Tag Archives: land rent

Land and money issues must be solved together

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In a forum on Land Value Tax on Facebook one member says “Full LVT and CD of the surplus will fix almost all monetary problems”.

No so. While money continues to be created as interest bearing debt by private banks, there will be more debt in the system than there is money. Banks create the principal but not the interest, so everyone has to compete to earn the interest they must pay. This leads to competitive behaviour, and some will lose out and go further into debt, widening the gap between rich and poor. No, banks can no longer be permitted by society to create our means of exchange as interest bearing debt. Money should be created by the people who use it, by society itself and it should never, never be created as interest bearing debt. Besides if you leave money creation to banks, they will continue to create the bulk of it as mortgages on property. They will continue to have land as their security. Society at large should have this land as security backing their currency.

And just as you can’t just solve the land problem by imposing a full rental on the site value, you can’t solve the money problem without addressing the land problem. Most pressure groups and political parties who advocate monetary reform alone will recommend spending money into existence by government for the building of infrastructure. But when roads and railways are built without a full location fee on land, the price of land will rise. This increased land value is privately captured by the property owner and also by the banks who earn interest on higher and higher mortgage loans.

Land tenure and monetary reform must be implemented together. Tweak one of them only and all you have done is skew the system.

Here is a 42 minute radio interview of Deirdre Kent with Karl Fitzgerald of Earthsharing Australia for the website Renegade Economist. When asked by Karl at one stage of the interview why they should go together, I missed answering one part. http://www.3cr.org.au/economists/podcast/renegade-economists-09102013

New Paradigm economics for jobs in a post fossil fuel economy

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I have uploaded a revised version of the slideshow on new paradigm economics. This is similar to the first one, yet addresses the question of how you get a financial incentive built in to an opt in scheme. It also comes after realisation that an opt in scheme will need to operate under current law. Homeowners will negotiate a land fee payable to government and agree under contract law. We no longer talk of leasehold land, though it is rather similar. This one suggests we burden the title with a covenant while the title remains with the property owner.

The other change is that we are not referring to Zeals but are talking about a tradeable tax credit. We don’t use the term land rental or land rent much, but talk about a land fee or land rates. These terms indicate more accurately that the fee is payable in exchange for the value provided by society in the services to the site.

We have also returned to the idea we had in the first place, that of mortgage relief. If the government pays for the land and effectively takes land out of the market, then the homeowner’s interest payments to the bank reduce while they have some precious new currency to spend. It naturally flows towards productive enterprise or the relief of more private debt e.g. student loans. So it is an ideal policy for first home buyers.

Since posting it, I have realised only one more thing. The land fee will rise or fall depending on the zoning of the land.