Thursday, 29 November 2012

Vote early, vote often, vote YPP

If you live in Croydon North, that is.

I'm afraid we don't have a candidates in the by-elections in Middlesbrough and Rotherham.

My latest blogpost: Vote early, vote often, vote YPPTweet this! Posted by Mark Wadsworth at 07:45

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3 comments:

James James said...

Hi Mark,

Off topic: what do you think of the following two arguments against LVT:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/02/problems_with_h.html
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/02/a_search-theore.html
?

Henderson describes them as similar but I think they're separate arguments.

Thanks,

29 November 2012 at 15:12
Mark Wadsworth said...

JJ, the arguments are the usual complete and utter bollocks which totally ignore reality.

Fact: maybe Disney doesn't pay much land tax in Florida, but so what if the location value is partly self-generated? Surely it is better to tax that small element which relates to rental value of their site and to untax the large portion which relates to running costs, salaries, services provided etc.

Of course Disney would have made the f-ing investment, broadly speaking, the tax payable by businesses will still go down by about 80% (instead of a 40% or 50% tax on total earnings of $100, there would be a near-100% tax on that small part $10 of their earnings which relates to the rental value of the site).

Fact: the rental value of an oil well is the net rental value AFTER the normal costs of extraction and a reasonable profit margin for the extracting company/finance providers has been deducted.

There are plenty of countries which tax resource rents at close to 100% (the UK and Norway do), and oil companies are happy to pay for them, in the same way as they are happy to pay full value for the stationery they use or full value for the equipment they buy.

For example, Brown told the phone companies to bid for the 3G licences and the companies duly bid up to market price and paid it.

29 November 2012 at 15:30
Mark Wadsworth said...

JJ, I did a proper answer to the first one today KLN #285.

Richard Allan submitted the second one ages ago and I covered it in KLN #194.

1 December 2012 at 17:20

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