From the BBC:
The SNP has announced that it plans to extend the freeze on council tax beyond the next election. Deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon told... delegates in Perth the policy would set the SNP apart from Labour, who argue the freeze is no longer affordable...
The SNP has funded a council tax freeze each year since entering government and, in an appeal to voters on a new policy debate website, the party wants to continue discussion on the issue. The Nationalists say they will protect family budgets, while Labour would put up the tax.
Correction: the SNP has funded nothing. They have merely shuffled taxpayers' money from one pile to another.
The Scottish Government also has the power to increase or reduce basic rate income tax by three per cent. They clearly haven't reduced it, so they could equally be accused of levying income tax that is three per cent higher than necessary. Does that not hurt 'family budgets' and damage their economy at the same time?
--------------------------------------
Even more galling was this in The Daily Mail. It is a pile of self-contradictory drivel which I can't even begin to fisk, so I'll just cut and paste two of the top-rated comments:
1. "Most of us can understand good old bricks and mortar, which over the years have offered consistent capital growth."
The sheer economic illiteracy of this comment is astounding. It is not the bricks & mortar which offers capital growth, it is the underlying value of the land which increase over time due to the activities of the entire population, the gain on which is then enjoyed by a single person/family. Land speculation & "house price" bubbles are bad for the economy, whilst making a select few richer, as a nation we are made poorer as a result.
Wages need to rise faster than "property" prices (actually land values) in order to correct the damage done to the economy by successive governments made up of the very same select few who become richer at the expense of the nation. Scott Wright, Sheffield, UK.
2. "People with homes have shelter, full stop. The hysteria of the mortgage lenders and banks, led to the unsustainable ramp-up in land values & presented people with a chimera: If you pay us huge amounts of interest, we'll perhaps let you "buy" a home, which doesn't belong to you in the first place; it belongs to the banks, until that faraway day when the mortgage - a French word involving "death" is retired.
The home owner has privilege of living there by the mortgage lenders. Mr. Glover's obeisance to a 90s boom is as much illusion as the South Sea bubble.
Real wealth is NOT created by your home; never has.. Real wealth is created by slashing taxes on peoples work and returns on investment. Real wealth is created by working hard and not letting the Dukes of Westminsters of the world pocket the gains in property values created by the hard work of real people.
As wages rise, why on earth should the benefit go to banks? Let the creative economy bloom by untaxing that. Joshua Vincent, Philadelphia, PA.
NB, Scott & Joshua are moderate and enthusiatic LVT-supporters respectively, who both occasionally comment in this blog.
Y'see, that's another selling point of replacing all taxes with LVT and dishing most of it out as a Citizen's Income: there would be no need to scramble to buy a house to 'share in Britain's rising prosperity' as we would all effectively be landlords anyway (via the Citizen's Income), so we could and would devote our energies to creating more wealth and creating a bigger cake, rather than trying to grab the biggest slice of an ever smaller cake.
It's then up to each individual to decide how much LVT he wants to or can afford to pay by choosing to consume more or less land value. That is a purely personal/family decision and has nothing to do with wealth creation or indeed wealth destruction.
--------------------------------------
PS, my personal favourite bit of DoubleThink from the article is this:
Nor is it the fault of home-owners that the last Government failed to build enough new houses. Whereas in the Sixties hundreds of thousands of houses were built every year — the annual peak being some 385,000 — only 142,000 houses were built last year, the smallest number during any peacetime period since 1923.
'nuff said.
Starmer’s headlong rush
1 hour ago
7 comments:
MW
It is, by the way, the Scottish Executive. Wee Eck might call his collection of parasites - and distributors of English largesse - a "government" but, in reality, they are a creature of a statute which refers to it as an "executive"
U, I wasn't sure about that but they call themselves Scottish Government which was good enough for me.
The Scott Wright who writes the first blast about land values above appears to be a UKIP member; Josh Vincent, who writes the second, is an American Georgist of note, who in his youth played covers of The Jam in a group
called the Lumpen Proles.So he is more simpatico,The Jam getting a poor reception in the U.S.generally ,but Scott Wright's is the better letter.
MW
Cameron calls himself a "Conservative" but that's no reason to indulge his illusions.
DBC, they both say much the same thing but SW's is definitely punchier.
U, perhaps Cameron is a true Conservative and 'Conservative' means something different to what we always thought it meant.
Wow, i'm surprised it was rated so highly on a daily mail story. Perhaps people are actually starting to realise that "the bank of mum & dad" being the only way to afford a deposit is a bad thing.
@ DBC Reed: I am indeed a member of UKIP, who else is there really if one actually cares about the country in which they live?
SW, they always link to these DM articles at HPC, and they tend to vote en masse, but well done anyway. Agreed on UKIP.
Post a Comment