I inherited three properties. I pay a property management company to do everything on them, all I get is a regular check in the mail. Please explain how I have earned this?
"Earning" something is not a useless question. As someone who's had things stolen from me before, a large part of the anger comes from feeling like someone took something that you earned through hard work. It's a big reason we criminalise and punish things the way we do as a society.
Sure, but when people propose a land value tax it's because morally, they've come to the conclusion that the current system is unjust. Systemic changes need to originate somewhere, right?
> Systemic changes need to originate somewhere, right?
Yes, but that does not need to be morals, values, ethics or ideology.
Instead I prefer Kant´s idea of the categorical imperative whereby the question only is if a society following specific rules would satisfy its members long term. It is more pragmatic as it shifts the question from should/shouldn't to does it work out.
LVT satisfies the categorical imperative. If I didn't know whether I'd be born as a landless serf (very high chance) or born to inherit wealth (low chance), then I should prefer to be born into a society with an LVT, since the LVT distributes the land rent to everyone.
then live to your own standards and give it away. This all just virtue signaling until you actually so something with your (not very strongly held) values.
Luck is part of part -- in economics we call it risk. And without risk there is no economic development.
Somebody in your past took a risk and passed profits from that risk down to you. Trying to take the ability to pass that down is both immoral and bad economics.
Didn't the previous owners want you to to inherit their properties? As long as they did, you must have done something to have earned this inheritance, with or without you being aware (e.g. being born to or adopted by them).
If they didn't want you to inherit them, presumably they would have done something about that.
Doing genealogy, one of the most interesting ancestors I have actually got mentioned in a discussion in parliament for his real estate shenanigans. His wife had inherited some small but vaguely defined land from her first husband. He then became mayor and land assessor, and drew up ridiculously generous borders (and low tax assessments) for that land. No one thought to stop him. At one point during a sale, some officials had commented that they couldn't find that he had title to this land, but they didn't follow up. By the time they complained about it in parliament, it was two generations and many land transfers ago so they didn't think it was worth it to try to unwind it.
The trouble with this is it's a playbook for huge inequality. If there is very little cost to holding onto land, then as soon as someone accrues some, it never leaves their family tree. For example, do you believe that the Duke of Westminster should be the beneficiary of his aristocratic ancestors? He is literally living off of land accrued hundreds of years ago.
You haven't earned it, your ancestors did. But your inheritance of this property is only a small fraction of your unearned benefits. Ask a dung beetle how fair life is.