Tag Archives: mirrlees review

Joe Bourke

Opinion: Land Value Tax – an old idea with lots of modern supporters

By Joe Bourke | Thu 10th May 2012 - 5:56 pm

Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations (1776) was an early proponent of land taxes as was that great radical Tom Paine.

John Stuart Mill was an advocate and Henry George put the case in ‘Progress and Poverty’ (1879).

The economist David Ricardo gave us the concept of economic “rent” – that land or property derives its value from scarcity rather than investment.

In the debates before and after the peoples budget of 1909 both Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George argued strongly for the introduction of a land tax.

The economists John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman recommended Land Value Tax (LVT) for …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 258 Comments
Advert



Recent Comments

  • Peter Martin
    @ Nigel @ Mick, Sorry that last comment somehow shot off before I was ready. To continue: So as one elderly right wing age group dies off another sligh...
  • Peter Martin
    @ Nigel @ Mick, Yes point taken about it being Tory voters. I was taking "by 2029" to mean the start of the year so the end of 2028 which is why I came up wi...
  • Michael BG
    Tristan Ward, When you are considering the history of the Conservative Party you should see a Conservative Party that supported Lloyd George’s social proga...
  • Mick Taylor
    Peter Martin. You misread what Paul Barker said. He was talking about a quarter of TORY voters dying off, not a quarter of voters. If he's right that many Tory ...
  • Nigel Quinton
    @Peter Martin - in defence of Paul Barker's arithmetic, he said that a quarter of Tory voters would have died by 2029. That implies a quarter of the 6.8m ie 1.7...