My ideal world would tax land, not buildings; reduce extreme wealth and poverty; and moderate climate and population problems with zero-carbon nuclear power.
Here’s an article about climate collapse. It’s an excellent article but it doesn’t propose practical solutions. It asks for change of our mindsets but how to do that in our hard-headed world? I think we can avoid industrial collapse or at least moderate it if we change the ways we manage our land and resources.
Here’s my wish list.
I. Tax Use of Land and Natural Resources. Our Creator made this planet and we are mere temporary tenants. We were all born equally and we should all share the planet’s benefits. Thus no one can really own a bit of land any more than he can own a bit of air or a bit of water. So if he uses a bit of land, he should pay for the privilege. And to whom should he pay? He pays the true owners, that is, everyone else.
The Native Americans knew that we share the land and its resources but the European invaders forcibly imposed the idea of private property. This brought strong economic growth but now we have unrestricted Capitalism with vastly increasing wealth but also continuing poverty of large numbers of people. Extreme economic inequality concentrates power in too few hands. To cure these problems, the Communists tried to impose joint ownership of land and resources. This failed, however, as it removed individual incentives and the system degraded to Dictatorships.
Henry George suggested third way: a compromise between rampant Capitalism and Communist communes: Land owners keep their land and pay a tax for its use. The tax, called Land Value Tax, is not really a tax but a rent, an Annual Ground Rent. LVT would promote efficient use of land and resources, retain individual incentives and discourage land speculation and related boom-bust cycles. By taxing land but not the buildings on it, LVT encourages land owners to improve their properties, resulting in fewer slums. It makes cities more compact and more walkable, with less sprawl, reduced transportation costs and reduced housing prices and homelessness.
LVT could replace most other taxes, such as on labor and trade. Economists agree LVT is the most fair tax, not distorting the economy as do income and sales taxes. We want people to work but we tax them for working. We want the economy to function smoothly but we tax sales and transactions.
We could reduce economic inequality by taxing income and wealth but income and wealth are slippery things, hard to quantify and subject to fraud. They can be moved across borders or hidden in art, jewelry or offshore accounting tricks. Land and resources can not be moved or hidden and taxing them is efficient and resistant to fraud.
LVT is a rent for the use of all natural resources, not just land, so it promotes efficient use of natural resources. Thus it includes James Hansen’s proposed tax on use of the atmosphere as a carbon dump and so can reduce climatic effects. And like the carbon tax, LVT proceeds would be paid to directly to all citizens; a Universal Basic Income.
II. Distribute Wealth More Equally. UBI eliminates absolute poverty by providing a floor under other wages and thus UBI reduces stress levels, reduces drug and alcohol usage and improves public health. UBI encourages the back-to-the-land movement by allowing people to move out of crowded, expensive cities to lower cost rural areas. A UBI is particularly needed now with millions out of work with the pandemic. And in the future as AI and robots eliminate many jobs.
The UBI would be supported by several sources: LVT, reduced welfare programs and reduced military expenses. Both LVT and UBI are efficient in that they do not require large administrative costs.
https://link.medium.com/cBuSc84Hwbb
III. Promote Abundant, Cheap, Zero-Carbon Energy. Our economy runs on fossil fuels. The more we burn fossil fuels, the more energy, the faster our growth, the less poverty and the greater our wealth. Now, however, we have to reduce our use of fossil fuels to moderate warming temperatures and rising sea levels. Since the 2008 recession, global growth has been weak and economic inequality and instability are increasing. We need continued growth, however, so that as we all get rich, we will have fewer kids and our population will stabilize. Most of us are already rich and birth rates in many countries are below replacement levels of 2.1 kids per woman. In places like central Africa, however, people are still poor and many women still have five or more kids.
To maintain growth, we are adding more debt; too much debt to ever be repaid. The ancients had an occasional Jubilee Year to cancel debts when they became too great to ever be repaid. We won’t do that but we have to start cancelling debt somehow as excessive debt leads to instability and revolution.
Adding debt is a temporary prop for growth but not a long-term one. To support continued growth, we need a huge new source of cheap, zero-carbon energy. Nuclear power can provide this and renewables such as wind and solar power can not. There is no alternative. Renewables take huge amounts of land and materials and their weakness, diffuseness and intermittency kill them.
The energy return of fossil fuels is declining due to resource depletion. EROEI values of fossil fuels are in the tens to hundreds; renewables have even lower EROEI values. New nuclear plants will have far greater energy return; EROEI values in the thousands.
These new nuclear power plants will support continued economic growth, greater global wealth, moderated climate effects, healthier lives with less air pollution, lower resource usage per capita and more recycling. They will allow our population to peak and start to decline, avoiding catastrophic collapse.
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So is this an ideal UU world? I propose an 8th UU Principle: Equal sharing the wealth and resources of the Earth.
Land is a birthright. We all were born equal on the Earth and we all own the Earth jointly. So when we use a bit of the Earth or it’s resources, we owe a rent to others for that privilege. This rent would reduce extreme wealth and poverty and would insure that we do not over-use the Earth and its resources.
Here’s a short reference about Land Value Tax.
https://www.bournbrookmag.com/home/the-case-for-land-value-tax
And a longer article about the philosophy of Henry George where I got many of these ideas.
The Georgist Philosophy in Culture and History
Henry's boys 