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Jock Coats — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 11:11:42 +0000

Well - it's here. I was waiting to see if we could have a mature discussion about it, but since not I decided to post them.

"The Cat" - are you "the Cat" as in "have you seen the cat yet"? Clearly Keith hasn't!"

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Gareth Doutch — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 12:32:38 +0000

I'd love to see it!

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Tristan — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 11:46:37 +0000

Best to ask permission, but I'd love to read his reply...

Good letter though :)

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The Cat — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 07:37:34 +0000

Go on, please print his reply - I'd love to see how he responded to your cracking letter

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Jock Coats — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 20:30:21 +0000

Now...shall I print his reply? It's quite funny really.

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Praguetory — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 20:22:48 +0000

Bingo!

That pesky "left wing tax"

Jock — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 12:42:00 +0000

I was pleasantly surprised today to see that on the southern regional slot on the Politics Show on BBC1 they had an article looking at how the Lib Dems would introduce Land Value Tax - portraying it indeed as a "silver bullet" (Paul, and the BBC, have a great deal more confidence than I have in this respect!). Cllr Paul Bizzell of Vale of White Horse, where they carried out a paper based exercise nearly two years ago now into how it would affect an area of about a ward to the west of Oxford city, was explaining it, and did quite a good job - as he should!

County Council leader, Conservative Keith Mitchell was the "anti-LVT" interviewee, castigating it as a "left wing tax" that is designed to blight our beautiful country and to redistribute wealth - something, he said, that "we are not all in agreement with". So I've fired off a nice letter to Kaiser Keith:

Keith,

Much as I respect your views I think you should perhaps investigate the history of Land Value Tax's supporters:

Adam Smith:

"Both ground-rents and the ordinary rent of land are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. Though a part of this revenue should be taken from him in order to defray the expenses of the state, no discouragement will thereby be given to any sort of industry. ...Ground-rents, and the ordinary rent of land, are therefore, perhaps, the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them.

"Ground rents seem in this respect a more proper subject of peculiar taxation than even the ordinary rent of land. ...Ground-rents, so far as they exceed the ordinary rent of land, are altogether owing to the good government of the sovereign. ...Nothing can be more reasonable than that a fund which owes its existence to the good government of the stae should be taxed peculiarly, or should contribute something more than the greater part of other funds towards the support of that government."

Milton Friedman:

"There's a sense in which all taxes are antagonistic to free enterprise -- and yet we need taxes. ...So the question is, which are the least bad taxes? In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago."

William F Buckley:

"It's mostly because I'm beaten down by my right-wing theorists and intellectual friends. They always find something wrong with the Single-Tax idea. What I'm talking about Mr. Lamb is Henry George who said there is infinite capacity to increase capital and to increase labor, but none to increase land, and since wealth is a function of how they play against each other, land should be thought of as common property. The effect of this would be that if you have a parking lot and the Empire State Building next to it, the tax on the parking lot should be the same as the tax on the Empire State Building, because you shouldn't encourage land speculation. Anyway I've run into tons of situations were I think the Single-Tax theory would be applicable. We should remember also this about Henry George, he was sort of co-opted by the socialists in the 20s and the 30s, but he was not one at all. Alfred J. Nock's book on him makes that plain. Plus, also, he believes in only that tax. He believes in zero income tax."

And not least that greatest son of Oxfordshire, Winston Churchill (albeit a Liberal at the time):

"I have made speeches by the yard on the subject of land value taxation, and you know what a supporter I am of that policy.

"It is quite true that the land monopoly is not the only monopoly which exists, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies -- it is a perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all forms of monopoly.

"Nothing is more amusing than to watch the efforts of our monopolist opponents to prove that other forms of property and increment are exactly the same, and are similar in all respects to the unearned increment in land."

Henry George was himself no socialist. Remember that the aim of us "single taxers" is to abolish all taxes on incomes, capital, profit that arise from human effort and hard work. It is unashamedly classically liberal and owes far more to the work of people whom the "right", and especially the libertarian right, would now look on as their predecessors than the "left" would - people like John Locke, David Ricardo, Malthus.

It is possibly a common fate of a good idea that it gets rubbished by all-comers who don't understand it. Georgists are castigated by the "right" as dangerous socialists, even communists, and by the left as loony neo-liberals. We must be doing something right!

It's worth noting that one of the biggest current proponents of LVT in print, Fred Harrison, has been published on it by the IEA, hardly some left-wing think tank. Though I suppose within your own party it is the looney left Bow Group who are promoting the idea, after a fashion.

Sincerely,

Jock

Jock's Place - That pesky "left wing tax" - Comments

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That pesky "left wing tax"