Thoughts from the Renegade Economists
Links to current headlines
Films and interviews
In the 4th part of our Michael Hudson series he explains the classical economic theory of rent and its modern day meaning. A vital key to unlocking the understanding economic policy.
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Popularity: 47% [?]
The life expectancy gap between rich and poor people in England is widening, despite years of government and NHS action, a hard-hitting National Audit Office report reveals today.
Popularity: 11% [?]
The life expectancy gap between rich and poor people in England is widening, despite years of government and NHS action, a hard-hitting National Audit Office report reveals today.
Popularity: 11% [?]
An interview on Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman, Gillian Tette, Hugh Hendry and the economist Jeffrey Sachs.
Popularity: 13% [?]
His most lucid video to date. Whats needed is just enough tax on the value of land to bring its exchange price as close to zero as possible, this is to reflect its cost of prodcution; £0.
In the UK there’s no such thing as a land tax, the closest we have is Council tax which is a tax a tax on the size of your home. If you want a nice home then you have to pay more tax, this is no way to run a tax system. Importantly this can be avoided by land speculators looking for capital gains by making these homes ususeable thus avoiding their tax obligations. The icing on the cake is that they’d still expect the police and fire services to protect their property.
For some reason, this video did not make it to your Youtube channel, where the Income Tax video is incorrectly labeled video #4.
Excellent video by the way, which I’d like to share once it gets uploaded to Youtube.
Let’s just cut to the Heart of the Matter!. None of us created Land but it is something that we all need in order to secure the basic necessities of Life – Food and Materials for Clothing and Shelter. Every single creature in Nature freely finds a place for securing its basic needs. It is an inherent Law of Life. Although animals can be territorial we as Human Beings have the ability to morally follow the Golden Rule of do unto others as we would have them do unto us and thereby respect the space of others. The simple way to satisfy the equal distribution of Land while maintaining the integrity of the infrastructure and the ecosystem and create an atmosphere of personal responsibility is to:
1. Remove taxes of any kind.
2. Move the current “value” of Land onto the Improvements.
3. Remove Land from its distorted position as a commodity and return it to its natural function as the Foundational Support for Life.
4. Charge leases based on the current market value of all Land in use on a local (a county is small enough that local individuals can maintain the integrity of this system) level. Take 100% of the proceeds from the lease fees and redistribute them EQUALLY to every Man, Woman and Child in the form of a yearly Land Dividend payment. In this manner, the yearly Land Dividend payment is nearly equal to the lease fee on the average piece of Land (minus the payment to the children which can be placed into a trust fund for future home purchase). This allows each of us to be secure in Land and Home when we reach adulthood and opens up the Enormous World of possibility and opportunity.
5. To maintain the infrastructure charge use fees which directly tie the use of the service, system or facility to the user. Roads for example can be funded either through a gas tax or when license plates are renewed or both. Funding of Libraries are paid by those who use the Library. Same with schools – use the school you pay, don’t use the school you don’t pay. All infrastructure costs are born by those who use it. Use fees create personal responsibility for the burdens we each place on society and those burdens are shouldered by those who demand/use them.
6. Institute a Sales Tax (also on a local level) using the current SIC/NAICS coding system, which is already used to define industrial classification, as well using a modified bar code system that would contain detailed information on the resources used to produce each product. This tax can be applied at the checkout and used to directly encourage or discourage certain resource usage as well as for maintaining ecosystems. For example when the barcode is scanned and wood is part of the product a tax can be applied right at the checkout that in turn goes to funding the replanting of the forest. Both producers and consumers are responsible for the resources used. Supply and demand go hand in hand as you can’t have one without the other. This also creates personal responsibility for the resources we each choose to consume.
I welcome your feedback.
Scott