Nearly every country in the world is affected by poverty and unemployment; widening divisions between rich and poor; boom-slump cycles; housing shortages; inadequate infrastructure; and damage to the environment. These economic ills persist, seemingly intractably, despite unprecedented developments in science and technology.
All these problems are all ultimately related to the different economic behaviour of 'land' in contrast to man-made consumer and capital goods. Cars or computers or cabbages can be produced in response to demand and are transportable.
But no more land can be produced: each plot of land is unique and immovable, and its total supply is fixed. Consequently, the market in Land behaves differently from the market in products. Land value comes from the natural and man-made advantages of location, which derive from the presence and activities of the community as a whole.
One conclusion that follows is that the value of Land, its rent, is peculiarly suitable as an object of taxation. If the right system of Land Value Taxation is put in place - an annual tax on land values assuming that each site was in its optimum permitted use - most of the problems mentioned in the first paragraph are mitigated or vanish completely.
The Land Value Taxation Campaign is a non-party/all-party body which works to raise awareness of this policy.
