Jock's Place - No "LVT bug" I! - Comments

It certainly was not my

Tristan Mills — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:17:29 +0000

It certainly was not my intention to make you sound like a fanatic.

I doubt I'd say it now, after reading your blog for longer as well, perhaps it was an undeserved impression I got from a few posts.

You are however the reason I've starting looking around at LVT and Georgism a bit more (perhaps that's why I associate it with you so much).

To be fair...

Jock — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 21:37:14 +0000

...I don't think that was Tristan's intent, or what it sounded like. And he is actively engaged with the "Liberal Economic Traditiona" of course. But yes, less thoughtful critics do level such accusations and it is most annoying!

Fanaticism

James Graham — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 19:32:50 +0000

It does annoy me that this criticism is so often levelled at LVT supporters. Indeed, as a supporter of several unpopular causes, I can testify that the standard criticism of all of them is, when you've essentially won the argument, is to say "yes, but you make it out to be a panacea". Of course, logically it is impossible to support more than one panacea, so I must be blameless on that score! :)
But when it comes to blind fanaticism, it is the income taxers in the Lib Dems that are the most strident. Ask a supporter of LVT why they support it and they'll trot out a dozen reasons or more. Ask a supporter of LIT why they support it and they start whining "but it's not fair..."
So long as we're clear about why we support what we support, and they aren't, then I won't lose too much sleep over it.

Oh don't get me wrong - I'm

Jock — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:17:25 +0000

Oh don't get me wrong - I'm the most hard-core Georgist I know! But I was responding to the suggestion by Tristan that I was some kind of "one trick pony" on LVT when in fact I just feel it is the most important and most practical of the solutions to any of the "four great monopolies".

Other unorthodox economists, especially in my experience Social Credit advocates (though I would count myself as one of them too), feel that various of these "solutions" are mutually exclusive, and in particular that Georgists are incompatible with many forms of monetary reform. I maintain that there is room for both in a balanced system that attempts to break these big monopolies.

An LVT-bug, I am

Mark Wadsworth — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:12:24 +0000

LVT is by a million miles the least-worst kind of tax, and does lead to all sorts of positive outcomes. No harm in telling people about them, but it's best to focus on one or two.

My favourite at the moment is to point out to these people who are wailing about Northern Rock and gloom in housing market that this is all a bubble - a credit bubble and a land price bubble. If we'd introduced LVT at the bottom of the cycle in 1994 or 1995, when most residential land was nigh worthless, we wouldn't be where we are now. And so on.

No "LVT bug" I!

Jock — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 11:48:36 +0000

I caught in my logs the other day someone visiting my blog from Tristan's piece way back in October about his "Essential reads". He was very flattering about my blog, but I do remember now reading it first time and wanting to defend myself against his suggestion that I was possibly the "LibDem version of a gold bug, seeing LVT as a solution to many problems as a gold bug sees a gold standard".

I admit, occasionally (well maybe more than occasionally for some) LVT seems like a religious belief, and as such one can be very zealous about it and make claims that others feel unwarranted. I know that a much more vocal LVT campaigner (yes, there are some!), Labour Land Campaign's Dave Wetzel, managed to put off a member of their NEC who works in my office because she could not believe that something for which so many beneficial claims were made had not been properly tried before now. And it is also true that for many years, the Lib Dem's own campaign group on such subjects, ALTER (Action for Land Taxation and Economic Reform), of which I am secretary, has focussed more or less exclusively on LVT to the exclusion of other "Economic Reforms" - indeed it has been suggested that "Economic Reform" was only included in the name to make a better acronym!