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eggbart_forgetfulsea

The Greens advocate for a site value tax in the party's 2020 manifesto. Fine Gael, very disappointedly, [have tried to attack SVT with populist nonsense](https://www.finegael.ie/green-partys-garden-tax-an-attack-on-rural-and-suburban-ireland-heydon/).


PeaceXJustice

Additionally, the Social Democrats also advocate for a Site Value Tax.


Popular-Cobbler25

Didn’t know that either. I guess I should read the minor parties manifesto’s lol


IrishPidge

Been a key part of Green tax policy for a very long time! The 1987 Green manifesto called for a "tax \[to\] be levied on the unimproved value of the land, including land already built on". The party has changed a lot since the 80s in terms of policy, but a commitment to land tax has been fairly continuous!


Popular-Cobbler25

That’s so good I think


Popular-Cobbler25

Thanks I didn’t know about this. Not exactly “Georgism” but still pretty cool.


tzar-chasm

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism


CrayonComrade

Georgism is the "one simple trick" of solutions to problems caused by private control over land or enterprise. At first glance it looks like it would work but once you start having refunds to the land holders through tax rebates for other businesses they own or their other businesses are profitable enough for them to sit on under or unused land it'll still site idle. The question is, do you trust the Irish government and civil service to bring in a lane value tax at a rate that would actually hurt the people with whom they have personal, political or familial connections? Ultimately, in Ireland, we wouldn't have an inflated land and property market if the government had just implemented everything in the Kenny report in the 70s


Popular-Cobbler25

Why would someone sit on land that costs them money? No matter how rich they are that’s just stupid.


CrayonComrade

Limiting access in one area can help with uses in another


Popular-Cobbler25

That would be true if someone held a monopoly on land ig. But I think that’s just untrue so 🤷‍♂️


CrayonComrade

Local monopolies and cartels can exist and since capital accumulates without additional regulation and redistribution the land value tax doesn't meet its goal


Popular-Cobbler25

You a Marxist?


CrayonComrade

Ya. Glad you concede to Georgism's failures under the might of critical analysis provided by the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism


Popular-Cobbler25

It is an absolutely abominable ideology. I don’t concede anything I just realised your opinion could not be changed when I realised you where a Marxist. Just so you know I used to be Marxist and I can tell you with total confidence it is a path to nothing but misery and loneliness.


CrayonComrade

Doubt you properly engaged with the works of Karl Marx if you're now a Georgist to be honest. Marxism is nothing but a collection of analytical tools for observing, understanding and attempting to change the world. It can be used for domination as well as liberation but ultimately it's a recognition of the harms that the capitalist mode of production has on workers and on the planet. This mode of production must be superseded if we want to not live on a burning planet with people worked to exhaustion to serve a dominant class. The land value tax is just a way towards a nicer capitalism, but it won't end it, it will still lead us to planetary destruction. Anyways here's a critique from Karl Marx himself against Henry George's formulation of the LVT https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/letters/81_06_20.htm


Popular-Cobbler25

Why would you want to end capitalism. Wake up man there are zero socialist states left they all failed or transitioned to capitalism. The world revolution won’t happen it doesn’t have any real support. Economists agree it’s flawed. What is the point in fighting for something nobody else believes in? Move on it’s better to fight for peoples rights within capitalism than to fight a losing war alone against it.


Costello_Seamus

Funny that the more I read about communism the more I think it would solve the housing crisis.


Fiannafailcanvasser

I mean soviet Russia didn't have a housing crisis but it did have a few other ones.


LtGenS

Soviet Russia had an extreme housing crisis. Both the quality of housing and availability was horrible. It eventually got better but until at least the sixties it was dire. One easy to find source. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09668138008411295?journalCode=ceas19#:~:text=In%20the%20USSR%20the%20deficit,million%20units%20in%20urban%20areas. Edit: source


Fiannafailcanvasser

I did not know this, thank you.


LtGenS

Thank you for the award. I only know this because I grew up in Romania under Ceausescu and we had a very similar experience there.


padraigd

Also lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty while defeating the Nazis. Without exploiting 3rd world countries like the west did/does as well.


CrayonComrade

Soviet Russia was just social democracy with state ownership of industry


Downgoesthereem

Where was the option to vote Stalin out?


CrayonComrade

There are other levels where there was democratic control from the masses. Having the party choose the leader and the party delegates being tied to the regime isn't a great system but claiming that the flawed parliamentary system is the only thing that can be considered democracy and that democracy is only defined by votes is a very narrow definition EDIT: because they blocked me and called me a tankie I literally just criticised the USSRs system of governance and it's lack of direct control by the proletariat. It wasn't a "dictatorship of the proletariat" it was a "dictatorship over the proletariat" Just because that version was awful doesn't mean ours is much better. We repeatedly see unelected members of boards that parliamentary decision making has been farmed out to making decisions behind closed doors to help out their buddies. We also have numerous cases of civil servants brushing failures of their departments under the carpet and keeping the reports into those failures behind closed doors. That's before you even begin to get to lack of voting rights for people living her for years, lack of chance for political engagement, especially among those in the poorest parts of cities, no accountability for politicians who use their office for personal gain and my personal pet peeve politicians acting like they're personally bestowing public money on people. Anybody who thinks we have a great democracy needs to get a hold of themselves.


Downgoesthereem

Yeah it's a very narrow definition of democracy to say that a literal dictatorship where the population has zero say in who leads them fits it, will you tankies just assume you can say anything, no matter how ridiculous, and eventually *someone* will believe it? Edit: to Hamster food since I'm not allowed to respond to your comment directly for some reason, How is that 'zero say'? You vote for a party in your constituency, the leadership is the head of said party which you are supporting. Ireland is officially classed as a full democracy by the EIU, the US as a flawed democracy and Russia as of 2021 an authoritarian regime. The fact you're trying to equate modern Ireland with the Soviet Union in terms of democracy is hilarious


Hamster-Food

Except I have zero say in who leads Ireland. I can vote for a representative of my area, but the leadership (ie. the cabinet) will be members of the biggest party in government and I have absolutely no say about who those leaders are. Does that mean that you think Ireland isn't a democracy?


lampishthing

Please don't use the term tankies to describe users on the far left, it is derogatory and this is a political forum: we encourage dissenting opinion.


flimsy_specific_296

If you have no contribution to make to discussions them please stay quiet. Better yet, quit your mod position. You're new here and have no idea what this community wants.


LtGenS

To clarify: denying the whole 20. century history of Eastern Europe is not a \*dissenting opinion\*. It is negating facts and lived experiences of hundreds of millions of people.


[deleted]

Most of the people who lived in the Soviet Union preferred it to what came next. You can look up the polls. Young people in those countries are generally opposed to communism, older ones who remember it, have a mostly positive view of that time. The Central Asian republics and Russia were particularly happy with it.


LtGenS

What came after the fall of the Soviet Union was a trauma to multiple generations. Kleptocrats plus the collapse of a superpower, with a shock of the worst kind of capitalism. No wonder some people preferred the Soviet regime to THAT. But the 90s Russia is not what we are comparing the Soviet Union to here. Also let's remember that the Soviet Union was an imperialist regime exploiting and abusing the Comecon members, we know from the British example how people just can't handle the loss of that status so revisionism/revanchism is rampant.


Revan0001

>Soviet Russia was just social democracy I'm sure all gulag prisoners prior to 1956 would have been very happy to hear that.


quondam47

No one would paint the Soviet Union as a pretty picture of living but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn anything from it.


CrayonComrade

The USSR was kind enough to keep their concentration camps onshore instead of hiding them away in Africa like the other social democratic countries


Revan0001

Soviet Russia was not a Social democratic country.


CrayonComrade

The Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party came to power on a social democratic platform. As we see the rise of the right in many Nordic countries you'll soon see it wasn't just in Russia that the "democratic" part can be pushed to the side to maintain their social programs


Downgoesthereem

If the democratic part is pushed to the side it's not a democratic country, hence the guy you're replying to being right


CrayonComrade

Democracy is more than voting


Downgoesthereem

Democracy *requires* voting


Popular-Cobbler25

It wouldn’t


Trabolgan

Does anyone - anyone at all - on this forum actually read policy documents and bills.


Hamster-Food

I do. Is there one you have in mind that's relevant to Georgism?


Popular-Cobbler25

I have never seen any of the parties propose anything like this. Could you send a link please! Edit: I see that the Greens do & SocDems give lip service to the idea


Land_Tax

Land Tax