Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac nationalised
Henry Law has made a comment about this on the LVTC blog.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac nationalised
It is curious how people with an absolute faith in the free market have suddenly turned into socialists now that things have turned nasty. But the market points to a reality – that US housing values (in reality, the price of the land that houses stand on), was just a bubble value. Either the price must adjust to reality or the currency must be debased to the point that inflation has the same...
Achieving political change
The difficulties of achieving profound political changes are discussed in a recent article by Johann Lindvall, Samuel Finer Post-Doctoral Fellow in Comparative Government at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Lincoln College. It is titled The Politics of Purpose.
There is good advice here. LVT advocacy needs to take account of the distinction...
House price fall accelerating
The Halifax Building Society reports that “house prices” were falling at the fastest rate since it started its monthly survey in 1983. This has been widely reported, for example in this Daily Telegraph article. Elsewhere, comparisons are now being made with the collapse in the 1930s. Of course, what is falling is what had been bubbling up until 2007 – land prices. But nobody seems...
Conservatives doomed without new ideas
Without new ideas, the Conservatives are doomed, says John Kampfner in the Daily Telegraph today. At the heart of the problem, he says, is that the centre-Left is running out of ideas. The policy wonks’ cupboard is bare. The underlying problem is that economic theory stopped developing in the 1880s, when it had reached the point where the privileges of powerful vested interests would have...
Interest rates to remain at 5% in classic stagflation trap
The Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee has decided to leave the interest rate at 5%, unchanged for the past five months. Is this the right figure? Some say it is too high and will make the forthcoming recession worse. Others say it is too high and will aggravate inflation. Both views are correct.
Scottish Local Income Tax announced
Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party has long advocated a Local Income Tax instead of the Council Tax and has now announced that it will be included in the next legislative programme. The belief is that it is based on “ability to pay”. That notion is a delusion (see below). It has been widely condemned, for example in this article which appeared in The Scotsman in September...
What should the government do about the economy?
What is the public’s level of understanding about economics? Following the Chancellor’s comments and predictions about the state of the British economy, a BBC discussion forum invited members of the public for their suggestions. There are over 100 pages to be viewed, but it is only necessary to scan through a few in order to get the flavours. They are worth looking at since they provide...
Factories demolished to avoid empty property rates
An article in The Independent reports that buildings are already been knocked down to avoid having to pay rates after the government abolished rates relief on vacant property.
Anyone familiar with the theory behind LVT could have warned the government that this would happen, but in any case, have they forgotten how the Window Tax led to bricked-up windows? However, given that this is being done...
UK joblessness set to rise for sixth month
An article in The Times today reports that “the deteriorating employment outlook is emphasised by a survey today from the Royal Bank of Scotland, which suggests that numbers in work fell in every region of the UK last month, and at the fastest rate since late 2001, as most parts of the country suffered a fall in economic activity. The steepest falls in employment levels were in Wales, the...