Comment - Land Value Tax Campaign

Piketty has got it wrong

Written on 22 April 2014. Posted in Economics.

“Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by the French economist Thomas Piketty, is now coming to wider public attention following its publication last year. According to Wikipedia, “The central thesis of the book is that inequality is not an accident, but rather a feature of capitalism and that these excesses of capitalism can only be reversed through state intervention. The book...

Mansion Tax misnomer

Written on 16 April 2014. Posted in Taxation.

“Mansion Tax” is a misnomer, as it is just a tax on quite ordinary houses in London and the South East. A real mansion would be a seat like Hinderton Hal in Cheshire. Hinderton Hall in the photograph is a Great Western Railway locomotive, 5900 built in 1931. What is the connection? The Great Western’s Hall Class locomotives were named after posh country mansions. There were over...

Main line to Cornwall reopens – and free riders

Written on 7 April 2014. Posted in Public Transport.

The main railway line to Devon and Cornwall reopened on 4 April after a two month closure due to the sea wall being washed away at Dawlish. Between Dawlish and Teignmouth, the line runs on the sea wall, built by Brunel in the 1840s. It is an exposed stretch of coast and the route is vulnerable to damage by heavy seas. The speed of the repair was due to heroic efforts by Network Rail’s engineers,...

Practical Politics back

Written on 7 April 2014. Posted in General.

We are pleased to announce that Practical Politics is back in production and the latest issue, number 205, will be available on the website shortly. If you want your copy as soon as it is published, you can subscribe or become a member of the Campaign – use the “contact us” link.

A long sorry tale – UK economy since 1945

Written on 28 March 2014. Posted in Economics.

Article in FT by Samuel Brittan. A potted history that reflects no credit on the politicians involved, nor on the officials who advise them, nor on the academic world that propagates the theories on which their policies are founded and justified.

Complain about inherited wealth but don’t mention LVT

Written on 26 March 2014. Posted in Taxation.

More ass to kick, this time in the Guardian.

New link on our website menu

Written on 24 March 2014. Posted in Non-English.

If you look carefully at our top menu bar you will see that we now have a new link on our website menu – Landskatt. The reason for this is that a lot of land value tax discussion and activity is on social media such as Facebook, where the Campaign has its own group, I support the Campaign for Land Value Taxation. The Facebook group has attracted a growing number of members from Sweden, partly...

Dissecting the budget – off the point

Written on 20 March 2014. Posted in Taxation.

The budget will be discussed and dissected for the next couple of weeks, as usual. People are naturally concerned about how it will affect them. There will no doubt be unintended winners and losers in this annual game. But most of the discussion about the wider economic impact will be off the point, because it ignores the phenomenon of tax incidence: that the individual or body nominally responsible...

The need for large-scale landscape management

Written on 19 March 2014. Posted in General.

Climate change is a topic on which the Campaign does not take a view. We hold to our self-imposed terms of reference, on the basis that our supporters have differing views on just about everything apart from LVT. This is as it should be. This winter’s weather, however, raises the issue of large-scale landscape management. It may turn out to be a one-off event or part of a new pattern, but...

Yet another re-launch of HS2

Written on 17 March 2014. Posted in Public Transport.

Yet another re-launch of the project to built a high speed railway from London to the north. More land value created at the taxpayers’ expense but which will end up in private pockets. Read report here.

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