I received an email from a drone at Tory propaganda unit, it's a classic of the genre, and illustrates the sort of crap we have to put up with:
Anyone who thinks there is a simple solution is either a conman or particularly dumb (see also MMT).
Firstly, if you introduce LVT, you need to abolish all planning laws.
It heavily penalises everyone who has scrimped and saved for a house.
Further it discriminates heavily against manufacturing (you need more space to actually make stuff).
This is why no country in the world has introduced this idiot idea save Taiwan, where predictably it has been a disaster.
There is a "simplish" solution: tax at Scandinavian levels - 25% VAT, 30% basic with little to no personal allowance. It is proven. Unfortunately it is bloody hard work and involves sacrifices
Additional KLN says it was "disaster" in Taiwan: This is why no country in the world has implemented it to any serious degree except Taiwan, where it has predictably been a complete disaster. There are no easy, elegant solutions, only hard ones.
UPDATE:
I emailed back, "You and I both know perfectly well that every single one of your claims is either untrue, irrelevant or both. Why do you bother?"
To which he replied: "Mark, this is a prank. I am a satanist and a bit of a weird person. Stop worrying about LVT or if you do worry, try to become an adviser to Corbyn. Maybe be the devil for a short period of time?"
Well, he had me fooled.
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Henry Law from LVTC received a similar load of crap by email:
I started reading and found my blood pressure starting to rise as I detest the bigoted, naive and simplistic viewpoint that is typical of socialism/marxism/whatever or from anyone of a left-wing bent. It’s pointless trying to explain the holes. Socialism - the race to the bottom, the champion of mediocrity, the stifling of enterprise.
And just for the record, my wife and I grafted all our working lives. Neither of us had a silver spoon in our mouths or a rich daddy. What we’ve got is down to our own hard work. So if we can do, why can’t the feckless and the idle ? We like where we live but on limited income. So why force us to sell our home to pay some land tax? Why should we defer it until the house is sold ? I’ll tell you why.
Not because we want our children to inherit because we decided long ago that much of the ills in our society (and the world for that matter) is down to too many people.
Not because we want to keep our money to pay for care as neither of us intends to get to that state of decrepitude and be an eternal drain on the NHS. We’ll find a way to depart this earth somehow.
But because we have researched carefully and are leaving our estate to selected charities. I’m damned if any of that money should go towards yet another pointless, resource draining Govt ‘initiative’.
Please - don’t bother to reply.
Please - don’t send me any more socialist bile.
OK, so he'd like "everybody else" to pay extra tax to fund his landowner benefits, and he would like to gift the net present value of those benefits to "selected charities". That's called "spending other people's money".
Why does he think that other people are happy to pay for the "pointless, resource draining government initiative" of subsidising landowners?
Prestigious
3 hours ago
6 comments:
One thing I am struggling to understand about LVT - the claim I see made that tenants, e.g. High Street shops, will benefit from it.
The Landlord has captured their economic activity as rent, so LVT takes it from the landlord and into the State's coffers, but the tenant has lost that economic value they created. The Landlord is still going to squeeze as much rent out of them as their turnover can afford. All that seems to have happened is the recipient has changed - OK, fair enough, the State might spend some of it on public infrastructure, but that's scant recompense for the tenant.
R, look at the bigger picture. Every £ land rent the land owner gets in rent is £ lost to 'everybody else'.
If 'everybody else' gets a tax reduction and landlords are getting less rent, then 'everbody else' must be better off. They will benefit from govt spending, not land owners.
What the Honeys like to brush under the carpet is that Georgists are campaigning AGAINST taxes on output and employment as much as they are campaigning FOR land value tax.
What a strange(rude) e-mail to receive.
All cobblers of course. Any justification for the Taiwan comment?
B, I didn't bother commenting because it would be shooting fish in a barrel.
B, the first chap admitted he was winding me up.
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