A: When landowners do it.
Longrider in the comments at 14/12/08 at 3.35 pm (with whom I otherwise agree on most things) said that my idea of replacing all existing property and wealth related tax (Council Tax, Business Rates, Stamp Duty Land Tax, Inheritance Tax, Capital Gains Tax etc) with a flat rate tax on all land values would be ...
... a bad idea. Not necessarily because the idea of the tax is automatically a bad thing, but because it is being sold as a justification for some pretty unpleasant social engineering.
In the same comment, he also stated:
Some years ago, Bristol Rovers tried to build a stadium next to our street. They were eventually defeated. Despite trying to convince us that this would be an amenity, it became obvious that we did not want this amenity - if I wanted to live next door to a football stadium, I could have bought a house in Ashton Gate. I don't, so I didn't.
Which gets us back to the initial problem - what is the least-worst way of balancing out competing property rights? I responded:
LR, what social engineering?
... As you say, if local residents don't want a football stadium, they will vote against it. You have answered your own question as to whether the stadium would have 'added value' - quite probably it wouldn't, that's why you voted against it.
So given that your land value has increased ever so slightly as a result of depriving the owner of the land on which the stadium would have been built of an opportunity of making a profit, is it so unfair to pay a bit extra for being able to exercise that right?
Would you describe the collective efforts of you and others in campaigning against the stadium as 'social engineering'? I certainly wouldn't - it was your choice and you exercised it. Half a free market is better than none, surely?
LR continues the debate over at his.
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6 comments:
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Landowners don't have the power to socially engineer. This is something carried out by the state via legislation or tax to incentivise or disincentise preferred behaviour.
Fighting off Bristol Rovers wasn't social engineering in any respect - the council wasn't trying to push it, the football club was and even that was not social engineering.
Duh! disincentivise of course...
LR, OK, there is such a thing as Bad Social Engineering, like the council allowing gyspies to occupy a site anywhere near anybody.
But the flipside must be that there is Good Social Engineering, i.e. evicting said gypsies or not allowing them to stay there in the first place.
If the local council in this example does Good Social Engineering, this benefits local property owners, why is it wrong for them to pay towards the value of this protection?
For the zillionth time, LVT could and should REPLACE existing property/wealth related taxes, each of which is, intentionally or not, 'social engineering' and/or distortionary on a massive scale (Council Tax less Council Tax Benefit, Business Rates, Stamp Duty Land Tax, Inheritance Tax, Capital Gains Tax, s106 agreements, planning gains supplements etc).
Yes, I note the point about it replacing other taxes and on that point I agree with you, always have.
On social engineering - it is all bad. It is not the place of the state to engineer our behaviour; that's not their role.
LR, I have replied at yours.
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