That Stickie: People are Poor because they have no Land.

[BeFree]

That's the truth.

I'd bet that 10% of the people own 70% of the private land in the US.

All those vacant cow pastures, all those abandoned fields. If the poor were given half a chance to make that land be economic engines, and a place to live, we'd see far less homeless and far less folks on welfare.

Since the greedy landowners aren't going to share, increased property taxes are the only option to relieve this terrible situation. And lift local governments out of their financial problems.

Tax the rich big landowners!!

[JuniperLea]

1. Now, with all the foreclosures and short sales...

The wealthy are picking up even more properties.

Sort of like the banks continuing to get bigger because of closures and bigger banks picking them up.

If you are underwater with your mortgage, through no fault of your own, you can renegotiate your principle, and you can sell short... but you will be branded with a bad credit rating that will follow you a long time... and probably prevent you from taking advantage of lower home and land prices.

The rich get richer... that's the plan... it always has been the plan. It just get repackaged every once in a while.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Depressions arfe simply those times when

money flows back to its natural owners.--Andrew Mellon (Hoover's Sec'y of Treasury)

[SammyWinstonJack]

18. Interesting man...

:evilgrin: Lived in Pittsburgh for 3 yrs while attending the U of P. The Cathedral of Learning was my favorite place on campus. Most of my classes were held there.

[Hannah Bell]

2. there are something like 10 empty housing units for every homeless person. no need to build on cow

pastures.

tax the rich, period.

capitalism = zero-sum end-game.

[zeemike]

3. i am glad you liked it.

But your estimate may be a little low.

If we are to change thing this must change also. And in my revolutional mind I see the people taking it back from the ones who stole it.

[BeFree]

7. Taking it back

I see that as the economy wears down, the big property owners will have to sell land just to pay their property taxes. Help groups need to be aware and make themselves able to buy up under-producing lands and move landless poor onto those lands.

[zeemike]

8. But that is not how it works

It never has.
The large land owners know that the wealth is in the land and they will continue to buy up more of it as we become poorer and poorer...soon we will have a new feudalism and these land owners will become Lords of the land and we will be there peasants....just as it has always been in the past.

[valerief]

4. And public land is "used" by wealthy citizens all the time. They pretty much

consider it "their" property.

[grasswire]

6. I'm studying the effects of the homesteading of the early 1900s....

...and I have learned SO clearly about the desire for land and the effects of losing it. Of course, in that scenario untold thousands of people were deceived -- scammed -- by the government and by profiteers including railroads into a bitter existence where supporting oneself by "dry farming" was not possible. Failure was everywhere. Sacrifice. Bitter deprivation for women and children. Farms were abandoned and the people were impoverished.

There has to be a better way.

[uppityperson]

9. I own land, am money poor. assessments raised dramatically couple yrs back, now

they are starting to reassess and drop down more into line with reality. Having to pay $300/month taxes is a fair chunk.

I am poor because of lack of jobs that pay beyond minimal and high competition for even those jobs.

[BeFree]

11. You can sell your land

If it was dirt cheap I could maybe afford it.

[uppityperson]

17. I sold my land once when I needed $, will do so only as absolute last resort

Indeed owning land is a great thing. If my taxes drop, I can afford to live here, garden, raise food, for fairly cheaply and have others join me. Being steward of land connects me to everything also.

Edited to add that "increased property taxes are the only option to relieve this terrible situation" may indeed force me to sell my land as it forced friends to sell theirs on which they farmed and made a small living. Not sure how forcing my tilth friends off their farm "relieved this terrible situation" though.

[BeFree]

21. Good point

Small landowners should never have to sell their homestead to just pay taxes.

There are some states, I believe, where that is the case. However, if the taxes have risen, most likely so has the market value. That means gov. services and infrastructure have, or will soon, greatly improve and that costs money.

I saw just such a scenario happen one place I lived and got out. Sold off.

[uppityperson]

31. Not nec. Here we get assessed every 4 yrs. Last time was yr after peak

when sales were dropping off and it was based on the previous yr's sales since there weren't any that yr (duh, no one was buying). Since then everything has dropped more. Now they are assessing and finding that property values have plummeted, and taxes will also. It is a bit of a panic since we can't afford to pay more, but most things that taxes pay for cost at least as much as they used to. Bit of a nasty cycle.

[county worker]

10. I had 20 acres of raw land.

$12,000 to put in well
$4,500 to put in a water purifying and storing system
$8,900 to get an engineering study for the electric
$5,000 for electric from the road to the house 1000 ft
$75,000 for the land
$150,000 for the manufactured house
$20,000 to have pad and land worked to put the house on.
$9,000 for horse facilities


Yeah, I'll just give it all away and I'll still pay for all that shit to boot!

Your idea sounds more like theft to me.

[BeFree]

12. Good for you, you are lucky. And in debt?

The land is now productive!! And making a home for you. You sure are lucky.

But this OP obviously isn't about you.

[county worker]

13. I sold it at a loss.

[county worker]

14. If you look at history around here, Central Coast of CA

There were large land grants given by rulers of Mexico. They were around 50,000 acres each.

These were sold and then a few people got together and formed land companies. The land companies bought the land grants. They hoped that people would move in and settle the land and buy parcels.

Railroads were give land for right of way and the sold what was not needed for right of way and facilities.

Much open space is BLM land.

How do we at this point in time take it away from land owners and give it to someone else?

[BeFree]

15. How?

Tax it. If it produces something good for the community the taxes will be easy to raise. Or they sell it to pay taxes.

[county worker]

16. Land here is used to graze cattle and for crops

It is taxed. The taxes go to provide services for everyone in the county.

How is the person you give it to going to pay taxes?

[taught_me_patience]

28. It's probably unconstitutional

unreasonable seizure.

[Lucky Luciano]

19. It is theft pure and simple.

The OP seems to be one of those ultraleft "property is theft" folks.

A comprmoise might be a more progressive property tax system. The increase on your property tax maybe starts on property over $10MM or something.

[BeFree]

20. Eh?

To quote my OP:

""If the poor were given half a chance to make that land be economic engines, and a place to live, we'd see far less homeless and far less folks on welfare.

Since the greedy landowners aren't going to share, increased property taxes are the only option to relieve this terrible situation. And lift local governments out of their financial problems.""

We actually agree... does that make you a land thief?

[Lucky Luciano]

22. I suspect we have tremendously different ideas on where

the property tax increase could be invoked. Sounded like you said it should be across the board - no way. Maybe on cumulative property assessed over $10 million - maybe then a small bump.

[BeFree]

24. well

Do you agree that People are Poor because they have no Land?

Does someone who owns 100,000 dollars worth of land that does little to return anything to the community deserve a subsidy? Because that is really what it is. As government keeps order and builds infrastructure it expends money and the acts also drive land values up.

That is the idea behind progressive property taxes. Now ramp that up to a million dollar landowner and it begins to get gross.

[Lucky Luciano]

26. $100K worth of land is not much.

There is no obligation to make land "productive."

People are poor because they lacked the proper training to get a good job for whatever reason...or had the proper training and got outsourced with no recourse.

[BeFree]

29. well

I look around at some of these large landowners and see that they were handed the land to them via their family. And it pretty much lays fallow until the city moves near and they sell the land for big bucks.

Meanwhile, old -when younger- hardworking men go homeless. If they had a small piece of land, they'd not be homeless, eh? We need to share the land. The big landowners won't share. We need to force them to be less greedy, or take their land and give it to the poor landless.

[G_j]

23. but property taxes are also why a poorer person struggles to

to own/keep any land. And if an area experiences economic growth the taxes go up, often putting the squeeze on people such as the elderly.

[BeFree]

25. poorer is a relative term

I had some land and my taxes weren't but $150 a year. No services, really, I had to make do on my own and private community sources.

There are homestead exemptions for the real poor.

What I am getting at with this thread is that the landowners of large and non-producing lands need to pay more taxes. Pay more so that poor people don't.

Tax the rich, large landowners.

[G_j]

30. I agree that those land hoarders should be taxed

perhaps there could be a cut off point depending on income. I have watched people in my area who have lived many generations in a place that has grown, and now the taxes are a burden. When the 'rich' move in the property values go up along with the taxes, so there is a tremendous incentive for those folks to sell.

[Mimosa]

27. Homesteading should be revived.

During the Great Depression there was some homesteading. It was enabled by the Homesteading Act of 1862, which was ended in the early 1970s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Act