It appears that even the Home-Owner-Ists realise that can't just keep playing the Poor Widow Bogey (or Subsistence Farmer Bogey), so it now appears to be tradition to play the double and contrast them directly with a Hate Figure Du Jour:
Exhibit One:
So a single millionaire in a one bedroom flat will pay less than a family of 5, on average income, in a four bedroom house. Size of property does not automatically indicate an ability to pay higher taxes. Good to see Unison still in the 19th century mindset of social envy.
Exhibit Two
Suppose there are four earners in that £100,000 house, all generating masses of rubbish, using the roads heavily and placing a generally high demand on local services? Then suppose there are two independent-minded retired people in the £1m house (which doesn't have to be a palace these days) whose call on council services amounts to little more than emptying their kitchen bin once a fortnight.
Exhibit Three (via Mike R):
It would be rather odd if Rupert Murdock could own a 1/4 acre lot like my landlady and both would pay the same in taxes. Murdock's income shows he in benefiting 100x as much from Society as she does, I would suppose, and should therefore owe Society more.
Exhibit Four:
Try explaining to the electorate that under your new scheme Lakshmi Mittal is tens of millions better off, and Granny is going to lose out. Not going to go down well I suspect.
Exhibit Five:
A couple on £500k living in an apartment would pay little tax as they occupy very little land. A couple on £50k in a house with a decent sized garden - where they could grow vegetables and let the kids kick a ball about - would be heavily taxed. What's fair about that?
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I look forward to seeing other wealthy Hate Figures Du Jour being used as an argument against LVT, I'd like to suggest: love rat Ashley Cole; tax evader Philip Green; bank 'rupting Sir Fred Goodwin; pint sized Bernie Ecclestone; the conspiracy theorist Mohammed Al Fayed; polluter of children's minds J K Rowling; telly bore Sir Alan Sugar; Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, Baby P neglecting Sharon Shoesmith etc etc.
You'll notice of course that these people's income is largely a result of successful rent-seeking, for example, if Boris Yeltsin had introduced LVT instead of privatising everything, Roman Abramovitch would still just be a senior manager in an ooil company somewhere; of course civil servants like Sharon Shoesmith are vastly overpaid - out of taxpayers' money; Sir Fred Goodwin and other bankers could only make so much money because the government wanted them to etc etc.
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It's weird; these arguments are, to me, the exact ones that convince me how good LVT would be.
Why? Because it shows that under LVT taxation would be optional. There would be no more moaning about tax bills, and "the bloody taxman takes my pay packet", since anyone could choose not to pay it by careful life choices.
Now then, let's then have a careful think about whether Rupert Murdoch is going to run all his businesses out of a bedsit in Hull. It's his choice, but I suspect he would choose otherwise.
Besides, the printing press would stop him getting at the microwave.
OP: "It's weird; these arguments are, to me, the exact ones that convince me how good LVT would be..."
Indeed.
I wasn't really that convinced by LVT when I stumbled across it five years ago. Over the years, I have realised that, try as all these people might, there isn't a single good argument against it (assuming it were done correctly on an administrative level, other taxes reduced if possible, and something sorted out for pensioners, obviously).
Reminds me of the "POLL" tax - where did that end up?
Erm Bernie Ecclestone has built a massively successful F1 racing empire, Philip Green a huge retail business from fairly humble beginnings, Ashley Cole's wealth is entirely based on his own ability to kick a football, JK Rowling has created a ludicrously profitable entertainment franchise from her own head, Alan Sugar is the archetypal barrow boy to boardroom story. I hardly think they are 'rent seekers'. M Al Fayed's wealth is somewhat opaque I'll grant you, no-one knows where it can from. Fred Goodwin did run a profitable bank for a good while, OK he then crashed it into the ground at 1000mph, so not the best example.
Any way it matters little how they got there, under LVT they would all be quids in. Which would not be popular.
All you LVT fanatics remind me of the poll tax proponents from 20 odd years ago. It all made great sense on paper, everyone would pay their share, everyone would have a stake in local govt and what it spent, everything was oh so logical. No-one really opposed it as it was implemented, it was only as the reality of what it meant for millions of people, and the authorities trying to keep tabs on the 10-20% of the population who live rather chaotic lives, moving from A to B on a regular basis, that the whole thing fell apart.
I guarantee you within 6 months of the implementation of LVT it would be the most hated tax ever.
Ah, I see someone else has come to the same conclusion - Anon 16:081
Would Lakshmi Mittal really be much better off? He's a non-dom, so maybe not paying that much income tax etc., but living in a ca. £70m pound house, so might pay a fair bit in LVT, which he couldn't avoid (and is one reason why LVT is a good tax).
Anon, LVT is more or less the diametric opposite of the Poll Tax. That was a flat tax on each individual, LVT is a flat tax on land values, so the amount will vary hugely from the smallest flat in Blaenau Gwent to a Mansion in Westminster.
"People" are not "land values", a fairly fundamental difference, yes?.
"Everybody pays the same" is pretty much the opposite of "You choose how much you want to pay and then find a home within your budget", yes?
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S, Poll Tax = a truly shit tax, see above. And it was you with your Ed Miliband hat on who dragged the politics of envy into this, not me.
You also singularly fail to realise that there is proper earned wealth and unearned rental income, they are poles apart.
So with your David Cameron hat on you say that LVT is an attack on wealth and with your Ed Miliband hat on you say it is an attack on middle income people, make up your mind what you actually mean and then we can discuss it.
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H, but you are dragging 'facts' and 'logic' and actual figures into this, the Homeys have no interest in facts or logic.
Anon: "It's always the same, someone get's off their arse to better themselves and all the lazy bastards want a share."
I'm not sure what level of reality you are operating on here, didn't I always say get rid of income tax, VAT, corporation tax, NIC etc? Does that not make it easier to better yourself?
Or are you doing the usual Homey one-two where taxing income (thus punishing people who 'get off their arses') and using the revenues to subsidise land values is perfectly acceptable?
"No-one really opposed it as it was implemented,"
Where were you when that happened? ISTR huge opposition to the Poll Tax before it was implemented, but not from any political quarters, because it was a tax that hit the poor hardest and benefited the rich and the people who run this country are not poor.
"it was only as the reality of what it meant for millions of people, and the authorities trying to keep tabs on the 10-20% of the population who live rather chaotic lives,"
Oh, so those Poll Tax riots I personally witnessed were all caused by disgruntled local authority employees? I never knew that, I thought they were poor people whose tax burden had just doubled or trebled.
B, yes, re the Poll Tax riots, the point was we were moving AWAY from land value taxation (of which Domestic Rates was a reasonable approximation) and replacing it with a Poll Tax. Why do people have such short memories?
Moving back to LVT (or Domestic Rates or whatever) would by definition be far less unpopular than moving even further away from it.
The poll tax riots were mainly a bunch of crusty anarchists who didn't like the idea of having to pay something at all, thats all, not local authority employees, of course.
The reason the poll tax failed was not only because a lot of people were worse off, but because even those who were better off didn't really think it was fair either. There was thus no support for it even among the winners.
Which is exactly the point I'm trying to get you lot to realise. Look, I'm pro-business, low taxes, etc etc. So if you can't convince me that a tax that takes from some of the poorer sections of society and gives to the richest is good idea then I REALLY don't think that its going to be that popular with the rest of society.
One thing I have learnt in my 40 years is that people do not always vote with total self interest at heart. They do to some extent, but if they think that something is unfair they won't support it, or be that bothered if it gets stopped.
If you can't see that you are going down a very blind alley.
Interesting range of arguments Sobers. From "all taxes are theft" to "grannies and people on welfare wouldn't take it", and now, "LVT redistributes to the richest". Didn't see that last one come.
S: "a tax that takes from some of the poorer sections of society and gives to the richest is good idea then I REALLY don't think that its going to be that popular with the rest of society."
Are you saying that with your Ed Miliband hat on or your David Cameron hat? I'm genuinely never sure whether you are doing Politics Of Envy or trying to maintain the corrupt status quo.
LVT doesn't actually take anything from anybody, there is absolutely no redistribution involved, not a penny, the system is blind as to people's incomes.
Remember the basic Tom Paine idea:
1. Charge rent on all land in the new colonies
2. Dish that money out as a Citizen's Dividend.
3. By definition, everybody gets an equal share in the land value for free and as of right.
4. If he wants to spend that on an average sized plot, then great, he lives completely tax free.
5. If he wants a grand house, then he'll have to work hard to earn it (but not as hard as under current rules with income tax etc). Great.
6. if he is happy to live in a small house or share with others, then he can keep the change and spend it on something else. Great.
7. By definition, the average household on the average plot is a neither a net taxpayer nor a net recipient. Great.
8. Social mobility upwards is much easier, and the flipside of that is that social mobility downwards is much easier. So what? That's the bit they never mention.
"[LVT] takes from some of the poorer sections of society and gives to the richest"
I'm not sure what level of reality you are operating on. We have this system TODAY and that is what i am fighting against!
It's called Home-Owner-Ism - those at the bottom or in the middle are forced to take out colossal mortgages to benefit bankers and landowners; those at the bottom or the middle slave away and lose half their income in tax, which is creamed off by corporatists, civil servants, private slumlords etc and what is left is spent on stuff which pushes house prices even higher.
So if I live in a small house and pay £5,000 into the pot and my family's Citizen's Dividend is £10,000, how exactly am I making rich people even richer?
As noted above by Anon, Sobers seems to be shift his ground from a weak thesis, for example, that all taxes are bad, to a strong thesis with some content that Wandsworth rebuts. My observation is that Sobers has, in the end retreated to the Uncle Tom and Flashman default position over at HPC. That being, the Red and Blue voters will never go for LTV, so why do you try?
So, two conclusions: Wandsworth and the others here stand for the Enlightenment not the party and Sobers and UT are one and the same!
Best,
MikeW
Sobers "technique" of debating remind me of a textbook in economics I read a while ago. A book that has been pretty standard in the higher economics education-system in the country I'm from. It stated something like this; "henry george believed in the single tax, a tax on the value of land etc. etc., the author then concurred with his thesis that LVT was without deadweight loss, encourages development and so on, all in all rather efficiently explaining the main tenets of Georgism. Then, by some twist, he ends the mention with; "There has been a common trait of tax-reformers throughout history to resort to simplistic measures, and so is the case with Henry George"... That was it, putting the merits to sleep so students of economics can concentrate on the more realistic issues of how to tweak a dozen bad taxes for the best result for the politically favoured of the day.
"So if you can't convince me that a tax that takes from some of the poorer sections of society and gives to the richest is good idea then I REALLY don't think that its going to be that popular with the rest of society."
Ah, so you recognise VAT for the evil tax that it is. No, I don't think many people think that VAT is a good idea, but something being a bad idea never stopped our rulers implementing it in the past, regardless of what people may think. I don't know where you get this idea that our rulers give a stuff what people think from. There are only two things that they take any notice of: losing seats in marginal constituencies and riots.
Mike W, Sobers and Uncle Tom are not one and the same. The former 'owns' a lot of land at the edge of Swindon and makes money by selling off bits of it.
The latter has owned three acres of brown field land in or near Oxford for decades and is dreaming of the day when he finally gets planning permission.
So, er, actually they are exactly the same.
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Anon, yes "simplistic" is a great insult bandied about by those who believe in heinously complicated taxes and benefits.
The bureaucrats and do-gooders respond in exactly the same manner when people suggest replacing the entire welfare state with a Universal Basic Income aka Citizen's Dividend etc.
Sobers: So if you can't convince me that a tax that takes from some of the poorer sections of society and gives to the richest is good idea...
That's incredibly ironic, given that it is the existing tax system which is designed to take from the poor to give to the rich.
Of course, those who don't understand the process look at income tax and think that the wealthy are paying significant sums, but those who have the most significant wealth seem to instinctively know that by taking their wealth and ploughing it into land based assets, they can have a significant amount of the money taken in tax returned to them, as the tax spend forces push up land values, leaving the real burden on those lower down the wealth scale.
Paul, long time no hear.
"the existing tax system which is designed to take from the poor to give to the rich"
Exactly - but for some reason people are obsessed with publicly collected taxes (i.e. income tax etc, and to be fair, high earners pay a disproportionate amount of income tax) and completely ignore privately collected taxes (which is why the landowners and bankers get richer and richer as time goes on).
AFAIAC, if the government deliberately arranges things so that some people get poorer (or stay poor) and others get richer, that is tax and redistribution, it's just that the money flows from private pockets to private pockets without hitting a government bank account first.
"The bureaucrats and do-gooders respond in exactly the same manner when people suggest replacing the entire welfare state with a Universal Basic Income aka Citizen's Dividend etc."
That's to be expected. But when people that are self-described libertarians, like Sobers (hard to tell really), even thinks (maybe rightly so) that it would not be enough to support the poor, that's even more confusing. So the adage about "charity will provide for those who need it" obviously only applies when people get nothing, not when they get a CI.
Anon, I'm not aware that Sobers has any opinion on welfare and pensions one way or another.
But if, objectively, we observe that the citizen's income is not enough for 'the poor' to stay alive, we just build a load more council housing and let them stay there for free, that's the risk-free option.
If anybody wants a free house, they can have it. It might not be very luxurious or in a nice area, but it will be warm and dry with a solid front door and windows.
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