Wednesday 19 February 2014

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From The Evening Standard (19 Feb 2014, page 47):

We were delighted by Danny Dorling's endorsement of a land value tax.

The Holy Grail of high wages/low house prices can be achieved by collecting taxes from the rental value of land instead of from earnings and output. Our calculations show that replacing council tax, VAT and National Insurance with a fiscally neutral Land Value Tax would leave most young couples £10,000 a year better off.

As well as reversing the rising tide of wealth inequality, such a measure would dampen the boom-bust cycle and lead to more efficient use of existing buildings.

Land Value Tax was supported by figures as diverse as Marx, Churchill and Milton Friedman. Now that corporations can shift profits between jurisdictions at the touch of a button it has ore relevance that ever as land cannot be hidden abroad.

Mark Wadsworth, Young People's Party.

11 comments:

DBC Reed said...

Overdoing it a bit to say Marx supported LVT : he kept saying Henry George's version was Capitalism's last ditch.Not to worry ;just quoting the Communist Manifesto should nullify all shades of criticism.
The high wages low house prices duo works well.Not so sure about Holy Grail!
BTW Dorling is all over Guardian.

Mark Wadsworth said...

DBC, the HW/LHP combo is your idea. Nice and simple, can't argue with that. I just called it "Holy Grail" for the heck of it.

Kj said...

Well done.

DBC Reed said...

@MW Thought it seemed familiar: might be an idea to come up with something instead of Holy Grail (sound effects of imagination creaking).

Derek said...

Excellent! Kudos to David for coming up with the slogan and to Mark for getting it published!

Mark Wadsworth said...

Kj, ta.

DBC, I'm good at numbers and tedious boring logic. I'm not very good at slogans, that's your and Ben Jamin's job :-)

D, also ta.

Unknown said...

But what we're up against:

http://www.cityam.com/article/1392771213/mansion-tax-would-be-equivalent-feasting-our-economy-s-seed-corn

Mark Wadsworth said...

SJ, ah, City Am, reliably Home-Owner-Ist to the last. They pump out these lies on a weekly or daily basis - it's what they are paid to do.

Bayard said...

"Land Value Tax was supported by figures as diverse as Marx, Churchill and Milton Friedman."

Someone for everyone to hate, eh?

Mark Wadsworth said...

B... and someone for everybody to like. My original list was a bit longer and include Good Queen Bess and Adam Smith, but the letters editor trimmed the whole thing down a bit.

Bayard said...

It would be nice to think so, but it's amazing how often the only people who can be bothered to comment, reply, write letters etc are those who've found someone or something to hate.