“The equal and sustainable right of access to the Earth's bounty seems one of the most transcendent truths a human being can contemplate. Yet, this right is missing from the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The fact that this single principle is violated on an ongoing basis is quite possibly the root cause of many, if not most, other human rights violations.”
Source: Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World
“How can we share the gifts of nature? By sharing the monetary value that human beings assign to nature. The fundamental thing we need to abolish is the mechanism by which people unfairly profit from land. The solution is simple: Property owners merely need to pay the communities from which they receive benefits through their exclusive use of land the exact market value of the benefits they receive.
When land users pay significant proportions of the rental value of land to their local communities, they rightfully reimburse their communities. These can be called Community Land Contributions.
Unlike, land value taxes, CLCs relate to the rental value (which subsumes all natural and social benefits) not land price. Also, a tax implies land users are being taxed on their land values while CLCs emphasize that land is a community good.”
Source: Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World
“Tax systems are essentially the mechanisms by which societies decide what people have to share with each other versus what they can keep for themselves.
Instead of taxing production and consumption, we can simply capture land value instead. Maxim: Keep what you earn, pay for what you use.
In such a system, employees, consumers, business owners, business investors, homeowners, farmers and even retirees would be better off. Only those who use land inefficiently or seek to profit from it directly would lose - land speculators, banks, mining companies, extractive industries.”
Source: Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World
“Progressive taxes are inherently flawed in that they fund public services which are often location-dependent, thus adding to the value of owned land. Thus, any tax that pays for public services without obtaining revenue from resulting land value increases is fundamentally unjust.”
Source: Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World
“Fred Harrison claimed in his book Ricardo's Law: House Prices and the Great Tax Clawback System that property owners are generally able to clawback their cumulative income tax payments through gains made from land values, while renters are financially penalized by income taxes. Thus, the progressive income tax is a scam by which the poor subsidize the rich.”
Source: Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World
“Most of all, community land contributions are both ethical and economically fair because they allow people to keep the fruits of their labour. Land contributions charge people for what they take away from other human beings, not for the value they provide through their labour and their provision of capital goods.”
Source: Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World
“Human beings need land even more so than they need money; the monopoly of land - not the monopoly of money - is the primary driver of poverty and inequality. Once we understand that the issue is lack of affordable access to land, and therefore to community, we understand why the value of land has to be shared.”
Source: Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World
“One way for communities to create affordable housing is for local communities to adopt land-use rights. Local governments or community land trusts would provide financing to homebuyers, who would then make land contributions on their properties in perpetuity. As a result, communities would get reimbursed for the goods and services they provide to homeowners, while property buyers would primarily become home buyers not land buyers.”
Source: Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World
“Whenever land is bought and sold, three stakeholders automatically vie for a cut from the revenue that can be had from land: the community, the property owner, and the institutions that finance property ownership. With land-use rights, the revenue from land value increases is primarily recycled back to the community rather than captured by banks and property owners.”
Source: Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World
“In order for our land contribution model to be complete, we have to consider two more aspects of affordable housing. First, we have to minimise the inequality between tenants and landowners, and second, we have to provide the homeless with guaranteed access to land.
Because higher rents are a byproduct of increasing community affluence, tenants get priced out (gentrification). The option of rent control results in a shortage of housing and lower quality housing.
What's required is a new mechanism by which higher rents are equally shared with all residents - a Universal Basic Income, financed entirely by community land contributions.
The homeless should receive free public housing with the cost deducted from their Universal Basic Income.”
Source: Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World