Bad news, I'm afraid.
I've been outed as a One time aide to Hitler and a world renowned pedophile (sic).
Therefore it follows that everything I have ever said is a deliberate distortion and a lie. I have updated my 'blog header accordingly.
Apologies for having wasted your time :-)
The dead hand of fake optimism
16 minutes ago
17 comments:
To be honest we all suspected as much.
"World renownwed paedophile" is a bit of a contradiction in terms innit?
Did you really call Churchill's Poor Widow ( dragged in to so many anti-LVT arguments in 1909 that Churchill thought she needed protection by Sweated Labour legislation))Widow Twanky?Great! Gonna use that myself.
R, what gave it away?
DBC, no of course I didn't. HH accused me of saying it to back us his basic point that I am a war criminal (or something).
Nope.
I objected to you throwing false assusations around when you are challenged on LVT i.e.
'As a non land owner, if it is OK to be described as a 'Home Ownerist', or, by a man who is in the Burka ban party, a 'Faux Libertarian', and if it isn't snide to transform small holders into 'mythical small holders' because they cause you an inconvenience (and somehow claim to become their champion. ~sick) or elderly people in homes they own as 'widow twanky', will it be all right, in the spirit of fun and by your own editorial standards, to title the blog post 'A reply to Mark Wadsworth ~ One time aide to Hitler and a world renowned pedophile' just because we disagree on economics, sorry, I mean religion?
Just in the spirit of fun, you understand.
Now, true to form, you have then transformed this into 'being accused of being a war criminal'
You know when you were a kid, Mark, and you were caught doing something naughty by your parents, such as teasing the kid down the road who had no arms, and they might say 'how would you like it if you had no arms, and we teased you', did you actually think that they were accusing you of having no arms?
Jesus /facepalm
HH Sir, you are a troll. Consider yourself outed.
I like "driver of the LVT Steamroller" better.
@HH To be clear: he calls you a Homeownerist ( a recent coinage in very restricted use) and you call him a close personal associate of Hitler and a paedophile.Hardly seems proportionate.
JT, B, thanks.
HH, for clarity, the two expressions I used are:
a) Home-Owner-Ism. This is the belief that house prices can only go up and this makes us richer; that banks should be bailed out to prop up the bubble; that it is OK to tax incomes until the pips squeak as long as the money is diverted into subsidising home values etc; that no new houses or roads should ever be built, ever, and of course, that there should be no taxes on land values.
(I doubt whether you fall into this category)
b) Faux Libertarianism. These people say 'all taxes are bad' when what they mean is 'all publicly collected taxes are bad'. I wholeheartedly agree that income tax, VAT etc are very bad taxes (no dispute there) however I also object to 'privately collected taxes' (i.e. the monopoly profits that landowners can collect).
The FL's refuse to accept that monopoly gains from land ownership are taxes pure and simple, i.e. money that changes hands because of the way society is organised and the way the state enforces the rules on the landowners behalf.
The FL's are also very ambivalent when it comes to liberalising planning laws. They pay lip service to the idea, and say they want to be able to do what they like on their 'own' land, but see it as an infringement of their personal liberty if their neighbour does what he likes on his own land.
I suspect that you fall into this category.
What you fail to realise is that if income tax etc were scrapped (without a corresponding upwards adjustment to land taxes), all that would happen is that rents and property prices would go up. So unless you 'jump on the ladder' long before income tax etc is scrapped, you will end up no better off in the long run.
For the third time, I cordially invite you to explain how a set of economic policies which would benefit and encourage smallholders is anti-smallholder.
I suspect that you fall into this category.
Again, Nope. I have written at length that I believe all planning laws should be scrapped and replaced with assumed concesnt and planning courts for disputes. i.e. I believe that you can do what the hell you like with your property, as long as in doing so, you don't affect the freedom for others to do what they like with theirs.
http://swimmingagainstthetide.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/planning-fail/
Ah, so now we get to the crux of the matter:
"I also object to 'privately collected taxes' (i.e. the monopoly profits that landowners can collect)"
Ergo you are against private property, because the very point of private property is that once it is yours you are entitled to do as you wish with it - use it, rent it out, sell it. If you are constrained from doing so then it is no longer private.
I suspect you are a closet communist.
S, OK, let me bat that straight back at you:
Complete the following in as many words as you like:
1. "Taxation of income and profits is not confiscation of private property because..."
2. "Having exclusive possession of land is vital to our economy and way of life. Society in general respects this, and the state enforces it. The right to exclusive possession is a valuable right.
If you wish to have the benefit of exclusive possession of land, there is no justification for paying compensation to society in general for respecting your right, or paying the state for the value of enforcing your rights because..."
PS, am I now an ex-Nazi or a closet Communist? Or both?
"R, what gave it away? "
The layout, the cow obsession etc...
Ground-rents are a still more proper subject of taxation than the rent of houses. A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground. More or less can be got for it according as the competitors happen to be richer or poorer, or can afford to gratify their fancy for a particular spot of ground at a greater or smaller expense. In every country the greatest number of rich competitors is in the capital, and it is there accordingly that the highest ground-rents are always to be found. As the wealth of those competitors would in no respect be increased by a tax upon ground-rents, they would not probably be disposed to pay more for the use of the ground. Whether the tax was to be advanced by the inhabitant, or by the owner of the ground, would be of little importance. The more the inhabitant was obliged to pay for the tax, the less he would incline to pay for the ground; so that the final payment of the tax would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent.
– Adam Smith From his book Das Kapital.
I concur that income tax is State confiscation of my private assets, and in a perfect world there wouldn't be any income tax, or any taxes at all. But we don't live in a perfect world. And at least my income tax payment is related to the cash I've made from whatever source, so unless I'm stupid and spend all my income before my tax bill arrives, I should have the cash to pay it. And my income tax goes towards maintaining the State which enforces my right to own property. So I as an income tax payer am paying for the State as much as you LVT payers would be.
S, "I concur that income tax is State confiscation of my private assets, and in a perfect world there wouldn't be any income tax, or any taxes at all."
A tax is a tax is a tax.
I have often pointed out that the average household in an average house is simultaneously being robbed on the income tax side but being bribed on the 'house prices can only go up' side (so for vast majority it would make much difference), but there are two side to this:
a) If 'the state' runs a system whereby money is transferred from people who do the decent thing and go out to work to people who don't work (or unproductive workers in public sector) using e.g. income tax, VAT etc, then those are explicit 'publicly collected taxes'. We can see the flows of cash.
b) But 'the state' runs a parallel system whereby people who do the decent thing and go out to work have to pay a massive premium if they wish to buy a house, and that money goes to other people who just happen to be registered as the previous freehold owner.
Seeing as the amount that FTBs spend on housing is roughly equal to what they pay in income tax etc, the premium is thus a covert tax on incomes, and the recipients in this case are people who have previously bought in to the monopoly.
This is quite overt with the taxpayer funded bank bailouts etc, but it happens anyway.
So while it's a nice idea to scrap income tax etc (and I am thoroughly in favour), it must be quite obvious to anybody who looks at rents and house prices in low tax jurisdictions that a £1 reduction in income tax leads to a £1 increase in rents or house prices.
c) As to this nonsense that 'my house doesn't generate a lump sum in cash every month' well it most certainly does and I covered that in an earlier episode.
A tax is not a tax.
Income Tax is a punishment for productivity.
LVT is a fee for excluding others and connecting property.
LVT is not a tax as such but a repayment.Your land goes up in value due to increases in the money supply ,improvements in local infrastructure etc.You are subsequently asked to repay this value,otherwise,if you kept it, this would screw up newcomers who buy the houses nearby which have the same inflated land value.Gradually as land values creep up generally there is less ready money about.Meanwhile you&everybody else still have to pay Income tax.
It is also unearned income.But you don't pay tax on it.
It is also a bribe to keep you voting primarily Conservative but the other parties as well.
There is no reason why LVT should cost more than Council Tax .It will
raise more revenue because it will put the squeeze on developers land banks with extant planning permissions which will pay at the same rate as built dwellings.
LVT is not revolutionary.As George Irvin said it is a minor amendment to existing tax law.It is not paid by the unemployed or poor widows if they don't want to.
Could be nobody has to pay it.You could say that the tax will only triggered when land values rise.People would then make sure that they did n't.No tax.But low land and property prices .Possibly forever.What is all the fuss about?
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