Comment - Land Value Tax Campaign

LibDems “mansion tax” folly or what?

Written on 22 September 2009. Posted in Taxation.

Our first reaction to the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable’s proposal for a “Mansion Tax” worth over £1 million, was that he had severely damaged his credibility and upset his party colleagues. He had claimed that the money could be used to raise the income tax threshold to £10,000. The proposal had been savaged within hours of its announcement, though some journalists...

Brixton Pound Launched

Written on 21 September 2009. Posted in Taxation.

The Brixton pound was launched last week at an event at Lambeth Town Hall in South London. Local currency initiatives are popping up all over Britain. Totnes and Lewes, Sussex are the oft-quoted examples of local “pounds” already in circulation; and this week Brixton became the first urban community to launch its own currency. What are we to make of this phenomenon?

Caritas in Veritate

Written on 20 September 2009. Posted in Religion.

During the summer, Pope Benedict XVI issued a new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, the latest in a series that commenced with Rerum Novarum, promulgated by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. Collectively, these are referred to as the Social Teaching documents. What are we to make of this new one?

The Tax Wedge

Written on 18 September 2009. Posted in Taxation.

Our resident accountant has just been analysing the effect of the current tax rates. Their most significant impact is of course at the margin. An unemployed single person receives about £200 a week in Jobseekers’ Allowance, housing benefit, &c. Of that, about £20 a week is paid back to the government in tax, a nice example of churning, so the real purchasing power of the £200 is £180....

Wonderful investment opportunities available now

Written on 13 September 2009. Posted in Public Transport.

Great investment opportunities exist even in the present gloomy economic climate. Railway electrification leads to land value growth and a new programme was announced during the summer. We have been looking at the proposals and identified the likely property hotspots.

We need inflation

Written on 11 September 2009. Posted in Tax Justice Network.

So some economists would have us believe. Richard Murphy, who runs the Tax Research web site and was interviewed on the radio earlier this week, is all in favour of it. A self-proclaimed Keynsian, he argues that the economy will grind to a standstill if prices are falling. This makes no sense.

Vad är markvärdesavgift?

Written on 8 September 2009. Posted in Non-English.

Markvärdesavgift är en lösning för att tillföra staten intäkter som innebär att en årlig avgift tas ut på markens nyttjandevärde. Markvärdesavgiften skulle på sikt ersätta de skatter och avgifter som tas ut i dag. Detta enkla finansiella instrument kan bidra till att motverka flera grundläggande ekonomiska och sociala missförhållanden.

Marx’s theory on labour still has capital

Written on 8 September 2009. Posted in Marxism.

Edmund Conway, economics editor of The Daily Telegraph, looks at Karl Marx and Communism, in an extract from his new book – “50 Economic Ideas You Really Need To Know”. “At the heart of Marx’s theories was the labour theory of value. This idea, laid out in Das Kapital (1867), states that a commodity is worth the amount of time it takes for someone to make it. So, for...

GDP revisited

Written on 3 September 2009. Posted in Economics.

A few months ago, we published a piece questioning the value of the Gross Domestic Product as an index of well-being, and noted the harm done when GDP growth became an objective of government policy. Our scepticism about the value of the GDP figure is widely shared.

What case for new high speed railways?

Written on 2 September 2009. Posted in Public Transport.

Network Rail has now published its Strategic Business Case for New Lines. The product of a study by transport consultants Steer Davies Gleave, it concludes that a new core line from London to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow would cost £34 billion to build and, over a 60 year period, generate £23 billion of additional revenue and a further £34 billion in additional benefits....

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