#justrent — Public Fediverse posts

The wrong way to think about universal basic income is that it is a free handout given to the government to people who don't deserve it, paid for by illegitimate taxation of the earnings of others.

The true basis for universal basic income is the moral fact that Nature belongs by right and in common to all the living, and that reclaiming the value of land for the common wealth is not taxation, because it is not assessed against anything which can be called private property in any legitimate sense.

There is no and there cannot possibly be any moral claim to private ownership of any part of Nature. It is not logically possible to "tax" something which is inherently not owned because it is unownable.

Land values are created solely through the aggregaate competitive demand for advantageous locations. They are not and cannot be created by any individual's actions, only via communal or community action, and therefore land values cannot possibly belong to any individual, but only to the community which creates them.

No moral stigma should attach to anyone who chooses to live solely off of their rightful share of the common wealth, without contributing in any way to any productive effort, since that share represents the portion of Nature which they have been denied by the artificial, but necessary, grant of exclusivity of occupancy by society.

In any advanced society, our labor saving inventions necessarily produce more than the input of human hands, or they would not be "labor saving devices", in the first place. The advanced of technology makes location more valuable and labor less valuable. It is neither possible nor desirable to have "full employment" in a technological society, but technology does not and cannot rescind the pre-existing common and equal right to the gifts and produce of Nature.

#Georgism #UBI #LVT #JustRent #economics #taxation #HenryGeorge

RE: https://hachyderm.io/users/scottsantens/statuses/112445770449726691