Friday 31 January 2014

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (315)

From Labour Uncut:

Madasafish says:

... the article talks glibly about Land Taxes(1) but not all land is equal. An acre in Central London is worth more than an acre in Northern Scotland.(2)

So... “Just 189,000 families (roughly 0.6 per cent of the UK population) own two-thirds of the UK’s 60 million acres.” is meaningless.(3)

So if that is the standard of the thinking behind this proposal, it’s just not thought out.(4)


1) No, the article refers specifically to Land VALUE Tax.

2) Yes it is. Does the commenter realise how much more? Probably not: "a hundred thousand times as much" is the answer to that.

3) Agreed actually, I've banged on about this before and the LVTers do themselves a disservice by repeating this: it's true but irrelevant. 0.6% of the population own two-thirds by area, but if that's all owner-occupier farmers, they do not have a disproportionately large share of the total value (maybe 1% or 2% of the total value, they need it for their business, so fair enough). The top 0.6% of the UK's rent collectors probably 'only' collect a third of all land rents (it's difficult to calculate).

4) The commenter's main objection shows that he hasn't even read the article properly, that's the standard of KLN we're getting nowadays.

2 comments:

Kj said...

KLNs, the well that never runs dry. Ddn't you think it's sort of comforting as well sometimes Mark? Something to depend on.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Kj, no it's depressing.

I heard a new one today, or a new version of an old one from a young colleague at work who'd never heard of LVT before but was clearly totally enslaved:

"But they'd have to do revaluations every year!"