Hat Tip to Ronan Lyons for this article in McLeans.CA about the rediscovery of land value taxation by the Lib Dems in the UK, and some quite influential others.
Did 2010′s man of the year die in 1897?
by Colby Cosh on Thursday, October 21, 2010 7:14am – 22 Comments
Marxism is dead; long live Georgism! With Britain in austerity mode, its government pre-emptively decommissioning aircraft carriers that haven’t been built yet and preparing to bounce a half-million public-sector employees, everybody is looking for policy solutions to make the state’s in-flow exceed its out-go with the least possible agony. That has some progressives, including the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable, looking at the notion of Land Value Taxation (LVT)—applying the new tax burdens not to capital and labour income, which would discourage work and investment, but to the unimproved value of land area, where, to a first approximation, it would merely encourage efficient land use and make it more affordable.
As the Spectator‘s James Forsyth points out, LVT is an “eye-catching” policy that the Conservatives, if only for cultural or spiritual reasons, would be unlikely to adopt. (They’ll still be the party of the great country houses long after the last one is reduced to ashes and its occupants sent to the salt mines of Gliese 581g.) The Lib Dems will need distinctive policies to help preserve their identity after years of helping the Conservatives govern. (link to full article)
