is this minimal taxing aspect of your thinking a recent development, or did i miss it when you have presented it earlier? An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern. -- Tony Benn in Sicko
I have long been convinced by the Georgist rationale for a Land Value Tax - ie a tax on the privilege of exclusive rights of land use - but I had not extended the logic of taxation of privilege much further until the last few months.
For a while I thought that tax on earned income might be unnecessary and maybe unjustified, but I think that a tax on earned income could be considered as a levy made on the privileges of security, education and good healthcare which a decent Society provides to all.
If a Location Benefit Levy; Non-Renewables Levy and Limited Liability Levy etc were applied, then I doubt whether taxation on earned income need be set too high. It would be interesting - but a major task, I suspect - to run the numbers.
By way of example, in Hong Kong, land taxation raises around 35% of the tax take, and until the current government capped it about 8 years ago, I understand that Denmark's land tax raised about 30%. In the absence of these taxes, then taxation of earned income would have to rise to levels which would probably be unacceptable -in Hong Kong at least. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
