The following four
paragraphs contain the description of a political study group which I created
and administer on Facebook in November 2016, entitled “Basic Income & Tax
Reform”.:
Basic
Income & Tax Reform (formerly Give Me My Money) is a study group promoting
radical tax reform alongside cash payments to the poor.
This is a group to bring together
proponents of:
(1) Land Value Taxation and Split-Rate Taxation,
(1) Land Value Taxation and Split-Rate Taxation,
(2) the Negative Income Tax,
(3) the FairTax,
(4) Citizens' and Residents' Dividends,
(5) Sovereign Wealth Funds and Permanent
Funds,
(6) Universal / Unconditional Basic Income
Guarantees,
(7) extensions of the Earned Income Tax
Credit, and
(8) expansions of ordinary people's tax
deductions for expenses of care.
We believe that serious discussion of
taxation reform, environmental policy reform, and welfare reform must take into
consideration the need to take an integrated and comprehensive approach to
these three issues. Reforms which must take place alongside our proposals
include reforms to property rights, natural resource extraction, homesteading,
and the budget.
We look forward to building coalitions with
libertarian-leaning and progressive Democrats, moderate and libertarian-leaning
Republicans, third parties and independents, Georgists, anarchist and direct
action groups, and others.
Basic Income & Tax Reform desires to help lift the
poor out of poverty (and remove poverty traps in the welfare system) while creating
an economic environment more conducive to investment and savings (whether
domestic or international) through less
government intervention, not more; with redistributive taxation and involuntary
taxation used only as last resorts. The types of tax proposals which we deem
most necessary and proper, as well as urgent, are proposals which provide tax
relief to the poor, while refraining from hindering productive behavior.
Proposals in include 1) extensions of the Earned Income
Tax Credit (E.I.T.C.); 2) repeals of non-luxury sales taxes; 3) curbing
inflation – through balancing the budget and paying off the debt – in order to
lower what effectively amounts to the taxation of savings, which discourages
savings; 4) expansions of homesteading tax credits so as to allow credits to
apply to apartments, and tiny houses (alongside homesteading reform); and 5)
permissive tax deductions for expenses from child care, elder care, and health
care and insurance.
After those first five short-term proposals are achieved,
our medium-term goals include 6) Cut-Cap-and-Balance measures; 7) reverting to
zero-based budgeting; 8) passing across-the-board tax cuts; and 9) supporting
measures which make taxes flatter. Our long-term goals are 10) formally
repealing the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; 11) passing a
Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution); and 12) reforming the structure
and philosophy of taxation into one that embraces geo-libertarian principles.
We would like to see all taxes imposed by the most local
level of government possible (without sacrificing efficiency), and we desire
that government be funded wholly through taxation proposals permissible under
the umbrella of Land Value Taxation / the “Single” Tax (including carbon
taxes), in addition to receipts from user fees, and revenues collected through
voluntary contributions.
In the event that Georgist and geo-libertarian tax
proposals were to fail, Basic Income & Tax Reform regards neither the
FairTax nor the Negative Income Tax (N.I.T.) preferable to the other. This is
because there are several things at issue; namely, that of progressive vs. regressive taxation, as well as
problems associated with precisely which types of behavior are being taxed and
which are not.
In one sense, the Negative Income Tax is preferable to
the FairTax, because the N.I.T. is more progressive than the FairTax is. The
FairTax has a reputation of being regressive, and in one sense it is, because
it penalizes the purchases of ordinary people. On the other hand, the FairTax comes
with a “prebate” that compensates people for the expenses they incur in paying
those sales taxes (up to a certain point). But the prebate aside, the Negative
Income Tax is a flat tax which has a reputation of being effectively
progressive; this is because the poor would receive
money overall instead of paying taxes. This is why the N.I.T. has been
described as a flat tax which is effectively progressive; the poor would “pay”
a “negative tax rate”; i.e., receive
money.
On the other hand, the FairTax is preferable to the
N.I.T. – especially as far as Georgists are concerned, and to some extent as far
as many conservatives are concerned – because the FairTax penalizes consumption
and the purchase of luxury and ordinary goods, while the Negative Income Tax
penalizes the earning of income. Since some conspicuous consumption is
wasteful, this means waste is more similar to consumption than it is to
productive labor and the earning of income. Hence, the FairTax is less
detrimental to productive behavior than is the Negative Income Tax.
Basic Income & Tax Reform is interested in
ascertaining the beneficial aspects of, and principles behind, each of these
two tax proposals (the FairTax and the Negative Income Tax) into a new
philosophy of taxation.
As a way to avoid taxing either sales or income – and
lessons from the FairTax and the Negative Income Tax having not yet being
ascertained for the purposes of improving the rest of Basic Income & Tax
Reform’s platform – taxation proposals permissible under the principles of Land
Value Taxation (L.V.T.) should be the only taxes levied which are involuntary.
Of course, convincing others that these taxes are appropriate, and winning
elections, is how L.V.T. becomes voluntary.
The environmental objective of enacting Georgist taxation
to its fullest extent, involves establishing Community Land Trusts (C.L.T.s),
Community Water Trusts (C.W.T.s), and, if governments please, Community Air
Trusts (C.A.T.s). These agencies could choose to unite these three functions
into a single office; perhaps an “Office of Taxation, Environment, and Welfare”
(O.T.E.W.).
Municipal and county governments would be encouraged to
offer fewer services and shrink spending and taxes, while at the same time
establishing these agencies. Additionally, unincorporated communities – and
autonomous, independent, unincorporated local voluntary associations – would be
encouraged to refrain from applying for recognition as official incorporated
municipalities, and instead to build these agencies as the act establishing
their legitimacy.
Communities would be encouraged – either that, or
required, as a condition of participation in a coordinated effort across
communities to build the same agencies and implement similar-enough policies –
to set up Sovereign Wealth Funds. The concept of Sovereign Wealth Funds,
Permanent Funds, Citizens’ Dividends, Residents’ Dividends, the Universal or
Unconditional Basic Income Guarantee, the prebate from the FairTax, and the
bonus given through the Negative Income Tax’s “payment of a negative tax rate”,
all amount in the same thing: cash payments to people; either to all of the
people, or only to those earning below a certain level of income (often set as
the poverty rate).
The Sovereign Wealth Fund (or whatever name it has, given
that so many names apply to such similar ideas) would be funded and backed by
the chief export or exports of the community and / or region. It would also be
funded by receipts and revenues originating from the imposition and collection
of user fees, voluntary contributions, and taxes admissible under an extended
Land Value Taxation system.
O.T.E.W.s (or their components, working independently of
one-another) would be free to choose whether to establish currencies backed by
the value of natural resources, and / or by the fees imposed for the privilege
of extracting said natural resources, and / or backed by export sales. Such
currencies could originate in local, state, or regional government; or they
could be outgrowths of electronic currencies, or other types of alternative
currencies.
O.T.E.W.s would operate as not-for-profit (or non-profit)
consumer-cooperatives. They could be either quasi-governmental,
non-governmental, or entities which are non-incorporated altogether. Any
purchasing by these entities should be performed as a consumer-cooperative
purchasing society.
These agencies would be free to become corporations, but
not through official recognition by government. They would be independent
corporations – really, consumer credit unions – which would sell stock. The
value of the stock would rest upon the degree of success of each of those
agencies in preserving its respective sphere of the environment (that is; land,
water, and air).
The value of the optional natural resource –backed currencies
would derive from both the degree of success of O.T.E.W. agencies in preserving
the environment, and also from chief export sales, as well as general faith and
credit in the government; and in the solvency of its taxation, banking, and
financial systems.
Basic Income & Tax Reform feels that the above set of
policies is the platform most likely to unite members of the Libertarian Party
with members of the Green Party; through creating a convergence upon
geo-libertarianism as a philosophy that lies between the two. We encourage
Greens and progressives to come towards the positions of the Libertarian Party.
We additionally encourage Libertarian Party members,
ideological libertarians, and libertarian-leaning conservatives, to embrace
Georgism, or at least to support Thomas Paine’s basic income proposal, which in
my opinion is compatible with Henry George’s ideas. In Paine’s proposal, a
citizen’s dividend would give a basic income for all adult citizens, as a form
of compensation for government takings from the full bundle of freedoms and rights
which come with private landed property ownership in full allodial title
(rights such as freedom from taxation of that land, the freedom to deny even
government agents access to the property, and the freedom to explore one’s own
property for natural resources without compensating the community).
The author of this article, himself, feels that the best avenue
and vehicle for embodiment and presentation of this platform, would be as a Thomas Paine Caucus; revived from its late-1990s form as a voluntary association comprised of libertarian Georgists, but as a caucus of the Libertarian Party. The caucus should make sure to bring
followers of Henry George and Milton Friedman into the mix; so I propose a
Geo-Painean-Friedmanite Caucus of the Libertarian Party of the United States; to consider radical tax reform and cash payouts, in addition to increasing tax deductions and low-income tax credits.
In light of what the Constitution has to say about the
environment (which is nothing), and welfare (which is that government spending
should benefit everybody), it is
important to consider at what level these reforms are to be implemented.
It seems appropriate to recommend (and highlight) that this
system works best as a decentralized or diffused federation of communities – or
as multiple, geographically overlapping confederations – rather than as a
centralized system or a polycentric system. Polycentric agencies may be helpful to prevent disproportionate favoritism of productive firms based in urban areas; but political power paradigms that are as diffused as possible are what are generally desirable. Encouraging jurisdictions to expand and overlap would help maximize this diffusion of power.
But if a centralized or oligocentric government ought to exist in any form; it should
primarily be in the businesses of 1) allocating land in a macroscopic way; 2) ensuring
mutuality of exchanges and transactions; and 3) registering individuals’ political
membership. These functions reflect the main functions of legitimate governance
as regarded by the schools of 1) Georgism; 2) Mutualism; and 3) Panarchism.
It might additionally prove appropriate for a centralized government to guarantee certain basic civil rights and civil liberties; such as equal protections under the law, like the right to defend oneself in court, and the equal right to sue.
However, it could very well turn out that those are simply the last functions of government which would dissolve, while a Geo-Mutualist Panarchist system emerges out of the unentangling last vestiges of a constitutional republic. And that goes whether it's a minarchistic one that's decided to embrace true liberty, or whether it's a corrupt democratic republic that ceases functioning or collapses (in any given imaginable scenario).
It might additionally prove appropriate for a centralized government to guarantee certain basic civil rights and civil liberties; such as equal protections under the law, like the right to defend oneself in court, and the equal right to sue.
However, it could very well turn out that those are simply the last functions of government which would dissolve, while a Geo-Mutualist Panarchist system emerges out of the unentangling last vestiges of a constitutional republic. And that goes whether it's a minarchistic one that's decided to embrace true liberty, or whether it's a corrupt democratic republic that ceases functioning or collapses (in any given imaginable scenario).
Written between Mid-November and December 5th, 2016
Edited on January 19th and 29th, 2017, and December 1st, 2018
Edited on January 19th and 29th, 2017, and December 1st, 2018
