Current affairs - Land Value Tax Campaign

Clear as mud – Charlotte-Ann Schreiber

Written on 14 February 2013. Posted in Banking.

Charlotte-Ann Schreiber interviews Sir Mervyn King…Following the latest Bank of England’s Quarterly Inflation Report we sent our resident economist Charlotte-Anne Schreiber to interview the Governor, Sir Mervyn King, to find out if she could get a simple explanation to some aspects of his statement. “Sir Mervyn, I gather you’ve seen it. This must be a wonderful moment for...

Helicopter money and the supply-side blockage

Written on 9 February 2013. Posted in Economics.

The camera retailing chain Jessops is one of a list of big name retailers which has closed in recent months. 187 stores have shut, with over 1300 people losing their jobs. What is left of the company will now become a mail order firm operating from a warehouse in Leicester, which takes the company back to its starting point. Jessops big expansion took place in the 1970s and it is, like many other...

Could the UK economy implode?

Written on 6 February 2013. Posted in Economics.

Several times a week I receive emails with scare stories about the imminent collapse of the UK economy. Most of them come from outfits trying to sell subscriptions to expensive investment advice magazines so they need to be taken with a pinch of salt. But some regular journalists are asking the same question, as here. All of these gloom-and-doom forecasts draw attention to the same fundamental...

The two Ronniseals

Written on 12 January 2013. Posted in Politics.

The two Ronnies were hilarious. The two Ronniseals are a dreadful pair. Following their mid-term ‘spectacular’, the Downing Street joke book has been binned and a new version commissioned. David Cameron began the show quoting the advertising slogan “it does exactly what it says on the tin.” But when he held the tin up to the cameras, all that could be seen were the dabs...

Banking the rotten heart of capitalism?

Written on 23 December 2012. Posted in Banking.

Will Hutton writes in the Observer about banking scandals as lying at the rotten heart of capitalism. That was two years ago but other commentators keep on saying much the same thing. We disagree. The rotten heart of capitalism is the private appropriation of the rent of land, something which Hutton and most other commentators never talk about. Without it, the banking scandals could not happen. The...

The free market fallacy

Written on 22 December 2012. Posted in Economics.

I came across this the other day.“It is really very simple. Capital can be allocated by markets or by central planning committees. Despite the booms and busts, markets do it better. It may be that that the booms and busts are just inevitable.” Why is there a refusal to recognise that there is more to it than this?

More welfare for landowners

Written on 10 December 2012. Posted in Taxation.

A nice little welfare handout for landowners was slipped almost unnoticed into the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement last week. New developments will be exempt from empty property rates from next October: all newly built commercial property completed between 1 October 2013 and 30 September 2016 will be exempt from empty property rates for the first 18 months. This is described as “a victory...

Economic Cycles are Land Cycles

Written on 10 December 2012. Posted in Banking.

An introductory slide show by Jacob Shwartz-Lucas explaining land’s role in the business cycle. Also available in Swedish by Jonas Lagander

Denmark’s Justice Party re-launched

Written on 6 December 2012. Posted in Politics.

The Justice Party has been re-launched in Denmark. The party’s policies are uncompromisingly Georgist. Britain’s electoral system means that such a party would get nowhere in Britain. The only value in fighting elections would be to get publicity. However, given the recent experience of elections where the candidates have declared their support for LVT, the publicity that can be gained...

Amazon’s Corporation Tax avoidance

Written on 3 December 2012. Posted in Taxation.

Labour MP Jackie Ashley, writing in the Guardian today, complains about the tax avoidance antics of firms like Amazon. SOMETHING MUST BE DONE, she says. That something appears to be getting the tax authorities to act in a more aggressive way. But since this tax avoidance is legal, there is nothing that HMRC can do about it under present legislation – which Labour had thirteen years to do...

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