[ExI] Friedman and negative income tax

[Damien Sullivan]

On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 06:40:24AM -0700, Dan wrote:

> Also, given the context of your statement, the difference between a
> GI, negative income tax, and other such public wealth transfers and
> all forms of private ones is that the former must violate property
> rights -- someone is forced to pay.  In both cases, yes, free-loaders

But how are property rights distributed?  
If someone owns land, they can basically be the government, a
veritable king, on that land.  "Pay me rent!  Obey my rules or I evict
you!"  Not a huge problem with many competitive small landowners --
though shared norms against blacks or gays can make life hard for those
renters -- but if someone owned all the land, they'd be a 'legitimate'
government.

> Finally, as an aside, I think a problem is that having forced wealth
> transfers will eventually have a cultural impact -- as some people

If I have ot pay someone to rent land they own, where I do the work of
constructing a house and all they contribute is legal access to the
land, how is that not a forced wealth transfer?

-xx- Damien X-)