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Samizdata quote of the day – Why are we ruled by morons? Imagine having a tax even more stupid than the one generally agreed to be the most stupid ever?
Mansion tax inspectors will target homes with views of the countryside and driveways, The Telegraph can reveal.
The Government valuation agents will be sent out with a checklist of features supposed to signal an increase in a property’s estimated value.
They include whether the house is set in scenic surroundings, if it has a conservatory, and even the number of parking spaces and bathrooms.
It comes after The Telegraph revealed that HMRC agents will be able to demand entry to people’s properties to assess their value for the levy.
Sigh. So, the most stupid tax ever is generally agreed to be the Windows Tax. This led to people bricking up their windows in order to avoid the tax and therefore live in the dark just to middle-finger the revenue. Well, OK, giving the revenue the middle-finger is an honourable thing to do but still, forcing people to live in the dark and dank via your choice of taxation methods is generally agreed to be very stupid indeed.
– Tim Worstall
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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The obvious answer to the question people ask about their government, “How dumb do they think we are?” is to simply look at the people we elect.
This also raises the question- what is a good tax? Can anyone suggest a better system of funding governments?
Although it would be very disruptive if brought in ‘overnight’, and open up more evasion schemes, you could scrap all taxes except VAT. I’d guess that the VAT rate would be around 50% – very high but only charged on selected services and goods. And very much within the control of individual consumers.
Anther advantage would be that each political party could campaign on the basis of their achievements in power, or their manifestos, using a single taxation figure. No more stealth taxes, and much simplified administration. Governments would have to resist the bureaucrats carving out ‘exceptions’ or multiplying the number of VAT bands.
Too much transparency. It’ll never happen.
@Nicholas in addition to their direct costs, taxes often introduce something called “deadweight loss”,
which is costs that people suffer to avoid the taxes but raise no revenue. You want to minimize this, so
a tax on the unimproved value of property is worse than taxes improvements, arbitrarily taxing certain specific
improvements more than others are even worse.
One thing that some people are unaware of is that HMRC, the UK tax authority, can – if it has a court order – already search a home in cases of suspected criminal actions such as tax evasion. (Avoidance is not a crime, at least not yet.)
However, searching and surveying a property for the purposes of tax assessment is quite a new departure by the standards of recent decades. It is not clear if the valuables inside a property (paintings, jewellery, classic cars, etc) fall into the net. But at a very practical and human level, this is seriously intrusive, and bound to be resented.
Various problems arise:
What happens if the owner is on his or her own and some official turns up, claiming that they had an appointment? Older folk whose memory is not that great can be caught off-guard. (Several of my older relatives, etc.)
Criminals pretending to be from HMRC and who want to snoop and recon a place for burglaries. This is such an obvious threat, it seems almost embarrassing to point it out.
Values will inevitably be contested. Thanks to this and previous governments’ raises in the level of stamp duty taxes, property transactions have declined, reducing market liquidity and price discovery. HMRC folk will have to make a guess. And you can bet that this will lead to litigation. Tribunals will be flooded with cases. Cases will last months or more, and lawyers’ fees will mount, and the revenues will trickle in. It will be a farce.
I think a lot of this wealth tax stuff comes from a sort of “punishment politics” mindset. “People who live in big houses are lucky bastards and deserve to be made uncomfortable and if they have to sell stuff to pay for it, well too bad.” I have seen variations of this “argument” on social media. It is spiteful, nihilistic trash. But then a large chunk of the UK public are spiteful, nihilistic trash. This process is their chance to play “Joker” in a Batman movie.
The amount of revenue raised will fall short while the damage done and respect for the rule of law will further decline.
People will have no incentive to improve their homes’ values. Some places will go to seed. Inheritances will decline in value, which will reduce the yield from inheritance tax – a case of a foolish, expensive tax cancelling out some of the impact of another.
Mr Mamdani – the democratically elected Mayor of New York City, has already done this. Threatening letters and inspectors (really political activist thugs) sent to people in houses and apartments they have lived in all their lives – because the properties may (possibly) be over a certain value – he said he would only do this second homes, but he lied – the letters and activists are also harassing people with only one property (the property they live in).
The message is clear – get out of New York City whilst you still can. And Britain (as many people have pointed out) is much the same, in governance, as New York City or California – if you do not want endless regulations and endless taxation, this is not a good place for you.
Nicholas Gray – the key is to reduce Government Spending, not talk about doing so (as David Cameron and Gideon Osborne talked about it) – actually do it.
No system of taxation can work when government spending is this high.
For example, Florida (which has a higher population than New York State) has government spending which is only half the level of New York State – that, lower government spending, is why it can have lower taxes.
But in my lifetime only one Prime Minister has reduced government spending even as a share of the economy – Margaret Thatcher.
No other Prime Minister in the last 70 years has reduced government spending even as a share of the economy – only Margaret Thatcher, and only in the period when Nigel Lawson was Chancellor (NOT when the wildly over rated Geoffrey Howe was Chancellor).
I believe that Liz Truss and Kuasi Kwarteng also sincerely wanted a smaller government – and the level of smears directed at both of them was savage, the worst I have ever seen in British politics – even worse than how Margaret Thatcher was treated.
“Liz Truss crashed the economy” was and is a lie – but a lie that is endlessly repeated is believed by most people. As for Kuasi Kwarteng – suddenly it was fine, just fine, to be racist – when we are told endlessly that racism is bad, with him it was approved.
“Look how he fidgets, it is because he is Nigerian, someone like that should not be charge of the economy”.
Put a camera on someone long enough and they will fidget – whether their family are from Nigeria or from the Arctic Circle. He was subjected to extreme, and very crude, racist attacks – but it was considered O.K. because he was “right wing” and therefore anything done to him was supposedly O.K.
It could be worse – the Mexican Revolutionary Zapata (the sort of person the, utterly evil, degenerates who control Hollywood, and control the education system, pretend was a hero) murdered people for such “crimes” as owning a horse, or having stairs in their house.
This is not, yet, British government policy.
To answer the question of the post directly – no we are not ruled by morons, their I.Q. level tends to be high – not just the officials and “academic experts”, but the politicians as well – including Mr Burnham (he is not “a worker” he has never worked for a living – he went from Cambridge to political life).
They lack moral wisdom (a nice way of saying – they are evil), but they do NOT lack intelligence – they are NOT morons.
And this is not reason – for example Denis Healey was not stupid (far from it), but nor was he a “moderate” as the history books falsely claim.
The taxation policy of Mr Healey was designed (designed – it was not an accident) to do as much harm to the “capitalist” economy as he could get away with. For example, taxation on investment was over 90%.
The British establishment has been rotten for a very long time….
For example, Professor Eric Hobsbaum supported the murder of millions of people under various Marxist regimes – and he was made a “Companion of Honour” a very restricted order, given to only to the highest of the establishment elite.
Moderates do not say “tax the rich till the pips squeak” and moderates do not sing “The Red Flag” – the anthem of a movement responsible for over a 100 million deaths.
See “The Black Book of Communism” – and, for specific cases, the works of Robert Conquest on the Soviet Union and Frank Dikotter on the Marxist regime in China.
@Nicholas (Pro-Localism) Gray
This also raises the question- what is a good tax? Can anyone suggest a better system of funding governments?
This actually is the wrong question. The real question is why the hell does the government spend so much money? The United States federal government was funded entirely by excise taxes for about half its lifetime, but in 1913 the country passed the 16th amendment when it first started taxing individuals directly. And the funny thing is that as soon as you have the right to spend other people’s money you find a LOT to spend it on.
Were the federal government to run on half a trillion dollars the income tax and all these other taxes would be so small it would barely matter how it was levied and collected. You might think that is ridiculous, but remember that the vast majority of governing functions in the United States are supposed to be carried out by the state and local governments all of whom have their own taxing authority.
I don’t know I agree with the OP that the window tax was the stupidest tax, insane though it was, but I’d say the stupidest tax is inheritance tax, where the government has the audacity to tax you for dying. Besides being insanely ridiculous it puts a huge burden on a family who are going through some of the worst moments of their lives. It is a tax that doesn’t really raise all that much, but is designed with the goal of destroying generational wealth. The word I’d use to describe the inheritance tax is not so much “stupid” as “evil.”
Many government services could simply be charge as a fee, for example, toll roads on our interstate highway system or maybe just a flat fee depending on your mileage and type of vehicle. And our retirement tax system should never have started. The government took our retirement money in exchange for a promise to tax people in the future to fund our retirement. This could quite simply be done privately, even if there was an obligation to contribute, perhaps with a small tax or better voluntary contribution to provide for a fund for the truly destitute. About ten states in the United States do without any income tax, funding themselves mainly through sales taxes, property taxes and excise taxes. Those seem about the least intrusive taxes that a government could institute.
Just for fun I looked up the first federal budget of the United States. Excluding debt payments on the war it amounted to about $600,000, which, according to grok, is about $23 million in todays dollars. Just the congressional budget office alone, the people who plan the budget and print it, costs three times as much as that to run today.
It could be worse – the Mexican Revolutionary Zapata (the sort of person the, utterly evil, degenerates who control Hollywood, and control the education system, pretend was a hero) murdered people for such “crimes” as owning a horse, or having stairs in their house.
Absolutely not true. I’m no fan of Zapata, but this is purely a myth. Bad history, IOW.
I was puzzled by that budget listing everything as “goths”. Then I realised it was “90ths”. Even more puzzled: they were calculating every budget item to 1/90th of a dollar? And *NINETYTHS* of a dollar???? Why not cents, ie 100ths?
@jgh, always good to ask Grok. Here is what it said:
Why does the government spend so much? From an engineering perspective the answer is quite straightforward. Any system requires negative feedback to function stably. Without it, the system will runaway. So where is the negative feedback in the tax system? What prevents a rogue government simply taxing its host nation to a standstill? Of course there is no negative feedback and government will make sure this is the case as governments resent being constrained, even if it is for their own good. As I have commented previously, the demos should consist only of male taxpayers which would provide as least some constraint, otherwise I fear the west will tax and spend itself to death.
That would not prevent the government from taxing single women at a 99% rate.
And a very recent court case in Massachusetts provides a strong disincentive to marriage, at least in Massachusetts.
— But i agree on the principle of giving NET taxpayers more political power, but for this to be effective, i think that people who pay more taxation should have mre representation.
For instance, we could make voting power for the upper chamber proportional to the logarithm of NET tax paid.
Or maybe the lower chamber; but not both.
This new taxing activity has nothing to do with common-sense ways of raising revenue, because it’s not about revenue.
The Window Tax did raise some quick, short-term money, and made some sort of fiscal sense at the time. But the results can still be seen on many London streets, centuries later.
But this taxing process is not about that. It’s about punishing those who have nicer homes with pleasant locations and settings. The revenue it raises will be trivial compared to the cost and time expended in administering the tax – it may even be negative. But those imposing it don’t care about that at all, it’s not the point. They’re using the taxing process to make society be more “fair” and “equal”, plus, they get the added bonus of the votes of those who are motivated by envy and jealousy.
Manny Shinwell did not turn the parklands of Wentworth Woodhouse into an open-cast coal mine because the nation desperately needed coal – although it did. He did it to punish the ‘landed gentry’ that owned the house, ruin their property, and encourage Labour voters, all in service of his moral convictions of how the country “ought to be”.
Mayor Mamdani’s ‘pied-à-terre’ tax on second homes is not about raising revenue. He doesn’t think people should own more than one residence, and he’s using the power of taxation to persuade them to leave their second homes in New York. The tax will then fall to zero, but the housing market will be enlarged a little – for him, that’s a win, but the real goal is to drive out those people who his moral convictions tell him are doing ‘wrong’ things.
Once again, as I’ve rabbited on about here before – the tax is not about the tax. The tax is merely a tool to impose a set of political values. To those who impose these sorts of measures, the revenue, or lack of it, is immaterial – it’s the power to impose their worldview that matters, and even if it costs money and immiserates those who have done no identifiable wrong to anybody, to them, it’s worth it in the noble cause.
llater,
llamas
Llamas,
While I broadly agree with you, the 90% top rate tax that drove Britain’s entertainers to California produced a rounding error in tax receipts, that doesn’t explain the out of control borrowing. I would like to think male taxpayers would understand why that is a really bad idea.
Snorri,
Why would male taxpayers approve of single women being taxed at 99%? I certainly wouldn’t. I don’t object to women earning money, I object to men being displaced to make it easier for them to do so. My view, as expressed by the philosophers of old, is that government should treat all citizens perfectly equally, i.e. absolutely no preferential treatment for women (or minorities). Telling businesses to employ more women is exactly the same as telling them to employ fewer men, which is none of the government’s business and harmful to society as men spend their income on their families while women spend it on themselves. Families are a good thing and we want more of them.
RlJ:
Neither would i. But it seems that you are misunderstanding me.
I wrote:
Male taxpayers, even if given exclusive voting powers, would have no control over government between an election and the next.
And wrt government, i stand by Machiavelli’s greatest insight: one must presume that all men* are potential criminals. Hence, you cannot trust the bastards not to tax women at a 99% marginal rate, even if it is not in their long-term interest.
* Of course, Machiavelli never imagined that women could be in government: his insight should be rephrased accordingly.
ggeorge m weinberg:
Given the context, i assume that “worse” was actually meant to be “less bad”.
Yes Snorri I wrote the first pair first pair backwards. Henry George thought the only tax should be on unimproved property.
I wouldn’t go that far, but hw was at least thinking along sensible lines.
@Roué le Jour
Any system requires negative feedback to function stably. Without it, the system will runaway.
But there are negative feedback loops, we just have to recognize them. One is government corruption. When large corporations can “buy off” the government to prevent its most egregious mistakes. This is often in the form of “donations” to campaigns. A second form of feedback is “reality”. When the worst government tax policies destroy jobs and cause massive inflation voters don’t like that. As a general rule when the economy is bad the party in power gets kicked out, when it is going good they stay in power (of course the civil service stays in power come what may, and they are the real power behind everything.) And finally, at least in the USA, there is the constitution and the courts’ enforcement of it. There are probably others that I didn’t think of.
This is why I have said many times that corruption is a necessary part of democracy. When a democracy has unconstrained power to spend other people’s money, it isn’t long before they run out of other people’s money. A bit of corruption affords a modicum of constraint.
the demos should consist only of male taxpayers which would provide as least some constraint
I’m not sure why you think the male taxpayer is any more sensible than the female taxpayer. Your experience of men is perhaps rather different than mine. Perhaps they lean more conservative, but not by much. And exactly how much tax does one have to pay to qualify?
The answer is not this at all. The answer is a government tied down by the chains of the constitution to be constrained to a limited list of powers, and the rest of the necessary government power distributed to the states, where one has a competitive system where you can leave and go to a different state if you don’t like your current state government. This worked for the large majority of the life of the United States, despite the barbarians hammering at the walls. I’ll grant you that the walls have been breached, but the fact that it lasted this long is a testimony to its effectiveness.
As to what next, I think that is unknown at the moment. The world is changing dramatically and we will have to realign with that new world when it emerges. Those male tax payers who you so advocate for voted strongly for the MAGA movement and got a government that went hog wild in its spending including, incredibly, DOUBLING the military budget in two years. All our best efforts have come to naught and we must hope that Elon and the masters of AI and robotics will rescue us from our folly.
@llamas
This new taxing activity has nothing to do with common-sense ways of raising revenue, because it’s not about revenue.
I agree with you that it isn’t about revenue, but I don’t think it is really about hatred of the rich, from the politicians anyway, after all, most politicians are pretty wealthy.
What it amounts to, on the left, is that they have to promise to give the voters an abundance of bread and circuses and that shit is expensive. So they need an answer to the question “how are you going to pay for it.” And that answer has to be something that the voters align with. “Soak the rich” is a very popular idea because it plays into the feelings of self worth of voters who compare their lives to the lives of the rich and wonder how that could be, how it could be so inequitable. And the one place they apparently don’t want to recognize is that in a free country you are where you are largely because of your own decisions. For sure some people have to try harder than others, but ultimately almost anyone can rise to success and financial freedom if they make the right decisions. “Soak the rich” means “its not my fault”, it means “they won a rigged game”, it means “my position in life is not my own fault”. And people sure do like hearing that.
“Soak the rich” is this magical bottomless pot of money that can pay for anything without any consequences. I mean can’t Jeff Bezos make do with only one super yacht? It is promulgated to people who apparently don’t understand, and certainly don’t want the average voter to understand what “net worth” really means practically speaking.
“Soak the rich” is a vote winner, that is why politicians like it, it has the double whammy of “hate the other side” and “free stuff, and a pony for all”. And the civil service, who are the real power behind all of this, love it, because it means they get more staff, more power and more budget, which is how they measure success.
No doubt there are some in politics who are true revolutionaries trying to destroy the system from within. But for the most part, once they are fat and feted by the establishment they fall in line and are more concerned about keeping the money rolling in, and the power they wield firmly in their hands. The civil service have carefully designed it that way so that they can tame the worst of the radicals (one need only look at AOC who has gone from fire breathing radical to tame pussy cat.) So maintaining their power and lifestyle is the fundamental motivation behind the large majority who hold political power.
Voting provides the feedback.
But imagine a thermostat in your home that takes four years to register a dropping temperature before it turns on the heat. You’ll get darned cold waiting for help.
IrishOtter49
Then why did Mr Zapata murder these people – did he just murder people at random? Perhaps you are correct – but that does not make him a better person.
The “myth” is that Mr Zapata murdered people because they were rich – but if you are correct (and you may indeed be correct) that he just murdered people at random – that is also bad.
Hollywood also treats “Pancho Villa” as a hero figure – and he did not “just” murder Mexicans, he also murdered American citizens inside the United States. Even as a boy (many decades ago) the fact that Hollywood productions treated this person as a hero gave me an insight into the mentality of Hollywood, and of the left generally (for Hollywood and so on are just shadows cast by the education system – it is the “education”, indoctrination, system that is the true core of leftism in the United States and other Western nations). There can be no peace with these people – for they will not allow it, in the end it is kill-or-be-killed with leftists – for that is what they insist upon.
“Social Justice” is evil, utterly evil (it is the inversion of justice – and there can be no peace with the supporters of “Social Justice” for they will allow none), but at least it is a clear philosophy – a philosophy of robbing the rich and murdering them if they resist (or murdering them whether they resist or not), murder at random is not better.
Fraser Orr is correct – the key is Government Spending.
Most government spending goes on “Social Justice” i.e. benefits and public services – the military take a SMALLER share of government spending in the United States, and the United Kingdom (and all other Western nations) than it has ever been.
If you want to reduce taxation then you must reduce government spending on benefits and public services – and that is incredibly difficult.
Quite.
All compulsory taxes are bad, but Georgian taxes are, objectively, the “least bad”, for many reasons – they don’t introduce deadweight issues is a big one (there’s loads of other reasons, of course)
(One of the funnier things I’ve seen is someone trying to do a “counterpoint” by suggesting that “capital gains tax” was fairer, despite the incredibly obvious fact that it pushes the tax burden onto the buyer – because the seller raises the price to cover it – or decreases incentive to sell. Absolutely brilliant argument LMAO)
Paul Marks:
The Mexican Revolution was a notoriously savage affair . . . a series of interrelated wars in which generally no quarter was given and many atrocities were committed by all participants. Perhaps the only leaders with a modicum of decency were the Maduro brothers and Obregon. They were the best of a mostly bad lot. The U.S. actually supported Obregon and his army, allowing on one occasion his troop train to transit through U.S. territory in order to get around and into the rear of enemy forces. But I wouldn’t have wanted to be taken prisoner even by Obregon’s people, notwithstanding the discipline Obregon tried to enforce on them.
As to your question at to why Zapata murdered people: I don’t know, but I can guess. He was an Indian with the morality and ethics of the stone age culture with which his particular society was still largely imbued; and he acted accordingly toward the people he deemed his enemies. Not an excuse, just an explanation. And not a hoary myth like the ones that have him murdering people with stairs in their houses.
Anyway, I imagine that Zapata, in committing his murderous acts, was motivated by emotions and values (or lack thereof) akin to those that spurred British paras to gun down unarmed Irish civilians during the Bloody Sunday protests in Belfast.
IrishOtter49 – thank you for admitting that Mr Zapata murdered people, he claimed to be an enemy of “the rich” – but how is one to know who is rich?
That is where the “hoary myth” comes from – Mr Zapata had to work out who was “rich” somehow, how else would he know who to murder?
As for “Bloody Sunday”.
For many years Martin McGuiness (IRA Army Council and Sinn Finn)) claimed to have fired the first shot on “Bloody Sunday”.
Was he lying all those years? In which case he got a lot of free drinks with those lies.
By the way, when was the last time you were in Belfast Sir? On Londonderry?
Do you even know that the British Army was sent in to protect the Nationalists who were LOSING the war they-started with the Unionists.
If “British paras” (and so on) had not been sent to Northern Ireland – Martin McGuiness, Gerry Adams and the rest of I-Ran-Away would have been dead.
I-Ran-Away and the other Watermellons (Green on the outside, but Red on the inside – they never gave a damn about Ireland) started a war with the Unionists – and they were LOSING that war.
That is why the British Army was sent in – to protect those poor “unarmed” “Irish civilians” such as Martin McGuiness and Gerry Adams, who otherwise the Unionists would have killed. Unionists may be absolutely useless at politics (well YES – they are absolutely useless at politics, for example they say what they mean, and the mean what they say – and that is fatal in politics) – but they know how to fight, who do you think American “Red Necks” really are? Their forefathers were often Protestant Irish. And a wildly disproportionate number of American Medal of Honor winners come from this ethnic group.
Me? I would NOT have sent in the British Army, that should please lease you, as there would have been no “Bloody Sunday” – although that does leave Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday to teach “Sinn Fein” (the IRA) not to start a fight. And that lesson would not have involved any British soldiers at all – and would have been entirely the work of people whose have lived in the “island of Ireland” for hundreds of years (far longer than the United States has existed), indeed quite a few of them are “Os” – for there are Protestant O’Neils as well as Catholic ones – and-so-on.
By the way – the family names “McGuiness” and “Adams” do not sound very Irish – and there is a good reason for that.
The Diaz (President Diaz himself was a mixed race man of fairly humble origins – and was also a Liberal agnostic, not the arch conservative he is presented as) government in Mexico made blunders – for example switching from silver money to a “Gold Standard”, Mexico had silver – it did not have much gold, so it could not have much gold-money, it got a gold “Standard” instead (i.e. banker fraud – in practice a monetary “Standard” tends to mean fraud, for example the farce in Britain from 1925 to 1931 when the Bank of England pretended the Pound was worth a certain amount of gold – when they did-not-have this gold, or anything like the amount). There are still people in Mexico today who want to restore silver-money, but they have no power.
More seriously from a moral point of view – the forced labour law that was officially meant only to apply to aggressive vagrants was, in reality, applied much more wildly – and that, quite understandably, caused resentment.
But all that is beside the point – as President Diaz was gone BEFORE Mr Zapata and the other “Social Justice” types started their campaign of murder and plundering – which is, after all, what “Social Justice” means.
On Northern Ireland – I remember pointing out to a friend as we were going through a list of Mayors of Ballymena in the museum (O.K. I am a nerd – I admit it), that one of them had a Papal Knighthood.
He was a Roman Catholic Mayor (a real Roman Catholic – not one of the “Liberation Theology”, God-is-a-metaphor-for-the-proletariat, types who bubbled up much later, who are NOT Catholics even if they hold the rank of priest, bishop, Cardinal or higher) in a mostly Protestant town.
Northern Ireland in the 1950s was far from perfect – but to claim it was like the American South, of that time, is a lie.
By the way – I had my “Rosa Parks” moment in Belfast – some years ago.
Unlike the late Rosa Parks I do not own a car – and was not on a bus because the Communist Party (also the party of “Dr” King’s main fund raiser) had asked me to be on it.
I did not get to go on the bus at all, “we are full” said the bus driver – driving a mostly empty bus.
A friend (Jerry with a J – how you spell your name is important in Northern Ireland, indeed it can be a matter of life and death) explained the matter to me.
“The driver was a member of the Nationalist Community” were his exact words – very politely expressed.
A Nationalist Community that would have been wiped-out – had the British Army not been sent in to protect them (yes protect them from the consequences of the war they-started), more than 50 years ago. The Unionists did not start that war – but had the British government not stopped them, they would have finished that war.
No a Henry George style tax on land is not “less bad” than other taxes.
People who claim to believe in the doctrines of David Ricardo, either on land or the labour theory of value, are, at best, wrong – and more likely much worse than that.
Although not a officially a Henry George tax – the Poor Law Tax in Ireland starting in 1838 (thanks to Lord Russell – who was a “laissez faire” man, in the same way that I am tall, slim and have a head of hair – i.e. he was nothing of the sort, the history books are, as so often, drivel) mostly fell on farm land – because there was little else in Ireland.
The Poor Law Tax massively increased in the late 1840s – and areas of Ireland that were not dependent on the potato were forced to pay for areas that were, thus dragging down the whole land.
No tax is “just on landowners” all taxes are passed on.
As for Ireland – at least a quarter of the population either died, or fled the island-of-Ireland.
As for these days – I have never seen such intense hatred of Jews as in the “Catholic” areas of the island-of-Ireland.
Not among real Catholics (the sort of people who actually believe in Catholic doctrines – the existence of God, opposition to abortion and so on), but among the fake “Catholics” – the “Nationalist Community” who are NOT Nationalists, as Sinn Fein and co do NOT believe in an independent Ireland.
They are very much servants of the “International Community” – and support the South (the Republic of Ireland) being wiped out by mass Third World immigration.
The “Nationalist Community” in the sense of Sinn Fein are NOT Nationalists – they never were, they were always Watermelons, green on the outside (although the colour of Ireland in heraldry is blue – not green) but Reds on the inside.
Ask them about abortion, or rule by Brussels and Frankfurt.
There are some real Nationalists in the South (in the Republic of Ireland) but they are NOT Sinn Fein.
By the way – if anyone wants to anger both sides in any discussion of Ireland.
Point out what religion most of the Blue Guard of William III at the Battle of the Boyne were – and which side the Pope supported in that battle.
I remember the two referendums on abortion in the South (in the Republic).
The first was an overwhelming rejection of abortion – I was impressed, and yes, embarrassed – for an enemy (an enemy – because I have always been on the Unionist side) was showing a basic moral decency that my own country (Britain) abandoned in the 1960s (although not in Northern Ireland – where Protestants and Catholics united against this evil) – when a foe is clearly morally better, in a vital matter, than your own country – it makes a person doubt.
But then came the second referendum a couple of years ago – overwhelming support for abortion, celebrated by the Prime Minister of the Republic (the less said about him, the better) – but via television I got to see some young women crying.
They were crying – and I thought they were crying for the children, I was deeply moved.
But then it was pointed out to me that they were crying-with-joy (I had not understand that) – they were filled with joy that now they got to kill people, totally helpless people who had done nothing wrong.
I have that image in my mind right now.
And it has come to Northern Ireland as well – not via a referendum, but via a judge ruling that killing babies is “the right to family life” under the “European Convention of Human Rights”.
I am not a good person, I have done many bad things, but this…..
@Paul Marks
If you want to reduce taxation then you must reduce government spending on benefits and public services – and that is incredibly difficult.
This is true but it is worth exploring why it is true. About half the federal budget is spent on socialized healthcare and social security. Why? With perhaps the exception of Medicaid which is a deeply corrupt pure welfare program, Medicare and social security are a sort of insurance program, though not legally set up that way. There is a political promise of “we will provide for your retirement and healthcare in retirement based on this tax of 15.7% we are taking.” Except that unlike a normal retirement savings program the government steals the money and spends it rather than investing it. Were I to run such a scheme privately it’d be called a Ponzi scheme and I’d be in jail.
So, although the government has a bond debt of about $40 trillion dollars, they have unfunded obligations that would require something like $100 trillion to capitalize as an annuity. Which is to say the idea that the government has a debt of $40 trillion dollars is not really true, it is more like $140 trillion dollars depending on how you do that math. And those supposed social security payments we are making ongoing are in many respects simply like an interest payment on that uncapitalized obligation. It sure as hell isn’t saved for your retirement.
From my point of view then the idea that our interest payments are 14% of the budget is not true, it is more like 60% of the budget.
The reason the budget is so vastly high is because the government has, certainly since 1935, been stealing vast amounts of money to pay for their political shenanigans, and we have to pay it back. We are poor because our government has run up a MASSIVE credit card debt that we have to pay off.
Fraser Orr.
Yes, as we have both said (many times) most government spending goes on benefits and public services (military spending has never been a LOWER share of government spending – whether in the United States, or the United Kingdom).
The justification presented in the United States is the words “general welfare” in the preamble to Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution – however, those words “the common defense and general welfare” are the PURPOSE of the specific government spending powers then listed in Article One. Section Eight.
To claim that there is a “general welfare spending power” makes listing specific spending powers pointless – and it makes the Tenth Amendment (limiting the Federal Government to the spending powers given in the Constitution) meaningless.
The whole concept of a “general welfare spending power” shows the utter corruption of American constitutional law – it makes the American government no different from any other government who can also spend money (any amount of money) on anything they judge is for the general welfare (or public interest). Again it makes listing specific spending powers pointless, and makes the Tenth Amendment meaningless.
No State would have ratified the Constitution had they known that “general welfare” would be transformed from the PURPOSE of the specific spending powers, into a “general welfare spending power”.
As for the debt – Fraser Orr is correct, even 40 Trillion Dollars is bigger than the entire American economy – and when one includes the unfunded Entitlements the debt is indeed vastly higher than 40 Trillion Dollars.
Default is inevitable – either open default, or disguised default via massive inflation. After all the Supreme Court has (corruptly) ruled that legal tender does NOT have to be gold or silver coin (thus nullifying Article One, Section Ten of the Constitution of the United States) and the “Federal Reserve” does not exist anywhere in the Constitution of the United States – there is no reason to create “money” via the corrupt banking system (allowing Wall Street to “wet its beak”) – the Treasury (according to the Supreme Court in the Second Greenback Case – it is NOT me who is saying this) can just create “money” itself – and spend it directly. No need to create money (from nothing) and lend it out to the financial institutions (at sweetheart interest rates – which is what the Federal Reserve does) only for the Treasury to borrow the money back again – at a higher rate of interest.
To say that the monetary and financial system is now a vast con-game is an insult – an insult to con-artists, who would not engage in something so despicably corrupt as the present monetary and financial system.
By the way, before someone points it out…..
I am well aware that even before 1914 the Bank of England did not have enough gold for its claims of what the Pound was worth (in terms of gold) to be true – but what it claimed the Pound was worth was not absurdly out (it was a Con-Game – but a limited one).
For the Bank of England and the British government to then massively inflate the number of Pounds (to fund the First World War) and then, in 1925, pretend the Pound was worth the same amount of gold they claimed it was worth in 1914 (and, again, even before 1914 it was a con-game) was absurd – utterly absurd.
If they wanted to know what the Pound was worth in terms of gold all they had to do was divide their gold reserves (the amount of gold they actually had) by the number of Pounds – the number of Pounds they had created.
But, of course, that is precisely what they would NOT do – any more than that crook Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve would do that in relation to the Dollar and gold in the late 1920s.
They wanted to have their cake – and eat it as well.
They wanted to inflate the number of Pounds (or Dollars – or whatever), but still pretend that their money was gold.
That is the fraud (legalized fraud) that is at the heart of their gold “Standard” (as opposed to gold money – or silver money, or whatever)- the “Standard” is the effort to have the cake, and also (at the same time) eat the cake.
The “Poor Law tax” is very much not a Georgian-style tax. As george m weinberg clarified, and has been pointed out before, the Georgian “Single Tax” very strictly excludes improvements to land made by the owner, whereas the Poor Law tax was based on the land and the structural improvements, which is why it was so problematic – amongst other things, as is correctly noted, it allows for “tax incidence” to be passed on, whereas Georgian-style tax does not (due to market pressure etc); it also, pretty obviously, discourages some forms of investment, unless one can guarantee that the ROI is larger than the increase in tax – in simple and easy-to-understand terms, I’m discouraged from building a granny-annex for me dear old mam unless she can cover the increase in tax that would attract. Which is a crap system, obviously enough.
The Georgian-style tax is very specific in that avoids those pitfalls – it’s basically the whole point behind it. The “similarities” are roughly the same as between a pineapple and tomato – sure, they’re both fruits, but only one is useful for a Pina Colada. Both “Poor Law tax” and “Georgian Tax” are taxes, sure…but that’s about the end of the similarity.
nennsnake – it does not matter if the farm had been improved by the owner or not, it was the Poor Law tax itself that people could not pay (not without being crushed). I did not mention any improvements to the farm. And it did not matter if there were no “land lords” – owner-occupiers could not afford the tax either.
A Henry George Tax is a “pit fall” – it is based on Ricardian economics, which is false economics (whether we are talking about land – or about the labour theory of value), and YES David Ricardo was building on confused thinking in Adam Smith himself (at least in the old age of Adam Smith). Indeed this idea may go back to John Locke’s false interpretation of the Book of Genesis – as you know, Mr Locke held that God gave land to humanity in-common, so private ownership had to be justified, by “as much and as good left for others” or by some form of cash payment (the “Lockian Proviso”) – Thomas Paine (the founder of the American left – just as Roger Sherman was, arguably, the founder of the American right) took that to the final extreme in his “Agrarian Justice” where he demanded a tax on large estates of 100% (he was led to this position by people pointing out that his claims in “The Rights of Man” that various benefits and public services could be paid for by abolishing the monarchy just did-not-add-up, so he went looking for a tax to pay for his proposed benefits and services).
Henry George started out opposing the building of rail links to California (in those days spending money actually produced rail links – these days some 15 Billion Dollars “not much if you say it quick” has been spent on a Californian rail project without producing one-inch of rail) – he opposed rail links on the grounds that they would bring more people to California and increase land prices.
However, even if rail links had been banned by law – more people would have come to California, by wagon or by ship, so land prices would have increased anyway.
Supply and demand – more people means more demand for land, but the supply of land remains the same – so the price goes up. A new tax does not solve anything – it just makes the situation worse.
I think California may be the most corrupt society on Earth – note I said “corrupt” not “brutal” – there are far more brutal societies.
The worst Dictator would not take 15 Billion Dollars and produce NOTHING – not one inch of rail, and neither would some Tinker (if I may use the word) knocking on your door and asking you “do you need any work doing?”
But in California no one blushes, no one is embarrassed that they have spent all this money and produced NOTHING (in a project that was voted on in 1996 – some 30 years ago), 30 years and 15 Billion Dollars and they have produced NOTHING – and they are not ashamed, not at all – in fact they are outraged that the Feds will not give them even more money for them to steal (I mean pay themselves “fair salaries” and engage in “vital law cases” – lots and lots of money for lawyers and activists).
They think this is totally normal behaviour – damn them to Hell.
In San Francisco there was a scheme (starting during Covid) to give free booze to drunks.
It ended up costing half a million Dollars per drunkard (most of the money did not get to the drunks – it was taken by officials and activists, no surprise there) – and was only stopped this January.
This is a society that really does think that unlimited amounts of money should be spent by government – “money” produced from NOTHING.
When money was gold or silver or some other commodity, government borrowing made some sort of mad sense (although men such as Roger Sherman still hated it – and rightly so). The government did not have the money, but wanted to spend it – so it borrowed it from people who did have the gold (or whatever).
What Franklin Roosevelt did in 1933 (steal all the monetary gold in the country) would have been considered the action of a ruthless conqueror (of example Attila the Hun) rather than the action of a legitimate government – whether monarchy or republic.
But now money is just created by government (created from nothing) government borrowing makes no sense at all – if government is creating the “money” (from nothing) why lend it out to the Wall Street types and borrow it back again (at a higher rate of interest)?
“Because if the government just created the money and spent it – that would be massive inflation”.
Yes – but that happens anyway if you create the money (from nothing) lend it out to the banker-fraudsters (and other such) and then borrow it back again.
For many years Martin McGuiness (IRA Army Council and Sinn Finn)) claimed to have fired the first shot on “Bloody Sunday”.
And yet the only people shot by the paras were unarmed civilians. What, were the supposedly elite paras unable to distinguish between a Provo gunman and unarmed civilians? Or was the shooting of civilians attributable to poor marksmanship, poor shot selection, poor training — or some combination of the three? Maybe they simply ignored the rules of engagement — or, worse, were encouraged to do so? In any case, not one — NOT ONE — of THE shooting victims was armed.
By the way, when was the last time you were in Belfast Sir? On Londonderry?
I’ve visited both on multiple occasions. And I was there during the height of the Troubles. One night, in Belfast, while stumbling alone and half-drunk back to my lodgings, I was “detained” by a unit of squadies. Not a pleasant memory.
You seem to assume that your tedious, long-winded bloviations on the history of the Troubles, the Mexican Revolution, California and the character of the people who live there, and just about every other subject you write about are uniquely insightful and worth our time to be subjected to them.
They are not.
Paul Marks,
I must admit that your borderline obsessive concern and interest in America and Americans, along with your endless willingness to share your thoughts, feelings, and putative knowledge thereon, is kind of touching, even flattering. Keep up the good work! Americans love to be lectured at by sad, lonely, angry Brits.
No, it does matter.
You’re trying to argue against a tax that very specifically excludes improvements, by invoking one that very specifically did include improvements in the valuation, no matter whether you mentioned them or not. The entire point of the Georgist Single Tax was to exclude improvements.
I fully agree with you on the Poor Law Tax. 100%. It was a bad tax (not just in the sense of “all taxes are bad”, but overall it was a bad tax period). But I haven’t argued in favour of it.
This is like me saying that I think we should make Shepherd’s Pie for dinner, and you loudly arguing against it because you believe (quite correctly, in my opinion – in the same way as you are correct about the Poor Law tax) that aubergines are an unpalatable ingredient in a mince-based dish.
I mean, you’re not wrong, but you’re arguing against moussaka – which has next to nothing to do with what was suggested for your supper.
What the heck is mince? Is it just hamburger?
(Yes, I am untraveled.)
@bobby b
What the heck is mince? Is it just hamburger?
Americans would call it ground beef. Though Shepherd’s pie is traditionally made with ground lamb (mince lamb) rather than beef. Mince, unqualified, is beef.
Yup – or ground beef as Fraser says is the same thing. Here, hamburger would refer to a preformed burger patty. I used to get very confused when reading US recipes that called for “2lbs of hamburger meat” – I thought you lot were getting pre-formed hamburgers and smushing them up – why not just buy minced beef?
Funnily enough, the “shepherd’s pie is lamb mince” thing might be something akin to the Mandela Effect (it’s debated still).
The earliest recipes use any sort of meat, beef or veal included. But, over time, in the UK at least, it’s come to be “shepherd’s pie is lamb, cottage pie is beef”. So, next time someone does the “it’s lamb, hur hur, clue’s in the name”, you can legitimately say “not necessarily”. Although, that would, probably rightly, put you in the “not much fun at dinner parties” box.
Ah! Thanks, guys.
Never really thought about the idea that buying hamburger to make a couple of hamburgers is an odd usage.
I’ve an idea it might be a regional thing for you, too? Thinking about what Fraser said, I reckon I see it called “ground beef” as often as I see “hamburger meat”
neonsnake – what is it about “they could not afford the tax” that you do not understand? And “they” included the owner-occupying farmers in Ireland. A Henry George style tax would have been no more affordable. The Poor Law Tax should not have been established in Ireland 1838 and should not have been extended in the late 1840s (dragging down the areas of Ireland that were not dependent on the potato to pay for the areas that were) – and, for that matter, the government school system of 1831 should not have been created either, it was the idea of Lord Stanley (later the Earl of Derby) and Lord Russell – if the Irish people wanted a state school system, they should have come up with the idea themselves, it should have been their decision.
And all taxes are passed on – there is no such thing as a tax that just hits land owners.
Trying to solve poverty by tax-and-spend was mocked by Aristotle 13 centuries ago, and the French economists of the 19th century (correctly) explained how the idea was absurd – indeed counter productive. J.B. Say and Frederic Bastiat (and the rest of the French liberal school of the 19th century and the early 20th century) were correct.
Paul:
I agree with you that the idea that a government should have to “borrow” the fiat currency which it creates is indeed absurd. Even more absurd is that it has to pay interest on the money it “borrows”, money which it creates.
The idea of central banks made sense when money was a tangible asset, gold, which a government could not create at will. This is why the Bank of England was formed in 1694, to arrange for the English government to borrow gold money from its citizens, at a rate of 8% interest. This proved very popular, and allowed England to finance its wars against Holland and France.
Ever since the end of the gold link in 1971, I fail to see the point of any of this. I suppose the iron law of bureaucracy that any public body which exists can never be got rid of means that the Bank of England is here to stay.
I do not think that most people appreciate that “money” is now something which governments create at will. If they did they would resent paying tax to fund the operations of government. Perhaps that is the point. The government gains great power from its ability to tax people, and power is really the whole point of being in government. Liz Truss wanted to lower taxes, and it took the Bank of England only seven weeks to get rid of her.
I’m sorry, but are you absolutely joking? Do you really not understand the difference?
What bit of “you are talking about an entirely different tax” do you not understand?
LVT – or Georgian- would have been significantly lower – that’s the entire point.
NO! This is just false. Georgian Single Tax literally cannot be passed on, because rent is determined by demand The market determines the price, NOT the landlord. A landlord cannot decrease the supply of land, because it’s inelastic, ergo they can’t raise prices over and above affordability. It’s one of the main points about it!
You really do not understand what it means, do you?
Oh wow, something’s just dropped into place for me.
You’ve said this a few times, and it’s always baffled me, because it makes no sense.
If the rental value of the unimproved land is, say, £200, but the output is, say £20,000 due to improvements etc – how much do you think that “100%” tax means?
But it takes 2 to tango, doesn’t it?
The market includes both demand and supply.
In principle, the supply of land is fixed. But if a landlord cannot get any renter to pay at least the amount of the LVT, then what is the landlord going to do?
(I am sure that i don’t know.)
— A related question: what does “unimproved” mean?
Does a square mile of land in Manhattan have the same “unimproved” value as a square mile in the Sahara desert?
I am not trying to be funny, i just don’t know what Georgian theory says about this.
NB: I have previously offered cautious support for the LVT. I have become more cautious, but not thoroughly opposed.
One more thought, after extra time:
It is exactly because (i think that) it can be passed on, that i have offered cautious support for the LVT.
If it could not be passed on, then, under the LVT, people would over-invest in the stock-market or treasuries, or maybe gold and diamonds. (Just as people over-invest in real estate today.)
Someone who still believes, or claims to believe, in the economics on land (or economic value) of David Ricardo and Henry George is (probably) beyond help. And, of course, a Henry George tax would (indirectly) hit everyone – the idea that it would just harm landowners is false. “Passed on” means – the tax would hurt everyone, directly or indirectly.
And no, neonsnake, I am not “joking” when I say that the farmers (including the owner-occupiers) could not afford the Poor Law Tax in Ireland in the late 1840s – and calling it a “Land Value Tax” would not have changed this. It was the Government Spending they could not afford. They could not afford the level of Government Spending – regardless of the name (or details) of the tax or taxes.
JohnK – I do not know, I just do not know.
One one level most people do seem to know that money no longer has any connection to a commodity (such as gold or silver) that people choose to value before-and-apart-from its use as money – but they do not seem to draw basic conclusions from this.
They still seem to think that the government has to “borrow money” and pay interest – as if this money was gold or silver, not fiat Credit Money that the government itself creates (or creates via the accursed Bank of England) – and, of course, I do NOT support the Modern Monetary Theory people who argue that creating money from nothing and spending it is a good idea.
The wild government spending is a terrible idea – regardless of how the spending is financed.
As for Liz Truss – the idea that proposed reductions in tax rates (tax cuts that did not even happen) “crashed the economy” is indeed drivel – what “crashed the economy” was 400 Billion Pounds of wild (and counter productive) Covid spending – which the Bank of England financed via its horrible antics.
But I regularly see Conservative Party spokesmen, and Reform Party people as well, parroting the “Liz Truss crashed the economy” lies of the Bank of England and the establishment media.
It is sickening – the level of dishonestly is total.
And it is dishonesty, not ignorance – because, privately, they know the truth.
Probably worth reading up on it, then?
I know very little about the Sahara desert, and only a little about Manhattan, what with not living in either of those places. A vacant lot in Manhattan would have much more value than the same acreage of land in the Sahara desert, given that it’s value is largely to do with the work of other people. Which is the point.
I’m not sure what this means – other than, well, not rent it out until he can? Again – this is the fricking point It’s also unfeasibly unlikely because the LVT is levied only on the unimproved value of the land.
No, Paul, what I meant by this was: it’s pretty clear that you don’t know the difference between the Poor Law Tax (bad) and pretending that it’s the same thing as a “Land Value Tax”. They are two very, very different things, and changing the name doesn’t do anything – they are still two different things. You are consistently arguing a point that no-one has made, and indeed has been agreed with (Poor Law Tax is “Bad”).
Well, quite – you’re the one who is calling it a “Land Value Tax”. This is a fictional thing which you have made up, because it literally wasn’t a Land Value Tax. It was, in actual reality, NOT a Land Value Tax, no matter how many times you pretend it was. Your arguments are utterly irrelevant.
Neonsnake:
Why should i bother?
I asked specifically about UNIMPROVED value.
— Since you are unclear about this:
My point was that nobody wants to hold on to land at a loss.
(Sure, one can build an Empire State Building in the Sahara Desert, but it would remain empty. Not to mention that it would not have running water.)
So, a landowner who cannot pass on the LVT to renters would most likely refuse to pay — possibly escaping abroad with his/her gold, diamonds, bonds, and treasuries.
The land would presumably be confiscated by the State.
Is this for the best? I am sure that i don’t know; but i think not.
To be fair, i should also hit on Paul Marks:
It is possible to reject the labor theory of value of Ricardo/George, and still think that there are good arguments for the LVT.
Arguments that Paul has not engaged against.
Yes, but so does EVERY tax.
(I assume that Paul is aware of that. But it needs reminding.)
Because you asked a question about how “unimproved value” works, in the context of Manhattan vs the Sahara Desert.
Apologies, my “Probably worth reading up on it, then?” might have come over snippier than it was intended. Essentially, the value of the land is largely determined by location. In your example, the value of a plot in Manhattan would be massively higher than the same amount of land in the middle of the Sahara (unless there’s something hugely valuable about the Sahara that I’m unaware of). By necessity, I’m being very, very broad-brush in this, and there’s loads of nuances that I can’t possibly touch on in one post.
Again, this might come over as a bit short, but it’s one of the very basic things about Georgian theory – I’d argue that, in fact, it’s what it’s founded on. I don’t know how much you already know about LVT or George’s “Progress and Poverty”, and I don’t really have the energy to start from scratch on it (the question about “unimproved value” falls under this too, which is why the Poor Law Tax was absolutely NOT the same, and is a pretty good example of what LVT was designed to address).
If you’re genuinely interested, then a swift google will serve you much better than me trying to explain it. If you’re not, then of course not – I’m not trying to give you homework!
OK, thanks!
neonsnake – you claimed not to understand what Thomas Paine’s proposal for a 100% tax on large estates meant.
I do not believe you – I think you understand only too well, but it is possible that I am being unfair – so I will explain.
Sir Robert Walpole had (before Mr Paine was born) promised to abolish the land tax, but he did get it down (for a while) to one shilling in the Pound.
Mr Paine was proposing, on large estates, a tax of 20 shillings in the Pound – if you really can not understand “100%” perhaps you can understand “a tax of 20 shillings in the Pound”.
As for renaming a tax a “Land Value Tax” and excluding “improvements” – that in no way reduced Government Spending, and it is the Government Spending that the people of Ireland could not afford in the 1840s.
The idea that the tax would “just hurt landowners” was nonsense pushed by Sir Charles Trevelyan (who later founded the British Civil Service” – all taxes hit everyone (that is what “passed on” means in this context).
Most of the money went on the Poor Law in Ireland (created by Lord Russell in 1838) – but it also went on the national police force (created in the very early 1800s – no such force existed in England and Wales, it was expensive) and the National School system (created by Lord Stanley, later the Earl of Derby, and Lord Russell in 1831 – again there was no such system in England or Wales in 1831).
Even back in the late 1700s Edmund Burke has shown that, as-a-proportion-of-the-economy, Government Spending, and, therefore, taxation, was much higher in Ireland than England – even before the Act of Union in 1801.
That is why so many Irish people kept leaving Ireland – it was partly the regulations (the Penal Laws hit Dissenting Protestants – not just Catholics) but even after the Penal Laws were repealed (in large part due to the work of Edmund Burke) the very big government, in relation to the size of the Irish economy (the Irish were much poorer than the English back then – the Irish economy was not just smaller because there were fewer people, it was also smaller because the people in Ireland in Ireland were, on average, poorer) remained and the Irish could not afford Big Government.
The people in London were demanding a Bigger Government in Ireland – to be paid for by people who were poorer than the people in England (who were paying for less government, proportionally to their income and wealth, than the Irish were).
I do not know how I can make this any simpler.
There was an interesting talk last night by David Starkey and Mark Littlewood (both of Popcon – Popular Conservatism, which is NOT affiliated to the Conservative Party) – in Northampton (not many miles from me – so I attended).
Dr Starkey argued for his well researched thesis that democracy has been undermined in the United Kingdom by the rule of officials (morr than 400 Quangos – so not just the Civil Service), “experts” and judges – and Mark Littlewood agreed that Conservative Party ministers found themselves powerless due to the institutional changes that have occurred.
I think Dr Starkey over stresses the break in 1997 – it is true that the decline of government by elected people massively increased after 1997 (the Blair Revolution – although Prime Minister Blair himself may have had little understanding of what he was being USED to “achieve”) – but I think the process started a very long time before that (one thinks of, for example, Chief Justice Hewart’s book “The New Despotism” which was published way back in the 1920s), but let us leave that historical discussion aside – the fact, and it is a fact, of the undermining of democratic government remains – and the need for a “Great Repeal Act”, getting rid of the various Acts of Parliament that have had the effect of undermining Parliamentary government is clearly desperate.
However, in discussion (and NOT in response to a question asked by me – it was in response to a question by another person) Dr Starkey made an qualification to his position that I have not heard him make before, perhaps he has made the qualification many times and everyone reading this already knows – in which case I apologize for bringing it up again, but it was the first time I had heard Dr Starkey make the qualification.
Normally Dr Starkey just say that human rights are a nonsense – because they rely on a universal human being which, Dr Starkey argues, does not, and can-not, exist – but when questioned last night he made an qualification…..
Specific Negative Rights, specific limits on government power (and the power of private aggressors) as in the American Bill of Rights, are fine Dr Starkey said (which is all that thinkers traditionally meant by natural law and natural rights – including Common Law thinkers), it is the vague “positive rights” that judges can make mean whatever they want them to mean (such as in the, incredibly vaguely drafted, European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations Declaration) that he is against.
This made any question from me pointless – as he had already made the qualification I would want him to make, in response to a question from another person.
We may be ruled by “morons” – but the “morons” (or worst than that) are officials, judges and other “experts”, NOT the elected people – who are largely puppets.
There must be a Great Repeal Act – all the legislation that has led to this mess, must go (in one Act) – and, yes, the “Supreme Court” must go as well – otherwise it will declare a Great Repeal Act void for “violating the rule of law” – by the new definition of that term.
That wasn’t the question I asked. I’m aware that “20 shillings in the pound” is 100% of a pound.
I asked: “If the rental value of the unimproved land is, say, £200, but the output is, say £20,000 due to improvements etc – how much do you think that “100%” tax means?”
Based on everything you’ve said, I believe that you think that the 100% would be levied against the £20,000, whereas LVT would actually be levied against the £200 (I think you don’t know this)
I don’t think that you actually know what Land Value Tax means, because you consistently quote taxes that specifically include buildings and improvements in your examples (eg. the 1802 Land Tax that I believe you’re referring to here), whereas Georgian Land Value Tax specifically excludes them. It’s the entire point, and is what differentiates it from other “land” taxes such as, say, Council Tax in modern terms.
You might not agree with LVT – that’s fine – but you’re not arguing against it. You’re arguing against something different; something which indeed stands against what LVT is designed to do. That’s fine – I actually agree with your arguments against taxation on land INCLUDING improvements – but it’s not Land Value Tax.
(side-note: Paine actually never argued for 100% tax on Land Value. You’re mixing together a few different arguments; he at one point argued for 100% marginal tax on production, which is a very, very different thing, and a different discussion entirely)