Cityscape
The ownership of land is the great fundamental fact which ultimately determines the social, the political, and consequently the intellectual and moral condition of a people.

Location Value Covenants

Location Value Covenants are a proposal for collecting annual rental values without the pain, routing around the roadblocks, avoiding economic seismic events and of course in a politically achievable way.

https://sites.google.com/site/systemicfiscalreform/Home/location-value-…

The Systemic Fiscal Reform Group believes that any cure to the economic malaise must include development of an alternative to the private bank mortgage. From an economic perspective, the mortgage has three serious defects :

* repayments are linked to interest rates rather than market value

By Frank de Jong, 11 November, 2020

Inheritance, not work, has become the main route to middle-class home ownership

The cost of housing is rising so much faster than wages that buyers increasingly rely on family wealth

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/09/inheritance-work-…

In many of the world’s largest and most expensive cities, young people find themselves in a strange predicament. Although their educational credentials and employment prospects put them in the “middle-class” category, many have virtually no chance of ever making it on to the property ladder.

The New Barbarians: The continuing relevance of Henry George

ABSTRACT. The world's peoples are demanding: who should be the Lords of the Land or-should anyone be? By what right does anyone acquire the privilege of monopolizing that which should be the her- itage of all? A century ago Henry George saw the nature of this ques- tion, the land question, outlined the solution and foresaw the conse- quences if we failed to address it.

By Frank de Jong, 20 April, 2020

Thomas Paine called for a BI in 1797 financed by Land Value Taxation

Thomas Paine

If you know something about Basic Income, you may be aware that one of the first proposals for a Basic Income came from Thomas Paine, hero of the American and French revolutions. In 1797, after a stint in a French prison, Paine wrote the pamphlet Agrarian Justice, which sets out an argument for taxing land and distributing the proceeds among the population at large as compensation for landlessness.

By Frank de Jong, 26 March, 2020

After the Virus

In preparation for future challenges like COVID-19, we should take steps to address the root causes of low societal resilience. An important such step is a move to Land Value Taxation. This financial modification would turn the tax structure into a policy tool to boost community resilience without additional taxation or micromanaging legislation.

Land Value Taxation

By Frank de Jong, 9 December, 2019

Alex Hemingway: Property taxes in Vancouver fuel inequality and speculation

An excellent article in Vancouver Sun (Sat. Dec. 7, 2019) 'Vancouver property taxes fuel inequality, speculation' by Alex Hemingway. In our previous correspondence with Alex (Apr. 5, 2018), he says, "I agree with you that taxing land value is appropriate more so than (and perhaps even to the exclusion of) taxing buildings and improvements"