First comment in an LVT article on/in/at Salon, a couple of years ago:
This proposal would pass ALL of the land in the country to the wealthy at a far faster rate than it is now.
I make much less than 100K per year but I do own a home purchased many years ago. Making my taxes high enough to replace all other taxes would mean I would have to sell it to someone rich enough to pay those huge taxes. Eventually only the very wealthy would own property and we would all be renting from the over-class.
I've seen this one several times and can only assume that people who say it are hard core Home-Owner-Ist propagandists.
Simple question: "Do you earn enough to be able to afford to rent your own home?" For tenants the answer is obviously "yes", for owner-occupiers with a mortgage it is obviously "yes" and for people who have paid off the mortgage but not yet retired, the answer is almost certainly "yes" as well.
And surely just about everybody can answer "yes" to this question: "If payroll taxes were halved, so your net pay went up by a quarter and there were no sales taxes on the stuff you buy, would you be able to afford to rent your own home, assuming you get a one-third discount on the rent?"
Maybe these poor propagandists are in the one or two per cent of working people who can honestly answer "No" to that question, but methinks they are just full of shit.
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