Tim Worstall wrote one of his (presumably) paid pieces mis-describing taxes on land values as taxes on personal capital or personal wealth.
Taxes on land value are not actually taxes, they are user charges for private use of public/national capital or wealth. It's no different to a landlord charging rent. Either you agree with LVT or you agree that landlords should not be allowed to charge rent.
Lola left a comment and got this Faux Lib f-wit reply:
"Do you remember the story of ‘the tragedy of the commons’? Land open to all to exploit can be ruined – individual ownership can limit such pressure and preserve it as a productive resource.
Land Value Tax assumes that individuals own i.e. have exclusive possession of land and thereby privileged access to "the commons" (i.e. whatever it is that makes that area desirable). That's what they are paying for. So nobody will try to grab more of "the commons" than he needs and/or is willing to pay for. In its wider sense, LVT extends to all "commons" such as pollution, road use, radio spectrum, airport landing slots, extraction of natural resources etc.
They [landowners] have to continually expend resources protecting it, and maintaining it – that’s a service.
Yes, but he's talking about the building, not the land. More lies.
And the “location premium” is in large part defined by how one’s neighbours use their land, thus how a landlord uses their land contributes to the ‘location premium’ of their neighbours.
Quite true, but…
1) The rent-paying tenants contribute far more than their landlords, and our commenter overlooks the fact that there is an endless list of othe things which dictate location values (positive or negative) and it's not simple addition and subtraction. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link - so you could have the best state school in the world, but if there were no jobs or transport links in the area, location values would still be low.
2) It takes very large numbers of people to generate the 'site premium'. As a general rule, the more people, the higher the site premium. I'd be surprised if anybody generates more than 1% of the site premium of his own land (it's usually close to 0%). We can deal with this quite simply by setting the tax rate at no higher than 99% of the site premium. Seeing as the medium term aim is to tax land rents at approx. 80% and to give everybody their share of the land rent via personal allowance/Citizen's Income, that is a non-point anyway.
3) What about houses which are worth more precisely because of scarcity value, because people are prevented from building in the vicinity, i.e. in the Hallowed Green Belt?
Who creates that value?
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