TWO GOOD ARTICLES IN TODAY’S PAPERS (SAT 27 JAN, 2018)
“Building more homes won’t solve the
housing crisis”
And over in Ireland comes the
explanation that too many people actually like rising house prices. There is a
coalition of the greedy and the desperate who would be horrified if prices were
to crash.
Sadly, such wisdom and common-sense did not lead either writer to advocate the only workable and morally acceptable way to fix the housing market—LVT.
Instead, Pettifor says:
“First for
consideration should be a property speculation tax (PST), as in Germany”
“Second, the
government must manage speculative capital flows in and out of Britain by
taxing them through a Tobin tax on global financial transactions. “
Who are the speculators to be taxed?
She’s a bit vague here (and it is surely wide open to evasion!). As for her
second idea, she flogs the dead horse of the Tobin Tax.
And all the time failing to recognise
the bleeding obvious on Land Values!
Irish economist McWilliams thinks
that “a realistic alternative [to the collusion by
home-owners to keep prices up] is providing secure tenure in the rental sector”
Well yes, a vibrant
rented sector works very well in Germany and Switzerland, and in the long term
we should aim for that.
But how do we
engineer the house price crash? How to wean the profiteers off their unearned
investment wealth? The soon to be rented properties have to come in the main
from the existing stock/
No. Only LVT will do
it, and directly reclaim the specific, society-generated wealth from the property
speculators.
No comments:
Post a Comment