> Subject: RE: how to eliminate unemployement Well, the communists were most successful -- unemployment was illegal. This worked. It's not very free market, though.
> > > I know Georgists support land taxes (or community collection > of rent, if you > prefer) to fund services. That is one of my central points > of disagreement. > > Ideally, taxes should be eliminated altogether. Every > service should be > funded by those who use it, with user-fees assessed pro rata > according to > the real cost imposed on the system. By funding services out > of general > revenue, we break the market price system's feedback link > that tells the > consumer the real cost of what he consumes, and lets him > adjust his level of > consumption on the basis of the price signal. I suspect that > there are very > few (if any) true "public goods," that cannot be > "internalized" and paid for > entirely by those who use them. > User-fees are an excellent idea, but I don't think incompatible with a Lib-Georgist land value tax: Who supports the judiciary? Who supports the Dept. of War? er, Defense? -- property owners, who need/use local police and international police, as well as courts, to defend their property rights. I personally support smaller, annual fee-taxes, rather than less frequent, much larger transaction fees (eg. house ownership transfer fee of some $40 000), for such "night watchman state" funding. BTW, I like the comparison of a minarchist "night watchman state" with the current, and increasing, "nanny state". (If you want to get infected with that linguistic meme.) Words and phrases are important, I doubt that we can change "public schools" into "gov't schools", but if that gov't label had been given earlier, it might have stuck, and would certainly be easier to reform now. Finally, I also favor "user-fees" on pollution. I think that land-tax and pollution tax can, and should, replace all personal income tax. My desire for companies to pay for the benefit of corporate limited liability makes me hesitate to elliminate the corporate income tax altogether, but reducing it, certainly. Tom Grey
