"Beyonce's family tree reveals her great-great-great grandfather was a wealthy white merchant who married a slave in a 'love match'"

It doesn't take much imagination to re-write the Daily Mail's rehashed spin.

The whole thing is about how her black female ancestors were slaves bought and exploited by wicked white men.

For sure they were, but you might as well say that she is descended from wicked white men who forced themselves on female slaves.

Or, she might accept that whatever happened two centuries ago is pretty irrelevant to her.

For example, one of my grand-dads was a quartermaster in the British Army in India 'handing out underpants' as he liked to say; the other developed photographs for Luftwaffe reconnaissance on the Eastern Front. The bit I'm proud of is that neither fired a shot in anger, and my German grand-dad actually deserted a few days before the Russians overran them (a superbly brave thing to do in the circumstances, as the SS were routinely murdering deserters on the spot). But nobody should take the credit or the blame for what their ancestors did.

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From today's Evening Standard:

You have recently highlighted the issue of 'modern slavery' but this is only the tip of the iceberg.

In economic and historic terms, a slave owner is usually a landowner who takes the bulk of the value which slaves create, leaving them just enough to live on. In those terms, there are tens of millions of economic slaves in this country - all those whose rent or mortgage bills leaves them just enough to live on.

Although nominally free, if tenants or mortgage borrowers move to a higher wage area to get a better paying job, they will find that the bulk of their extra wages is taken in higher rents or mortgage repayments. So landlords and banks act are scarcely better than slave owners - they contribute nothing to the process of wealth creation but collect a large chunk of it anyway.

Mark Wadsworth
Young People's Party

Guardian missing the point most gloriously as per usual.

From The Guardian:

To understand why, despite the recent funeral orations, liberalism is very much alive, you have to go back to the 1860s and the abolition of slavery in two key countries. To be precise, 1863, when – in one of the great coincidences of history – the proclamations of liberty for the American slaves and the Russian serfs came just five weeks apart*.

Both liberations were great victories for anti-slavery campaigners, more than half a century after the first successes of the campaign against the slave trade. But they were also great disappointments for radicals. Because, in both cases, the slaves and the serfs were catapulted from bondage into poverty.

In the US, slavery was replaced by peonage and debt bondage. In Russia, the land was valued at three and a half times its market value, and the impoverished serfs had to pay this to their former owners over a period of 49 years. It became clear that it wasn’t enough to release the slaves – you had to release them from debt, monopoly and the economic tyranny that replaced it...

All fine so far, if TPTB 'release' slaves/serfs but allow private 'land ownership' to continue and then collect most of their earnings from them in rent, the former slaves/serfs are no little or better off.

It is as simple as that. And that is pretty much where we are today. Anybody who has to hand over a large part of his earnings to private landlords/mortgage banks is in the same position as a newly freed slave/serf, who in turn is little or no better of than an actual slave/serf.

He then drifts off into a criticism of free trade, which is called 'neo liberalism' nowadays.

Why? What he refers to as free trade is in many cases no such thing, what he is talking about is corporatism, regulatory capture, government granted monopolies and protections, rigging the tax system to favour large businesses etc. Those things are the antithesis of free trade. And in terms of importance, these things are nowhere near as important as private landownership, end of.

* One of my favourite coincidences of history, along with FDR and Hitler coming to power and dying within a few weeks of each other.

Poor Widows With Slaves

From an otherwise somber BBC documentary, Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners, this clip brought a wry smile to my face.

Land taxes are seen by many as an infringement of property rights, just as the abolition of slavery was back then. They even had their version of our Poor Widows in Mansions.

Well that's not "free" then, is it?

From The Evening Standard:

There may be no such thing as a free lunch but free rent is on offer - providing you have an unique skill.

Increasing numbers of householders in the capital are offering free rooms in exchange for services, from Chinese lessons to carpentry.

A leading property website has seen the number of Londoners offering a free room almost double in the last two years.

As I've said, we live in a barter economy.

Clearly, using some common unit of currency, be it gold coins or numbers on computer screens to denominate one half of each transaction makes things much simpler and more efficient, which is why such systems have developed independently thousands of times in various forms all over the world from ancient antiquity onwards, but when it comes down to it, you swap goods and services for goods and services.

But paying your rent in the form of Chinese lessons or carpentry is still payment, and the accommodation is not free.

And strictly speaking, both halves of the transaction are taxable as well; if the Chinese tutor gives £500 of lessons in exchange for £500 of rent, the tutor is supposed to pay tax on the £500 non-cash income (the rent) and the landlord is supposed to pay tax on his £500 non-cash income (the lessons). There is also the quirk that if a man marries his housekeeper, the output/exchange remains the same but the tax base suddenly falls.

Which conveniently illustrates that income tax is double taxation and the only tax which is 'one-sided' is LVT, it is a user charge on the benefits which the owner/occupier gets from society in general and nothing else.

Serfs and slaves

Fascinating and easy to remember facts from history:

The Russian serfs were officially emancipated in 1861.

Slaves in the USA (the Confederate bits) were not all officially emancipated until 1865. It took two years from the original Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 to take full effect.

The overall effect in improving the lives and living standards of the ex-serfs and ex-slaves was minimal of course, because instead of toiling away and receiving a small living allowance or free food and lodgings, they were forced to hand over most of their farming income in rent to the same old landowners and ended up in much the same position. But there you go.

Strange to think that Russia was (briefly) more "advanced" than the USA was.

The Mayan Apocalypse

From The Daily Mail:

One of the biggest Mayan pyramids in Belize has been all but destroyed by 'ignorant' builders who ravaged the ancient structure for crushed rock to fill in a new road.

The construction workers used bulldozers and diggers to claw at the sloping sides of the 100ft tall pyramid, which is part of the Nohmul complex - the most important Mayan site in northern Belize and one which dates back at least 2,300 years.

Horrified archaeologists claim there is no way the builders could have mistaken the Mayan ruins for a hill, as the landscape is naturally flat and the Nohmul complex is well known.

I don't know why people are so happy to go round the world admiring these things which were built with slave labour - castles, pyramids and the like. Why are we supposed to worship these symbols of oppression? I think it's a bit sick really.

I much prefer things where you know the workers got paid a decent wedge, which excludes more or less everything which is more than two or three centuries old in most countries. And those rocks are probably being put to better use as hardcore anyway, you've seen one Mayan pyramid, you've seen 'em all.

Forced Marriage Laws

Something you notice as you get older is that new laws appear and you think "how come we don't already have a law against this?".

Then you do a little Googling and find that actually, we already do. Or at least, there are things in other laws that allow you to achieve the same objective of the new law.

Such is the announcement of the government introducing a law that would criminalise families that forced their children into a marriage.

The law is unnecessary. A person in this country can refuse to marry in the registry office. Marriages can be annulled because of undue pressure. So, the only way to get them to marry is to take them abroad against their will to less civilised countries. At which point, we have laws against kidnapping. Or if taken to a country and told to marry and that they can't return, we have false imprisonment laws. We even have a Forced Marriage Unit that rescues people that have been forced into marriages abroad.

So, why is the government wasting a whole lot of time and money on a law that's unnecessary? The government's own explanation, of making it clear to families that forced marriage is against the law, as though a family that has to evade British law to get someone to marry hasn't worked this out. Fact is that the families know it's not legal, but have already made their mind up that the government can go to Hell and they'll do it anyway.

So, what's the law really about? What it's really about is creating a positive story for the government, something vaguely about upholding British justice, something that will make the public less likely to think that Fred Karno's Army are running the country.

In terms of outcomes, it makes no difference, as we already have all the laws we need. Arguably, we'd be better not having this law with its consultation, civil servants drafting, redrafting and so forth (all of which costs an eye-watering amount of money) and instead hiring a few more people at the Forced Marriage Unit to rescue women from forced marriages and prosecute those involved in it.

With no apparent trace of irony...

From The Telegraph:

Inflation forces parents to increase rental prices for adult children: A quarter of parents who have adult children living at home have raised the amount they charge them in rent due to the rise in the cost of living.

According to the survey by MyVoucherCodes.co.uk*, more than 60pc of parents charge their adult children rent, with more a third of those only just starting to ask for payment because they needed further support following the recession and rising inflation.

Mark Pearson, chairman of MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, said: "Some children live with their parents well into their 20s, or even 30s. It's fair that these parents** should take money for the home they provide once their youngsters reach 18 or get a job. Charging rent or taking money for food prepares them for what they will face later on in life, when they have to run their own home."

See also: Price of gas to rise, say men who set the price of gas.

* The survey itself may or may not be a load of rubbish, that does not detract from the overall hilarity.

** The very same parents who have indirectly prevented their own children from being able to afford to move out by deliberately and maliciously pushing up the price of houses and rents.

Killer arguments against LVT, not (33)

Ian B trots out the bizarre argument that taxing land values is only a short step away from enslaving half the adult population here:

... the big flaw in LVT is that it is a tax levied on what you think somebody can potentially earn from an asset (1), and that flaw will always remain. It is the equivalent of taxing all women on their potential earnings as prostitutes, regardless of whether they do or not, because they could rent their bodies out, you will tax their bodies as if they all do rent them out (2). I don't think many women would be thrilled (3), on demand of the Whore Value Tax, to be told that it's fair because your WVT assessor has assessed a high potential rental value.

You want to force every landowner to get on their back and think of England, or pay a regular fine for not doing so (4). It's simply morally wrong.(5)

I'm sure I've dealt with this before, but to recap...

1) There are two ways of looking at this.

a) The easiest way is to look at what somebody is prepared to pay for exclusive possession to a certain site. When you buy or rent a house, the mortgage lender or landlord will check you have sufficient income to pay the mortgage or the rent. So LVT is a tax on consumption of land. Sure, the land is not physically consumed, but it is consumed nonetheless in the same way as you 'consume' a hotel room or the pitch for your tent or caravan when you go on holiday. The rent you pay is a combination of facilities provided by the owner and for access to things that are not provided by the owner, i.e. hotels or campsites nearer the beach, the museums, the mountains or with a view over the sea or a lake command more rent than those further away.

So in one sense, LVT is a tax on consumption. My most-hated tax, Value Added Tax is also sold to the gullible public as a tax on consumption but it is not - it is a tax on gross profits of a business (i.e. a supertax on net profits plus salaries).

b) The other view is to look at land values as a function of how much people can earn if they live there and work nearby*. We know that there are wide disparities in average incomes across the UK, but if you deduct actual or notional housing costs, the picture is much flatter - i.e. you can earn £40,000 doing a certain private sector job in London but the mortgage or rent for a home within reasonable commuting distance is (say) £15,000 a year.

Maybe in Newcastle, the best paying similar private sector job that the same person can find would be £25,000 a year but the mortgage or rent for a physically similar home to the one he could have rented in London would only be £9,000 a year. So if that person takes the job in London, he is paying two kinds of extra tax - another £5,000 in income tax and National Insurance, which is publicly collected and an extra £6,000 in 'ground rent' which is privately collected.

* 'Nearby' is a question of commute time, not geographical distance, which is why in the South East, property developers and estate agents advertise properties as 'X minutes from Y station' and state that 'Y station is Z minutes from Liverpool Street/Kings Cross/Paddington Station'.

So take your pick whether LVT is more like a tax on consumption or a semi-voluntary income tax (for a given job, you can always choose a home with a longer commute time, or a flat in a block with more storeys, or a house with a smaller garden and so on).

2) Again, there are two ways or looking at this nonsense:

a) I have read all the arguments put forward by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Henry George and Milton Friedman, all of whom I would consider to be towards the small government or libertarian-with-a-conscience end of the scale, and I know a lot of Land Value Taxers across the political spectrum and a few Christian ones as well - I don't think any of these have ever proposed a Whore Value Tax. This is tantamount to slavery, for crying out loud.

What the LVT-ers are campaigning against is that the bulk of the population are already enslaved twice over - once by the state who collect the 'public' taxes, and then again by the banks and the property market which collects 'private taxes'. We could, in theory abolish income tax and so on, but you cannot abolish 'ground rents' (short of shutting the state down and allowing anarchy to ensue, which I am not recommending either, before Ian B accuses me of it). As long as the state protects and guarantees exclusive possession (subject to you paying the rent or mortgage in full, of course), there will always be ground rents.

b) On a practical or political level, Ian B's idea is a non-starter of course, and I don't see why I should dignify it.

3) Nor many men either.

4) In a world where we have fines on finding a job (loss of means-tested benefits), fines on earning more (income tax and National Insurance), fines on gross profits (Value Added Tax) and fines on net profits (corporation tax), all of which are hugely economically damaging, that's another complete non-argument. The point is that the public collection of ground rents is not a 'fine', it is a 'service charge' or a 'user charge' or a tax on consumption etc (see above). Ground rents are an irreducible minimum of taxes - the only question is, should they be collected privately or publicly?

5) As I may have mentioned before, simply stating that something is 'morally wrong' doesn't give me much to rebut. That's about as uninteresting as the tabloid majority saying that 'taking drugs is morally wrong' or that 'homosexuality is morally wrong'. LVT is a largely voluntary tax - like VAT, for example - if you want to live in the nicer bits of west central London, it'd be £100 per square yard per year (or the appropriate fraction if you live in a block of flats), for Outer London it would be £5 to £10 per square yard per year, but, assuming the usual skewed distribution of values, the land tax on two thirds of privately-owned developed land across the UK would be £3 per square yard per year or less.

PS, I have used £3 per square yard as a reasonable mid-figure, by assuming that all existing property or wealth related taxes (Council Tax less Council Tax Benefit, Business Rates, Stamp Duty, TV licence fee, Inheritance Tax, Capital Gains Tax, Insurance Premium Tax etc) which currently raise about £60 billion per annum were divided up by the total amount of privately owned, developed non-agricultural land, which is about 4 million acres. So that's a good place to start.

We'd then phase out The Worst Taxes (VAT and Employer's NIC, static shortfall £120 billion, dynamic shortfall £60 billion) and reduce grants to local councils by a corresponding amount. It is then up to local voters to decide what they want to pay for collectively by majority - a flashy new council-run sports centre with swimming pool might lose £8 million a year, so that'd be an extra 10p per square yard per year or an extra 2% on your land tax (I'd vote against, maybe my wife would vote in favour) and so on.

The £1 billion annualised cost of Crossrail might be an extra £2 per square yard for the areas that benefit (let's say a quarter of Greater London, for sake of argument), so it's up to businesses and homeowners to decide whether the increase in capital or rental values, or the increase in amenity or shortened commute times is worth £2 per square yard - either it is or it isn't.

And before some faux-libertarian tells me that 'Crossrail should be privately funded' or 'the ticket prices should cover the cost', even if it were, land values within a certain radius of the stations will increase by a significant amount, so I'd ask them, why would or should a railway company make such a massive investment? That's like expecting painters and decorators or roofers to provide their services to landowners for half-price (which is exactly what this London Borough is seriously proposing). See also Empty Property Grants, more taxpayer-funded subsidies for people who allow properties to fall derelict.
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Ian B then continues in his next comment:

All "rights" in those terms exist because of state enforcement. (6) That is, using the WVT example, the only reason women can assert ownership of their bodies is due to state laws against violence and rape (under the current system, let's not get into anarcho capitalist enforcement), otherwise anyone could invade their bodily property without repercussions. As such, the state's legal system protects bodily property ownership and creates the opportunity for bodily rental (prostitution). The same argument applies as to land. Land property rights are just one of the property rights the state protects. (7)

6) I agree that things like copyrights or patents are created by individuals or businesses but the 'rights' only exist because the state protects them, which is why there is a good argument for a modest income tax on copyright or patent income.

Ian B's view that people ought to pay for the right to not have their bodies violated is extreme, but in real life, people are prepared to pay for this - so house prices in an area with a good police force and low crime levels will always be higher than in another area where crime is (perceived to be) higher. So however we finance the police, it is always the landowners in the lower crime areas who benefit. The only relevant consideration, which applies to all 'public' services of course is 'Is the increase in rental values that arises from ... greater than the cash cost of providing ...?'.

Or, in Ian B's parallel universe, let us imagine that Country A were mad enough to introduce a Whore Value Tax and Country B replaced as many taxes as possible with Land Value Tax. To which country would a lot of people from Country A migrate? How many people would migrate into Country A? In which country would people live happier lives? And hence, where would rental values be higher?

7) Land and property rights are, in economic terms the most important 'property rights'. But yes, the same logic applies to radio spectrum, landing slots at airports, fuel duty (you're paying for the roads as well as the physical petrol), copyrights and patents, cherished number plates and anything where there is a state protected monopoly.

These forms of 'property' only exist because of The State - unlike your own body or physical possessions which are only protected in principle. In reality, you have to them protect yourself , rely on good luck or insure privately. Ask yourself, how many stolen goods get returned to their owners? How many murdered people does the state bring back to life? How many fraud victims get their money back?

Time heals all wounds. Unless you keep re-opening them.

From The Metro:

Major British companies and institutions founded using the profits of slavery will be highlighted by a new study.

An online database of all the slave owners in the country at the time of abolition in 1833 will be created to trace how their wealth was used. This will be the first in-depth study of how the owners were involved in events such as building the railways. UCL's three-year study is funded by £613,000 from the Economic and Social Research Council.

UCL means University College London, which is largely State-funded, and the Economic and Social Research Council..? Ah ... see here:

"We are an independent organisation, established by Royal Charter, but receive most of our funding through the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. Our planned expenditure for 2008/09 is £203 million, which funds over 2,500 researchers in academic institutions and policy research institutes throughout the UK. We also support more than 2,000 postgraduate students."

Typical, you wait ages for a new FakeCharity...

I thought I'd lost my touch in spotting fakecharities, not having identified one since 1 May, but I scented blood in Monday's Metro. See if you can spot the tell-tale signs in this:

One in four pupils is being failed by their secondary school, a report says... "Every child should thrive at school but, as this research shows, parents recognise that is not happening," said Andy Powell of independent education foundation Edge, which wrote the report. "The education system has changed and some schools are doing great things – but it hasn't changed fast enough." 

He called on the government to move away from the one-size-fits-all system to one which gives youngsters "the chance to develop their own talents through real world experience"... Signs that children are not happy include late nights out and constantly visiting social networking sites, Edge added.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families said exam performances had improved in the past 12 years. But the ministry accepted "there was more to do".
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I filed it under 'stuff I ought to research a bit more when I have time', but there was a full page advert in today's Metro, featuring an image worthy of William Wilberforce (click to enlarge):

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Having done my leafletting for the evening, I had a look at their website, the whole layout of which screams "fakecharity", but in case of doubt, look at their Partners:

The National Education Business Partnership Network
Association of Colleges
Association of Learning Providers
Department for Children, Schools and Families
Education Development International
Business In The Community
Edexcel
Learning & Skills Council
Qualifications & Curriculum Authority
Federation of Awarding Bodies

I appreciate good spin as much as the next man, but why are their frauds so pathetic? If you have a quick look at the website of each of their "partners" you'll notice that they all follow the same tedious fakecharity template. Are they all designed by the same geeks or something?

"Breakthrough in malaria fight"

On one level, this is excellent news, of course.

But as far as Africa* is concerned, will it really make that much difference**?

* There are nearly one million malaria deaths a year in Africa.

** There were also over a million deaths from AIDS, caused by "the might of greed and inhumanity over morals and virtue", apparently. Crikey, that's a new on on me. Plus around ten million children who die in civil wars, or in the famines that those civil wars cause or are sold into slavery.

See also: "You know aid money works"