Ray McBerry is a candidate for governor in Georgia who was slandered in the press. He is being vindicated on the slander. I’m guessing another candidate for Georgia’s governor will be in huge trouble if money and gifts were given to slander Ray McBerry in the press.
However, I am much more concerned about Ray McBerry’s tax reform proposal since it is eeirly a rerun of Debra Medina’s proposal, sold with the same type of religious and Founding Father rhetoric Debra Medina used during her campaign for governor in Texas, when God and the Founding Fathers are in disagreement with Debra Medina and Ray McBerry.
“Moreover the profit of the Earth is for all.” — Ecclesiastes 5:9
“The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is Mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me.” — Leviticus 25:23
“Men did not make the earth… It is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property… Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.” — Thomas Paine
“Ground rents are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. Ground rents are, therefore, perhaps a species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them.” — Adam Smith
“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of [landed] property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise.” — Thomas Jefferson
“Landlords grow richer in their sleep, without working, risking, or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title.” — J.S. Mill
“God gave the world in common to all mankind. Whenever, in any country, the proprietor ceases to be the improver, political economy has nothing to say in defense of landed property. When the “sacredness” of property is talked of, it should be remembered that any such sacredness does not belong in the same degree to landed property.” — John Locke
“A right of property in movable things is admitted before the establishment of government. A separate property in lands not till after that establishment…. He who plants a field keeps possession of it till he has gathered the produce, after which one has as good a right as another to occupy it. Government must be established and laws provided, before lands can be separately appropriated and their owner protected in his possession. Till then the property is in the body of the nation.” — Thomas Jefferson
The truth is recognized universally among other great minds, including the neo-classical liberal, Milton Friedman…
“In my opinion, the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument…” — Milton Friedman
“I have already read Henry George’s great book and really learnt a great deal from it… Men like Henry George are rare, unfortunately. One cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form, and fervent love of justice.” — Albert Einstein
“People do not argue with the teaching of George; they simply do not know it. And it is impossible to do otherwise with his teaching, for he who becomes acquainted with it cannot but agree.” — Leo Tolstoy
“For as labor cannot produce without the use of land, the denial of the equal right to use of land is necessarily the denial of the right of labor to its own produce.” — Henry George
“The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air — it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world, and others no right.” — Henry George
“How can a man be said to have a country when he has not right of a square inch of it.” — Henry George
“It is quite true that the land monopoly is not the only monopoly which exists, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies — is a perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly. It is quite true that unearned increments in land are not the only form of unearned or undeserved profit which individuals are able to secure; but it is the principal form of unearned increment which is derived from processes which are not merely not beneficial, but which are positively detrimental to the general public. Land, which is a necessity of human existence, which is the original source of all wealth, which is strictly limited in extent, which is fixed in geographical position — land, I say, differs from all other forms of property in these primary and fundamental conditions.” — Winston Churchill
“How can you buy or sell the sky — the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us… Every part of this earth is sacred to us.” — Chief Seattle
Ray McBerry’s tax proposal is a fraud promoted by the high-profile neo-conservative economist, Dr. Arthur Laffer, hardly the grassroots that Debra Medina and Ray McBerry like to frame themselves. Elimination of property taxes is a very economically destructive inversed Laffer curve. If all property taxes are eliminated, the supply of land will be drastically reduced as the very wealthy and extremely wealthy buy up land as a store of wealth, with no intention of developing, maintaining, or using the land productively, since it was bought purely as a speculative commodity investment, where it is expected prices will increase, as land is in fixed-supply and necessary for all people to live. The cost of owning a home, renting a home, or starting a business requiring land will greatly increase to the point of serfdom. If all property taxes were eliminated, you would not be able to afford land.
Income taxes should be completely eliminated since they are economically destructive, prone to loopholes, prone to evasion, and an invasion of privacy. Sales and property taxes should be made progressive through the use of a Fair Tax prebate so citizens are guaranteed tax-free land and natural resources necessary for survival, while those who drive up the cost of land and natural resources by consuming excessive amounts will be held liable for ground rents to be paid to all citizens by using the sales taxes and property taxes to fund the government and the prebate paid equally to all citizens. Furthermore, according to Henry George, if you tax the full undeveloped value of the land, undeveloped land becomes virtually free in rural areas, and thus, becomes virtually tax free as well.
Debra Medina and Ray McBerry are stooges for the neo-feudalism wing of the well-funded neo-conservative fraud they campaign against. If you’re looking for Founding Fathers, you’ll need to keep looking. Ray McBerry and Debra Medina are not it.
Note: This neo-feudalism is showing up in other strange places, such as Article 6.F.1 of the We the People Foundation for Constitutional Education’s “Articles of Freedom.” The foundation should be renamed “We the Aristocrats for Constitutional Fraud.”
