of us. And those who purport to protect and serve merely turn a blind eye, returning the favours of campaign contributions and political donations. Is it any wonder that the suicide rate is escalating? When your tormenter is out of reach, protected by a wall of manicured sycophants and faceless polluters reaping obscene financial rewards. Too often, the hopeless frustration of it all only finds resolution in the peace of oblivion.
Cities and towns are rife with vacant, derilict and unused properties. A travesty in such a struggling social climate. Land Value Tax would encourage owners of these properties to make them productive in terms of accommodation, or other commercial interests, that would provide homes and urban employment.
One day, perhaps, those betrayers will pay in kind for the path they have chosen. We can no longer pick up the pitch forks and hang our enemies from a gallows in Parliament Square. But we can, if we fight as one, bring about change. Change in the way leaders are elected, change in the rules for those that represent us, and changes to a tax system that for centuries has favoured the wealthy and those who rule. Land Value Tax works, this has been proven time and time again.
Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
Desmond Tutu