In response to an article on housing policy in the Observer, which needless to say did not mention LVT but came up with a list of tinkering measures ME: There is no solution to the housing problem without land value taxation – that is a prerequisite.Without LVT, all the measures listed in the article are just useless tinkering. With LVT, most of them would not be necessary REPLY FROM Lune13:...

From a discussion group… “Land isn’t a primary factor in a knowledge based, high technology economy. It’s a primary factor in an agricultural economy. You are a few hundred years behind the times.“ Why does this idea keep popping up?

A response on Richard Murphy’s Tax Research web site…

It is interesting how the arguments against LVT so often have to postulate impossible situations. Here is an example from the Guardian’s Comment is Free discussion group, as part of its present campaign against tax avoidance. The point put in favour of LVT was… “If taxation is tied to the holding of land titles, then it can not be avoided. Everyone uses land. Nor can land be hidden...

Land doesn’t matter any more, people often say. This is the sort of comment we often receive…Are you stuck in the 17th century or something? Land doesn’t mean an awful lot when food can be shipped in cheap from Africa and your entire business is an office.

The argument goes like this… Land does not determine production of non-organic goods. Since we discovered fossil fuels we have had a mineral energy source that can produce huge amounts of energy and does not have to be grown, like wood has to. With an unlimited supply of energy and materials (for the last two hundred years and maybe another 50) the West was able to industrialise, and land...

This recent comment in the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” section recently raises some Marxist objections which are answered below. Ricardo could only analy se capitalism in the limited context of bourgeois categories. He saw no fundamental contradictions within the capitalist system only competition between capitalists and workers and between workers themselves. He saw no need to...