Geoists, or anyone who has an idea of the magnitude of land rent in modern economies, know that sharing the full rental value of land -- and therefore having an "geonomic" system based on equal land rights -- would result in significantly lower income disparities. We know this because we know that a third or more of developed economies' GDP is land rent -- value that is collected by a relative few, and value that is unearned because it is collected, imputed or otherwise realized for monopoly control of something costless.
I consider Hong Kong and Singapore the "most geoist" places on Earth; they collect a much higher-than-average amount of land rent publicly and tax wages and capital at much lower rates than average.
A skeptic of geoism might point to the overall income inequality in these jurisdictions (Hong Kong's overall Gini coefficient is 0.54; Singapore's is 0.46) and say that geoism has failed, if that skeptic is looking to geoism as an answer to income inequality.
First, it should be noted that income equality is not the goal of geoism; economic justice is.
Second, it is severely flawed logic to read much into these numbers. Geoism implemented on a widespread scale will likely (1) Raise the economic floor, and (2) Reduce income inequality. When implemented locally, however, in a greater world of feudalism, it is only capable of the first point: raising that local jurisdiction's floor.
1. Raising the floor
In a feudal system (one of land privilege), the average landless worker will be left with the margin of production after he works and then pays his landlord. Geoism raises the floor by (a) raising the margin of production itself by effectively prohibiting the inefficient use of land, and (b) making every resident share equally in the jurisdiction's land rent -- either directly via Residents' Dividend, or in-kind through government goods and services.
2. Reducing Income Inequality
While local geoism will evenly distribute income from local land (land rent gini coefficient), it will not necessarily lower overall income inequality. It isn't difficult to figure out why. Our example cities, Hong Kong and Singapore (HK&S), have prohibited their locally-produced rents -- a fair amount of them, anyway -- from being claimed by outside rent-seekers, but the rest of the world has not. There is no law in HK&S saying, "Thou shalt not steal land rent from outside jurisdictions." Bankers, hedge fund managers and real estate investment vehicles are free to set up shop in HK&S and do what they would do in any other global financial center; they are free to rake in the resulting, lop-sided salaries, and there is simply no reason to expect that HK&S would have income inequality any lower than in New York or London.
New York's gini coefficient is 0.55. Published figures for London are based on a methodology that includes only wage earners. This methodology leads to an artificially low gini, so I'm simply not going to reference any of those figures here. The point is that HK&S have overall gini figures consistent with other global financial centers, and that's the best it's reasonable to expect of them. Only as more and more of the world's land rent is made common property can we expect greater overall income equality.
And that's fine. It would be pointless for HK&S to try to force more equal incomes by, for example, imposing a very high income tax on the top bracket. It would simply drive these global rent-seekers to outside locations. Keep them in town and there is at least a chance that some of their takings will trickle into local businesses and, eventually, publicly collected rents.
Evidence of Singapore's Higher Floor
Singapore is sometimes lambasted for "relying on" outside labor forces to perform undesirable construction work in the city. Of course, this is loaded language: Singapore doesn't "rely on" outside workers. The fact is that Singaporean construction companies simply seek them out because they will accept lower wages than Singaporean residents; Singaporean residents, having a cut of the local surplus (land rent), can simply refuse to do shit work for shit wages. Without cheap external labor, the construction would still happen; it would simply happen with higher wages being paid to Singaporeans who have accepted them.
Singapore is far from perfect, of course, but anybody who criticizes its employers for "exploiting foreign labor" in this case is focusing his energy in the wrong place. It is these workers' home cities and countries, through land dispossession, that have forced them to look for shit work at shit wages in a place that actually has employment. Tell the country of Bangladesh, for example, to mimic Singapore's economic policies, and your effort will be much more likely to help Bangladeshi nationals.
