r/AstraEuropa

Migration is one of the defining political tests of our generation. The failures of the past decade have eroded public trust, fueled support for the political fringes, and left genuine humanitarian commitments unmet.

We support a federal border and migration system that restores order and public trust. That means secure external borders, firm returns for those without a right to stay, and a legal migration system that selects both for the skills Europe needs and for prospective immigrants’ capacity to integrate into European life. Every country has a finite rate at which it can absorb newcomers successfully. That rate is higher when migrants share linguistic, cultural, or civic proximity with the host society, and lower when they do not. A serious immigration policy treats this as an empirical fact and calibrates accordingly.

Asylum is a moral obligation, but not an unlimited one. We support an in-region principle: each region of the world bears primary responsibility for sheltering those displaced from within it, with European support directed to building the conditions and capacities that make this possible. Europe should also be willing to invest, abroad and early, in the climate adaptation, security, and state capacity that prevent forced migration in the first place. Forced migration is a loss for everyone; prevention is more humane, more durable, and more economical than reception.

Hostile states have learned that engineered migration flows can be used as a weapon. Belarus’s instrumentalization of the Polish and Baltic borders is the textbook case, and it will not be the last. A Europe that controls its borders denies these tactics their effectiveness. That makes the world both safer and more humane, because the people deliberately funnelled into these flows are themselves victims of the strategy.

Justice and law enforcement must operate at the scale on which cross-border crime already operates. Europe needs stronger federal capacity against terrorism, organised crime, trafficking, and hybrid threats, together with European prosecution and judicial institutions able to enforce federal law effectively. We will ensure that justice moves across our internal borders as swiftly as criminals, traffickers, and hostile actors do.

Europe’s territory is not confined to the continent. We recognise the strategic value of European overseas territories to our security and that of our allies. Federal protection must extend to them fully. Their defence must not be treated as a peripheral concern.

Let me preface this by saying that I am a huge advocate for Georgism as described by the famous author Henry George in his revolutionary book 'Progress and Poverty' that was hyper-influantial in the Progressive Era in the late 19th century.

His theory and advocacy about a Land Value Tax (LVT) is, in my opinion: logical, just and hyper-efficient.

It is generally agreed upon that an LVT -if implemented liberally according to Georgist principles, i.e: remove/simplifying zoning, removing parking minimums, etc- has tremendous benefits, including:

1. The promotion of dense urbanization;
   • Resulting in walkable cities that have the benefit of
     • Increased economic activity
     • Increased benefit in well-being and physical health
     • Development of a more local community
     • Less CO2 emissions; car usages is less efficient
2. The optimization of land usage
   • Resulting in an improvement in productivity, since land will be allocated to those that utilize it's land more productively (since that relatively lowers the tax)
3. Discouraging land-hoarding & Lower rents
   • Holding land is taxed so much so that any holding of land, while the land is increasing in value, the profits will be non-existent
   • Landlords can't increase rent as that would mean that the land on which the house sits increased in value (as the house cannot simply be increased overnight);
     • This would mean genuine competition among landlords as a price hike means more taxation and a possibility of losing the tenant; so a race-to-the bottom effect OR selling the property.
4. The burden of taxation falls on those with greater assets
   • As landownership correlates strongly with wealth.
5. Economically, it is the only tax that doesn't distort behavior-
   • - as the land supply is fixed and taxing it doesn't reduce its availabilty nor discourage productive use, unlike taxation on labor or capital.
     • This has all kinds of extra benefits like freeing up money for consumption, investments and innovations: driving economic growth further.

Having done my advocacy, I am curious what Astra's views are regarding this policy?
And secondary (you may skip this question) what about the general theme towards Georgism? For instance; wide-spread Pigouvian taxation, taxation on natural resources, YIMBYism?

I think it aligns perfectly with the pragmatic theme Astra takes as evident in its manifesto.

I hope you take this in consideration and I am eagerly awaiting your answer.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter