James Wilson came up with an interesting angle over at Nourishing Obscurity:
In some American neighborhoods, those which are near to questionable areas, high taxes are seen by the property owners as a smart way of keeping the riff-raff out. Brookline, Massachusetts, which succeeded from Boston a century ago, is very affluent, very expensive, and heavily Jewish. Taxes are, by American standards at least, astounding.
They talk the relentless liberal line, of course, but have no blacks or other minorities in the town. Similar situations exist in San Francisco and other liberal enclaves. We too know how to talk out of both sides of our mouths at the same time. I don’t suppose anyone has noticed.
To which I responded:
James Wilson, that is surely A Good Thing, not A Bad Thing?
Gentrification or slumification are indeed self-enforcing (a sort of voluntary and spontaneous social engineering), and surely it’s good for social cohesion if a poor person can drive through a rich neighbourhood and think, “Hey, I’ll never be able to afford to live here, but at least these people are paying for my dole, school, health care and so on”; and if a rich person can say “Hey, my taxes may be eye watering, but at least I have world-class neighbours”?
We don't need no stinkin' objectivity
1 hour ago
8 comments:
I could well imagine that being able to pay a whacking great property tax would make some parts of London more 'exclusive' and just serve to attract wealthy Arabs and hedgies.
SL, and what's not to like about that? The tax they voluntarily pay would be = the income tax etc. that they can save by not living elsewhere.
So by magic, the UK would be diverting what are supposed to be income tax receipts by a foreign country into our own coffers. We, the people, would benefit from this, we can always build more houses a bit further out.
This already happens right now to a great extent. By definition, nice areas are inhabited by rich people, because the desirability of the location pushes up the rent/asking price.
The only way to stop that is to close the housing market and have government assign people their dwellings. The obvious consequence of which is no more nice areas!
Site Advantage always exists and there will always be people willing to pay to acquire it. The socialists mistake is to think that it can be eradicated. The capitalists mistake is to think that you can pay once and have it forever.
F, it's not the proper free-market liberal capitalists who say that, it's the Home-Owner-Ist Coalition.
We, the people, would benefit from this, we can always build more houses a bit further out.
While still not producing anything in the manufacturing area.
JH, with income tax and corporation tax abolished and loads of money flowing into the country, who's to say we can't do both? There's not much point doing one without the other, is there?
PS, the Greenies, the NIMBYs and the EU (and possibly the trade unions) are as much to blame for decline in manufacturing as the Home-Owner-Ist tax system is.
MW - what effect do you think LVT would have on offshore jurisdictions - that is: if LVT were introduced in England, what would be the effect on Jersey - or even Wales for that matter?
Anon, as I have explained at length using real life examples (see also my reply to SL above):
1. When the UK introduced the super tip-top rate of 50% income tax, high earners went off to Jersey, Switzerland etc, and estate agents in those countries noticed that hosue prices went up correspondingly.
2. Therefore rents and prices in J or CH go up if UK income tax rates go up (and vice versa).
3. Let's imagine we only had LVT and no income tax. That would make the UK the ultimate tax haven - foreigners would be happy to pay our LVT as long as it is less than the income tax they'd have to pay abroad (and it would be, by definition, or else they wouldn't move here). There's an analogy here with the £30,000 non-dom charge - very rich foreigners are happy to pay it :-)
4.We'd be pocketing not just the LVT you'd expect but an extra element to represent the difference between income tax in CH (about 40%) and income tax in the UK (nil% in this example).
5. And while money would flow INTO the UK, very little of it would flow OUT again, because other countries would charge income tax or corporation tax on it when repatriated. People would just invest their money here and keep reinvesting it.
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