There's a cracking article in The Daily Mail. It appears that they are moving from the "ridiculing" to the "fighting" stage.
The comments are the usual drivel (plenty of raw material, at least!). The "best rated" comment draws deeply from the seemingly bottomless well of Home-Owner-Ist DoubleThink:
Been here before! (1) The 'soak the rich' policy of the Labour government in the 70s resulted in the wealth creators, innovators, in fact anyone with the potential to succeed, leaving the country (2). It came to be known as 'The Brain Drain' and came close to reducing us to 'third world' status. "Those who ignore the lessons of history are destined to repeat it" (3)... The last thing this country needs now is more befuddled fog of leftist ideology.(4)
1) Yup. We used to have Domestic Rates and Schedule A Taxation, and as a result, we managed a quarter of a century of low and stable house prices. Scrapping those directly contributed to the return of the bubble/bust cycle from about 1970 onwards.
2) Yup. But that was because they were taxing incomes at punitive rates. So let's scrap income tax, VAT, corporation tax etc. and have Land Value Tax instead; higher earners (relative to the value of land and buildings they own/occupy) will end up better off. The UK would become a magnet for inward investment and most importantly - you can't take land abroad.
3) Yup. See point (1).
4) Yup. Socialism - whereby the productive economy is milked by the senior echelons of The Party - clearly doesn't work. But neither does Blue Socialism, whereby the productive economy is milked by the land owning classes. Most homeowners own very little land indeed and a lot of them have huge mortgage debts, which they have to repay out of income from which far too much tax has been deducted (so they are running up a down escalator). Yer average homeowner is being used as a human shield by the big guys: "Don't tax us or this puppy will die!".
He May be Right
1 hour ago
16 comments:
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
If we ever perfect DNA technology the first thing we ought to do is bring back Churchill.
@I3th Sp
You are rather ignoring the fact that WSC was one of the biggest land taxers of all time.
LVT proponents routinely lift from his speeches: his phrase "The Poor Widow Bogey"is frequently used by MW to describe the "What about the poor old widow living in the big house"argument which LVT deniers resort to even now though Churchill crushed it with sarcasm in 1909.
It does seem to me that the economy is being sculpted by the state to maximise the ability to rent-seek.
The poor widow living in a big house is an argument FOR the LVT.
It's a sign the tax system has forced her to protect her wealth in an asset that's the wrong size for what she wants (and thus as Land Ownership is zero-sum) make others have something too small), and not invest in wealth generation.
I must admit that I did not know this about WSC (having read two biographies on this is rather embarrassing). But I am convinced his virtues wholesomely outshine this socialist slip of his.
LVT is and remains wrong in my opinion.
DBC, nice one.
AC1, agreed.
13S, I am a free market economist, as were Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Henry George & Milton Friedman. Does it not puzzle you that they while they all favoured small government, they also all said that LVT was the 'least bad tax' and explained why?
Don't forget, Edmund Burke, often cited as the founder of modern conservative philosophy. Adam Smith said of him,
the only man I ever knew who thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do, without any previous communications having passed between us.
And Adam Smith thought LVT (or ground rent as he called it) the most sensible form of tax.
Karl Marx on the other hand hated land tax, criticising it on more than one occasion.
13th Spitfire should look in the and ask himself, "If I think Karl Marx was right and that Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and Winston Churchill were wrong am I really a conservative? Or a Marxist?"
ACO,
The real problem was that Labour could see that rising house prices was keeping them looking rosie, that they could appear as a party of wealth creation, despite the fact that it was really just a housing bubble, debt and PFI scams.
@JT
Right.The anti-Homeownerist argument is based on the presumption that all the major political parties are at it:guaranteeing above inflation house-price rises rather than well-paid jobs.All the Labour Party can say is:they (the Conservatives) started it.As a Leftie, I know quite a few Trots (70's vintage) who are very far from happy with the idea of house prices NOT being a source of unearned capital gains.
Derek, did EB actually ever suggest LVT?
JT, that's 13 years of NuLab in a nutshell. Plus a couple of wars.
DBC, as somebody once said, a Communist is somebody who owns more than one house.
I haven't found any evidence that he suggested it yet but I'm still looking because Adam Smith's comment makes me suspect that he had definite physiocratic tendencies.
D, it would be cool if he had!
Ah, the reason he didn't suggest it is that it was already in place in the England of the late 18th century. See Norfolk Land & Property . However he did defend it in passing in Reflections on the French Revolution where he said:
It is certainly not prudent to discredit the authority of an example we mean to follow. But allowing this, we are led to a very natural question;—What is that cause of liberty, and what are those exertions in its favour, to which the example of France is so singularly auspicious? Is our monarchy to be annihilated, with all the laws, all the tribunals, and all the ancient corporations of the kingdom? Is every land-mark of the country to be done away in favour of a geometrical and arithmetical constitution? Is the House of Lords to be voted useless? Is episcopacy to be abolished? Are the church lands to be sold to Jews and jobbers; or given to bribe new-invented municipal republics into a participation in sacrilege? Are all the taxes to be voted grievances, and the revenue reduced to a patriotic contribution, or patriotic presents? Are silver shoe-buckles to be substituted in the place of the land tax and the malt tax, for the support of the naval strength of this kingdom?
Nowadays silver shoe buckles (aka VAT) have indeed been substituted for land tax. It's a funny old world.
Derek, you are a star. You can also add JS Mill to the long list of 'right wing and libertarian icons who supported LVT'.
Also don't forget that Burke's great intellectual rival Thomas Paine was also a big LVT (and CI) supporter.
M, yup, he was already on the list. But if you stumble across any more, let me know.
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