div>
The depletion of 'wealth' to pay tax has a long and regrettably regressive history in this country
Not so. You confuse taxing income at source from high earners - the wealth creators -from taking from taxing wealth. And ever since we have had boom & busts and world-wide crashes, and poverty in an age of amazing technical advancement has not gone away. For e.g., in the USA the top 1% own more wealth that the bottom 90%. Something is clearly very wrong and deep-root analysis will point to land and its resources.
BTW, Winston Churchill was great supporter of Land Valuation Taxation -the finest speeches supporting LVT were made by him. He was in the government that caused the 1909 ructions in the House of Lords, which the Welsh MP mentions in the Assembly debate.
However, without a market there can be no wealth and no income whether the owner holds it or tries to flog it for threepence. Without a market, it is worth nothing. There is no wealth to tax. When there is income there will be something to tax. Geddit?
I got the free-market when I was about 13. Your last sentence is 100% incorrect.
Incidentally the empty house owner in Everton does not pay zero tax. If he’s lucky his community charge is discounted.
It it is uninhabitable he pays
ZERO. Yet the land can stay idle for decades and then he can make a killing selling the land. As Mark Twain said..."buy land they not not making any more". That land speculator in Everton keeps that land from being used productively...and creating an eyesore...and abusing the architectural culture of the city. In times gone by you could not own land unless you used it productively. If you stopped using it to reverted back to the community. Ever since we have treated land like a saleable commodity, like a washing machine, the world's economy has gone haywire. Land is like nothing else you can ever buy. BTW, I studied economics at degree level.
Land Valuation Tax will clear up the derelict homes in Liverpool within a few years. Experience in the USA proves that so.
Bookmarks