Like I said I'm against taxes on all these things. I would have 0% corporate tax, 0% tax on everything but income and acreage. The jobs would come rushing back to this country if we made it business friendly again, and taxes only on income and acreage would be as business friendly as one can get and still fund the government.
In short, no one is getting a free ride, just a reduced fare.
Why should the fact there is oil in ND reduce your fare? Like I said your using other people's prosperity to get a freer ride.
Back to your acreage tax. It isn't growth friendly. You can't grow without food.
Farms would still be in private hands. Food prices factor in all the subsidies we pay now, so put in the acreage tax and eliminate all the subsidies and food prices may even go down when all angles are considered. This simplified tax plan would result in an onrush of jobs bringing prosperity to all. And like it is said, a rising tide raises all ships and I believe Americans would pay the extra for high quality US-produced goods even if prices went up a little.
So let me get this straight. You would tax farmers by the acre, eliminate subsidies, crop insurance, hang the fact that it takes a million dollars worth of equipment and 5000 or more acres to make a wheat farm economical now.
In short, your rising tide wouldn't mean squat, because you would cut the bottom out of the boat.
In the meantime, the owner of a high rise office complex would collect millions in rent and pay on what, 5 acres?
You city people will starve.
You wouldn't tax automakers or factories on their means of production, but you would tax farms and ranches on theirs.
Fair?
No. But apparently you are too far from a pasture to know which end of the horse that idea comes from.
Even with today's relatively high performance and efficiency farming techniques, do as you want and two things will happen: food producers (smaller independents) will go out of business and prices will go up, both on shortages, and as the tax on the land is passed on to consumers (like any other tax on an industry).
An army marches on its stomach, an economy does, too. Or do you plan on having those farmers buy $250,000 tractors with 50 cent wheat?
With small businesses, which is what a farm generally is, current tax structures encourage reinvesting profits in the business. That won't happen with a Federal Land Tax, which gives ultimate control over the individual home to the Federal Government. The only way to enforce such a tax is by having the ability to seize the asset.
Bad enough that someone can lose their home over a few hundred dollars now to local government.
I am opposed to any tax on land. So there.
I have seen higher taxes on riverfront property (not the kind that floods), than on property with equal frontage on paved highways, but it didn't cost the state a dime to put the river there.
I have seen people taxed on stands of timber, even thought the government had declared that land a 'buffer zone', and the timber, instead of being harvested and managed was nothing but acres of kindling and firewood waiting for a spark instead of an asset.
Land does better in the hands of those who own it, if not, they won't own it long. Those who own it for multiple generations do well by it, with long range plans, understanding of local ecologies, and monitor the changes in it and act appropriately--all expenses you don't seem to understand, because you would not only fight the owners owning what they own free and clear, but would advocate penalizing them for ownership via taxation. Yet the McMansion owner wouldn't pay any more than someone would pay for an equal acreage of swampland.
I detect a distinct urban bias in your philosophy, one which betrays a lack of understanding of agricultural economics.
We disagree.
You would tax the means of production and the rewards of productivity (earned "income"), while I would tax consumption.
Why the difference?
Currently, massive resources are consumed supporting people who don't pay income taxes and don't own land. Some of these people don't belong here, legally, but they reap the rewards and are protected by our military even though they don't own a square foot of land (they can't they're here illegally).
You would leave the burden of taxation on those who own land and legally exchange their labor or expertise for a fee, which leaves out the tens of millions of invaders, free from not only adherence to our laws, but getting a free ride in so many other ways as well.
Those people eat, wear clothing, burn fuel, let them be taxed on that. It is a way to get an estimated 40,000,000 free riders to pay their way.