This one arrived via email, he knows who he is:
… as for land tax… good luck with that… I haven't got the foggiest clue about how you could explain that a high land tax is beneficial to anyone who's not an economist. Most people either own houses or aspire to own houses in the future, how to communicate that sky-high property taxes are a great idea that they're just going to love....?????
We're in a fact and logic free zone here.
Let's start with "sky high property taxes".
Taxes are a certain fraction of GDP, just under 40% in the UK. If we collect more tax on rental values and monopoly privileges and reduce taxes on output, employment, earned profits and transactions, then that percentage would stay the same for the time being.
(The purist Georgist view point is that the % collected in taxes would fall quite dramatically - free of most of the deadweight costs of VAT, NIC and so on, the economy would grow much quicker, assuming govt spending can be kept constant (big IF) taxes as a fraction of GDP would fall. There is also the mathematical point that a large chunk of govt. spending would not be real govt. spending, it would be a universal tax rebate i.e. Citizen's Dividend, so most people's net tax bills would be much lower than now).
So by all means, describe 40% as "sky high", in which case, people's current tax bills are already "sky high" so that is not an argument.
You don't need to be an economist to know that most people, who derive most of their income from actual non-rental earnings and own little or no land by value, pay a disproportionate share of that total tax bill. If you shift taxes from earnings to land values, most people would pay less tax and would be better off. That is a simple mathematical thing which is easily provable.
To give a simple example, if they increased tobacco duty and reduced other taxes, most people (non-smokers) would be better off. Land ownership is very concentrated among a small fraction of the population, the same as smokers are a small fraction of the population, so the same logic applies.
I would consider that all these effects are beneficial for most people. And for "aspiring home-owners", it will be much easier because they will have higher disposable income and land i.e. homes will be much cheaper.
(We're coming up to the 400th episode of this series, does anybody know any KLNs we haven't demolished yet?)
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