Exchange on Twitter with CityUnslicker, who has apparently left the real world far behind to a parallel universe where democracy has been suspended and you are not allowed to draw analogies from what actually happens in the here and now:
MW: Seeing as govt spending goes largely into higher rental value of land, fairest kind of tax is a service charge based on rental values aka land value tax. The more taxes it replaces, the better.SDLT, council tax and business rates should be first to go.
CU: You can kiss goodbye to the high street then even more so than now with that policy.
MW: What's morally or economically wrong with paying rent? Why should public services be paid for by group A (workers and businesses) for the benefit of group B (landowners and banks)? That's Communism under a different name.
CU: The state owning all the land and the [sic] deciding who can rent it off them and what price IS communism.
MW: Lying again! Here's the actual system: Landowners continue to own land. Market in land continues between private buyers and sellers. Buyers and sellers agree prices, landlords and tenants agree rental values. Govt levies a service charge on value of services provided.
CU: I [sic] your logic is faulty. If a renter can't pay the government will foreclaose. If the government raises the tax high then it will acquire more land. The logical procession [sic] of LVT is to enact communism. There won't be a free market in land when the got has acquired all the land!
MW: yes, govt will foreclose, sell land and buildings to another private buyer, retain the arrears and pass the balance to the previous owner.
That's why collection rates for business rates (quasi-LVT) are the highest of all taxes for the least faff on either side. The simple threat that the govt *could* do this means that 96% of payers pay in full on time.
So your claim is as fatuous as me saying "if a borrower can't pay the mortgage, the bank will foreclose. If the banks increase interest rates, then they acquire more land. The logical progression of banking is to enact bank control over the whole economy". That's never happened.
A grim document
10 hours ago
3 comments:
"The logical progression of banking is to enact bank control over the whole economy"
And you don't think that has happened already?
The history of the 20th century (and continuing today) is that when you give the State power over something at some point they will abuse that power. Sometimes immediately, sometimes after a period of time, but abuse always follows, often of an extreme nature. Private ownership of land that the State cannot remove is a huge bulwark against tyranny - remove it at your peril.
S, sorry, I am still reeling from the stupidity of that comment. I might dismantle it in a post later. Jeez.
Also Mark. This bit:
'CU: I [sic] your logic is faulty. If a renter can't pay the government will foreclose. If the government raises the tax high then it will acquire more land. The logical procession [sic] of LVT is to enact communism.'
This is pure sophistry in my view. MW argues correctly, 'Buyers and sellers' and'landlords and tenants'. Sobers adds a new third term above -'renter'. But he means by his 'renter' - 'landlords'. It is a psychological slip by Sobers not a logical correction of MW at all. Sobers sees the landlord masters being reduced from their special social status to being merely 'tenants' of govenment. This fear is very old.
Sobers always makes me think of J R Mcculloch 1789-1864, who on LVT said to Mill senior and junior, 'We may regret perhaps that this tax was not more equally distributed and its limits somewhat extended at the Revolution.... But it cannot now be interfered with.' When you Wiki this rentier consider if his 'scientific' economic understanding of Ricardo was not also shaped by being the eldest son of the Laird of Auchengool! Wiki Ed anyone?
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