People often object to land value tax because they think it will increase their taxes. However, for most working class folks, your taxes would actually go down. In reality, you probably already pay land value tax. Most of us pay a land value tax to a landlord in the form of rent or to a bank in the form of mortgage payments. This "tax" in the form of rent allows landlords and capitalists (mortgage holders) to survive and thrive without having to actually work for a living like the rest of us. The revenue from rent/mortgage payments allows landlords and capitalists to live off of unearned income, while the rest of us slave away for petty wages and live paycheck-to-paycheck. They make money, not by doing any productive labor, but by monopolizing land and resources and charging other people to use said resources.
In our society, we already have a land value tax: it's just that the revenue all goes to private land-owners rather than to the people as a whole. In our society, we already have basic income, but it's not universal. The wealthy, the landlords and capitalists, actually receive income from rent, interest, and dividends; and that money serves as an income independent of any actual productive labor.
Land and natural resources were not produced by man. The land-speculator, the landlord, and the capitalist didn't produce the resources that they monopolize through productive labor. The accumulation of capital was rooted in monopolization of land and charging rent. The land, which the landlords did not produce through labor, and the capital, which accumulated through charging rent for access to land, should really be regarded more as social wealth than as something that private individuals are inherently entitled to exploit for personal gain. A man is entitled exclusively to the product of his own labor, not to value produced by monopolizing resources nor to value produced by society as a whole. There's no reason that landlords and capitalists ought to be viewed as, in any way, entitled to their unearned income. The poor and middle class work for their wages―that's earned income! The landlord and the capitalist don't earn their income by performing any productive or useful labor―that's unearned income! As long as we have government, somebody has to pay for it. Wouldn't it be more fair to have government paid for out of taxes on unearned income rather than out of earned income?
Instead of the rent going entirely to private landlords and banks, a portion of that money ought to go to funding government and creating a citizens dividend. This rent revenue from land value tax replaces income tax. The average person gets a net benefit. Your income taxes go away (more money in your pocket) and the land value tax basically comes out of the rent/mortgage payments you were already making (you're not paying any more than before). The bankers, capitalists, and landlords merely get smaller profits. And, who gives a fuck?! I mean, let's be honest: these people are largely parasites. The banks make billions in profits and their CEOs get multi-million-dollar yearly salaries, yet tax-payers still had to bail them out. Parasites like Robert Mercer and Donald Trump have multi-billions and haven't ever done an honest day's labor. Don't tax the soldier, the firefighter, the ditch-digger, the garbage man, the plumber, or the HVAC guy. Tax the speculative investors, crooks, oil companies, and landlords. And take a little bit of that unearned income that currently serves as a basic income, apart from labor, exclusively for the wealthy, and give it back to the people as a citizen's dividend. The land of a nation is the territory of the nation, and it belongs to the people of the nation. Tax people for private use of that land (charge the damned landlord rent) and distribute the revenue therefrom to all citizens as a dividend for their share of ownership of the nation's land/territory. In a democracy, the people is the nation, and the nation's territory is the land; so land ought to belong to the people altogether, not to private individuals.
