Not all people who support land value tax (LVT) also support the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI); and most people who support UBI don’t also support LVT (if they’ve even considered it). Nonetheless, it seems to me (Mark Wadsworth) personally that LVT and UBI share the same basic principles.   1. The philosophical level Putting practicalities to one side, the basic assumptions...

“Multi-million pound corporations with complex structures have purchased the very ground we walk on

A correspondent sent me this yesterday, apropos the Panama “revelations” “I paid £200k for my house in 99. Now its worth £600 big ones. How much work did I do? None. How much tax did I pay? None. How much benefit did I receive? Rather a lot – All the increase in price plus improved location value. Now, multiply that by 23 million home owners and you have a nation of benefit...

An article in today’s Observer reports how quite ordinary Victorian houses in Albion Drive, Hackney (on the west side of London Fields), have continued to shoot up in value even during the recession and are now selling for the best part of a million pounds.

Imagine a feudal country where 432 families own half the land. Welcome to Scotland. This article in the Independent is about the resistance of the lairds to the proposal to break up the big estates and distribute land to small owner-occupying farmers. It is a proposal which would do nothing to address the real problem which is the private appropriation of the rent of land. Nor does it address the...

George Monbiot writes in the Guardian in support of Land Value Taxation and Basic Income.

Article in the Guardian in support of LVT by George Monbiot. Most of the comments are in support. The arguments against are scraping the barrel, so join in the fun everybody. Somewhere in there could be the prizewinner for the stupidest objection ever.

As we have pointed out many times before, the richest British-born individuals are members of the half-dozen or so aristocratic families who still own the most valuable areas of Central London. In dynamic economies, the greatest wealth is held by entrepreneurs and innovators such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates. In the British economy, a propertied ruling class sustains its wealth by playing the...

ALL land value is caused by the presence and activities of the community. ALL land value belongs to the community since it is the community that sustains this value. This is a vital point. The sustaining of land value is an continuing process. LAND PRICE is the capitalisation of the rental income flow in the expectation that the community will continue to sustain it. The uncertainties involved...

The Single Tax is not a tax. It is the collection of the rental value of land and its use as public revenue. Were this to be done there would be no need of taxes.