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Quote by Martin Adams

“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.”

Quote by Martin Adams

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Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World

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Martin Adams

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“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Millions can move into Enlightenment, and live That as Age of Awakening Enlightenment, a distinctively new way to be one with God, quite different from Traditional Enlightenment.”

“Property taxes - particularly those which tax only or primarily the land and not the improvements - are the closest approximations we have today to community land contributions. For this reason, property taxes and home affordability rates - which is to say, land affordability rates - are inversely correlated. Land contributions are necessary for the vitality of every community and city. For example, urban sprawl is a consequence of not capturing sufficient land contributions and thus enabling inefficient land use. Community land contributions lead to a more intensive use of land and encourage the greening of a city's surroundings, as the existing population will tend to cluster closer together. Land contributions also encourage the restoration of blighted areas.”

“In our current distorted reality, land is often held speculatively without being put to productive use. Because people are able to profit from land and use it inefficiently, sprawl is an issue and farmland is constantly at risk of rezoning, thus forcing up the cost of all farmland. Land contributions would remove the profit from land speculation and inefficient use, releasing more farmland and also ensuring existing farmland wasn't constantly under the shadow of rezoning. Labour and capital taxes would reduce and thus also farming costs. Overall, farming costs would reduce and farmland would be sustainably available for agriculture.”

“This book attempts to evaluate the roles of the traditional landowners (whose reckless lifestyles led to bankruptcy and the acquisition of their lands by commercially-minded entrepreneurs); the new breed of accountant trustees (for whom financial probity was paramount); the Highland Potato Famine; James Cheyne, the clearing landlord; events elsewhere on Lismore, particularly on the Baleveolan estate, factored by Allan MacDougall; the influence of the Lismore Agricultural Society; investment in infrastructure on the Airds estate; the differing fates of farmers and cottars; the lack of alternative employment for the young; and opportunites elsewhere, particularly in the Central Belt of Scotland.”