About LVT - Land Value Tax Campaign

A Land Value Tax for England

Written on 11 March 2013. Posted in Valuations.

Rights campaigner Andy Wightman has written A Land Value Tax for England, which presents the case concisely. My only criticism is that he refers to “annual rental values” and then talks about an initial rate of around 2%, which is presumably 2% of the selling price, and therefore about 30% of rental value. Apart from the need to go over these figures, this can be recommended. It is not...

It’s my land – I paid for it

Written on 18 February 2013. Posted in What is land?.

Not so. The value of your land arises because the state protects land titles by the rule of law the state defends the realm a state of civil order exists in which the community respects property rights and the taxpayer pays for the construction and maintenance of infrastructure which keeps your land in a usable condition. Since much of this infrastructure is out of sight and out of mind, it is...

All land value must be constantly sustained

Written on 6 February 2013. Posted in What is land?.

EAST COAST FLOODS 60TH ANNIVERSARY Older people will remember the East Coast floods which occurred at the end of January 1953, devastating coastal areas all the way from Lincolnshire to Kent, as well as parts of the Netherlands and Belgium. The upper picture shows the centre of Felixtowe, Suffolk. The cause was a combination of high spring tides and a storm, resulting in a surge tide in the North...

Why LVT cannot be a local tax

Written on 3 February 2013. Posted in Reducing inequality.

A new report on trends in house prices in Britain has just been released by Savilles. According to its annual “Valuing Britain” analysis, “The total value of the UK’s housing stock has risen slightly to £5 trillion over the past year, but housing wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated in London and the South East.” “Ten years ago the UK’s housing...

Article by George Monbiot

Written on 22 January 2013. Posted in Natural justice.

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.

The Rise of the freeloaders

Written on 6 December 2012. Posted in Natural justice.

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...

Root cause of unemployment revealed

Written on 4 November 2012. Posted in Efficiency.

If people hold any theory at all about the cause of unemployment, it is usually based on the explanation put forward by Keynes in the 1930s, that the underlying cause is lack of aggregate demand. Most of those who refuse to buy that idea come up with other theories: workers have priced themselves out of jobs, technology has abolished the work or that the Chinese are undercutting everyone else. As...

The Google Red Herring

Written on 26 June 2012. Posted in What is land?.

Google makes a lot of money. The company is often cited by those who purport to be fighting against injustice in taxation, as an example of an outfit that would get off scot-free by relocating its head office to some remote place – such as an island off the coast of Greenland. The so-called Tax Justice Network (TJN) likes to wheel out this argument as a reason why LVT is not the way forward...

Many Happy Returns

Written on 17 April 2012. Posted in Reducing damaging taxes.

It’s that time of the year when they drop through the letter box. Welcome to the World, planet earth. When you joined the society of mankind you were entitled to the use of the four elements freely and generously provided by nature – air water, sunshine and land.

The idea of property

Written on 19 March 2012. Posted in What is land?.

A Paper given to the Henry George Foundation March 2012 In Chapter VI of The Science of Political Economy, entitled ‘Cause of Confusion as to Property’, Henry George asks why John Stuart Mill was so confused about the basis of property. He replies that: “It is evidently the same thing that has prevented all the scholastic economists, both those who preceded and those who have succeeded...

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