AFTER 100 YEARS, STILL NO IMPLEMENTATION OF L V T.

WAS IT ALL THE FAULT OF HENRY GEORGE?

Henry George was not an academic, or a qualified economist. He was a hugely successful campaigner. But was he toosuccessful?

That is what Michael Hudson, one of my great heroes railing against the false theories of mainstream economics (you know, the ones who ‘didn’t see it — the Great Financial Crash of 2008 — coming). And yet he blames Henry George for being too narrowly focussed, too unwilling to collaborate with other reformers, for the failure to implement LVT.

Read Hudson’s paper — it is a very easy read — and make your own mind up. Was Henry George and the well-funded Georgists who followed him the reason why LVT is always rejected and his followers treated as fanatics?

Henry George's Political Critics Michael HudsonFirst published: 26 February 2008

To access the paper FOR FREE click on:

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1536-7150.2007.00560.x   

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 

LAND FOR THE MANY (not the few)

THE LATEST BRAVE ATTEMPT BY THE LABOUR PARTY

TO CURB THE PARASITE (rentier) ECONOMY

https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/12081_19-Land-for-the-Many.pdf

  

Only ref to LVT is to replace business rates (UBR). Otherwise avoids the topic altogether. Is this an example of shrewd political calculation? Dodge the smearing headlines in the Daily Mail (inspired by Conservative Central Office of course!) that “Corbyn is going to inflict the dreaded ‘Garden Tax’”. So stupid are the Mail hacks, that they think the tax will be levied on a per square foot basis depending on garden size! 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7145233/Essex-resort-boasts-biggest-gardens-Britain.html

Poor George! 

He discovers that some of his fellow journalists of our free press say nasty false things!

There’s been a recent Report prepared for the Labour Party called Land for the Many, not the Few.  It is very good, makes a serious and sensible attempt, in part, to see how government could take back the value in land under houses and ensure that homes for the many become cheap enough for the many to buy (or rent). 

I’ll look at some of the ideas in this report in future postings, but here I’m looking at the horrible, but totally predictable way the right-wing press reacted to it. Amusingly, or maybe , sadly George Monbiot, one of the authors of the Report just did not see the ferocity and mendacity of the attacks his Report was about to be subject to.

Read on…