James Leroy Wilson's one-man magazine.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Territocracy

We pay taxes, and then we also have to pay the rent. Fred Foldvary has invented a new word, territocracy, or "rule by the big landowners," for the trend here in the USA and elsewhere:
[T]itle to commercial and industrial land is highly concentrated, and farmland is increasingly concentrated in agricultural corporations as farm crops and animals come under ever greater mass production. The power of territocracy can be seen most clearly in tax policy. All across the world, land value is tapped lightly for public revenue, while labor and capital are taxed heavily.

1 comment:

  1. And among the last two, there's a concerted effort to shift taxation off of returns on capital and onto returns from labor. Otherwise, why are the Republicans so enamored of cuts on the inheritance tax and capital gains tax, and why do they insist that all income tax cuts be "across the board"?

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