Comments on Jock Coats

[TLIO Chapter7]

Georgists often  refer to capital as hard-earned ‹ but most of it is
inherited or comes as a return on investments, or is  funny money earned on
the stock market. Capital may well have been hard-earned by someone, but not
usually by the owner. Consequently,  I do not understand why high capital
investment returns or high incomes should not be taxed.

I agree with Georgists that profits from rent (ie profits derived fom
ownership rather than from working of land) should be returned to society;
but by the same token so should undue profits from ownership of stock (ie
profits which are out of proportion to the work performed).

Cheers
Simon

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> Reply-To: diggers350-accept-_PJyzT2anQ1YBxU_I25xmCA at yahoogroups.com
> Date: 31 Aug 2005 15:25:00 -0000
> To: diggers350-owner at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: MODERATE -- jock.coats at oxfordshirecommunitylandtrusts.org.uk posted
> to diggers350
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> A message has been sent to the diggers350 group from
> 
> jock.coats at oxfordshirecommunitylandtrusts.org.uk
> 
> The message summary:
> --------------------
> FROM: jock.coats at oxfordshirecommunitylandtrusts.org.uk
> DATE: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:22:35 +0100
> SUBJECT: Re: [diggers350] Land tax: the most dreadful scheme since Domesday
> 
> (Oops - I forgot to send this to the list!)
> 
> You do understand that the "Development Land Tax' as
> proposed by the government is NOT the Georgist land value
> tax that many of us propose?
> 
> I do not recognise your characterisation as applicable to
> "proper" land value tax. Indeed I would take an opposite
> view - that taxing our incomes and our hard earned capital
> wealth is slavery and was the final victory of the feudal
> --------------------
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> 
> From: Jock Coats <jock.coats at oxfordshirecommunitylandtrusts.org.uk>
> Date: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 4:22 PM
> To: diggers350 at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [diggers350] Land tax: the most dreadful scheme since Domesday
> 
> (Oops - I forgot to send this to the list!)
> 
> You do understand that the "Development Land Tax' as proposed by the
> government is NOT the Georgist land value tax that many of us propose?
> 
> I do not recognise your characterisation as applicable to "proper" land
> value tax.  Indeed I would take an opposite view - that taxing our
> incomes and our hard earned capital wealth is slavery and was the final
> victory of the feudal landowners - shifting the tax off them and their
> unearned land based wealth and onto the newly 'liberated' proles who
> ended up with nothing to tax but the money they could make with their
> own hands.
> 
> The whole point about "taxing what we all need to survive" is crucial.
> What we "all need to survive" is access to land, not ownership of land.
> Less than half of us own anything, yet the rest of us survive, though
> in doing so frequently have to pay through the nose in rent to
> landlords who do nothing for their increasing wealth.  And a Georgist
> Land Tax, replacing taxation on all sorts of other things like income
> and capital investment returns, will redistribute from those who occupy
> more than they need in any given location to those whom they exclude by
> occupying too much in an area of high demand.
> 
> Let's be clear, I do not know any Land Value Tax campaigners who think
> that the Barker-Prescott Development Land Tax is a good idea.  Indeed
> its effects, unlike with a Georgist Land Value Tax, would be, I
> believe, counter-productive in a whole plethora of ways.
> 
> Increasing density may be an appropriate response to need.  Oxford is
> half as dense as the greater London average for example.  The great
> debate at the moment is whether to slap hundreds of rows of new brick
> boxes onto green field sites or...well...not building them and doing
> nothing about the unmet need.
> 
> But with a Land Value Tax yes, higher densities would be encouraged by
> the tax system working hand in hand with the planning system (both of
> which we at least have a democratic input to, where we don't with the
> total private monopoly of land ownership we have at present, but so
> would moving economic activity to less expensive, less overheated areas
> (something that was very difficult in a leased territory of a few
> hundred square miles with a hostile communist northern neighbour).
> 
> Jock
> 
> 
> 
> On 31 Aug 2005, at 11:35, TLIO News wrote:
> 
>> Land Tax is slavery. It welds all landholders, including peasants, to a
>> financial system which gradually devours their labour. It's like
>> putting
>> VAT on children's clothes or bread, the meanest act taxing what we all
>> need
>> to survive.
>> Its also a method of taking land off individuals and putting it into
>> the
>> hands of the profit-making industrial agriculture and forestry
>> businesses.
>> Land Tax will force all landowners to produce the maximum from their
>> land
>> to pay the tax, turning the earth into nothing more than the factory
>> floor
>> of global capitalism. It assumes all land to be held from the state
>> not to
>> us as individuals. And forcing housebuilders to increase building
>> density
>> even further, just as in Hong Kong where land tax was trialed.
>> Land tax, just like rent or fuel prices, will be intrioduced to the
>> public
>> at a low rate, being jacked up to a higher rate as it becomes more
>> accepted.
>> Make no mistake, this is a major move toward our enslavement by the
>> Money
>> Masters of the Ruling Class.
>> 
>> As Gerrard Winstanley the Digger said, in 'The Law of Freedom'.
>> 'Money must not any longer be the great god that hedges in some and
>> hedges
>> out others.'
>> 'You have taken the people's money in taxes and free quarter whereby
>> they
>> are made worse able to live than before the war.'
>> 'The word of God is love, and when all thy actions are done in love to
>> the
>> whole creation thou advances freedom, and freedom is Christ in you and
>> Christ among you.' 'Bondage is Satan in you and Satan among you.'
>> 'Everyone talks of freedom but there are few that act for freedom. The
>> actors for freedom are oppressed by the talkers and verbal professors
>> of
>> freedom.'
>> 'The common people who have cast out the oppressor by their
>> representatives
>> have not authorised any yet to give away their freedom.'
>> 'Therefore England beware, William the Conqueror's army begins to
>> gather
>> into head again and the old Norman prerogative law is the place of
>> their
>> meeting, though their chief captain, Charles, be gone, yet his
>> colonels,
>> lords of manors, his councillors and divines, which are our lawyers and
>> priests, his inferior officers and soldiers, which are the freeholders
>> and
>> landlords, all did steal away our land from us when they killed and
>> murdered our fathers in that Norman conquest.'
>> 
>> Also,
>> Seems to me to be a convenient way of keeping house prices artificially
>> high staving off the crash.
>> I'm not interested in stopping debate about Land Tax but please, don't
>> believe the hype.
>> 
>> Tony Gosling
>> 
>> At 09:34 PM 8/30/05, you wrote:
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>> Hash: SHA1
>>> 
>>> http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article308976.ece
>>> 
>>> Land tax will target housebuilders' profits
>>> 
>>> By Andrew Grice, Political Editor
>>> The Independent, 30 August 2005
>>> 
>>> 
>>> The Government is to bring in a "housing land tax" to share some of
>>> the huge
>>> windfall gains that are made when land is sold off for housebuilding.
>>> 
>>> The move, which may raise hundreds of millions of pounds, could be
>>> announced
>>> by Gordon Brown in his pre-Budget report in November. A consultation
>>> exercise
>>> would follow before a final decision on the level of the new tax is
>>> taken.
>>> Individuals as well as developers could be hit by the tax, which
>>> would be
>>> paid at the moment when planning permission is granted for housing.
>>> In an
>>> attempt to stave off criticism that the plan would encourage building
>>> in the
>>> green belt, there could be a lower rate of tax for land in brownfield
>>> sites.
>>> 
>>> Although the proposal could be controversial, the money raised would
>>> not be
>>> retained by the Treasury but would be ploughed back into plans to
>>> revive
>>> local communities by providing housing and improving services. Part
>>> of the
>>> receipts could be earmarked for local authorities.
>>> 
>>> Planning approval for homes to be built can vastly increase the value
>>> of
>>> land.
>>> A study for the Government found that the value of farmland in the
>>> South-east
>>> would increase from £9,122 to £2.7m per hectare when it could be used
>>> for
>>> housing. In the North-east, the value would rise from £7,534 to £1.2m
>>> and in
>>> the east Midlands from £7,450 to £1.8m.
>>> 
>>> The idea of imposing a tax on a landowner when planning permission is
>>> granted
>>> was first mooted by Kate Barker, a member of the Bank of England's
>>> Monetary
>>> Policy Committee, in a review of Britain's housing needs in March
>>> last year.
>>> It has now won the support of Mr Brown and John Prescott, the Deputy
>>> Prime
>>> Minister, who is responsible for housing and planning.
>>> 
>>> While ministers would normally be wary of imposing a new, highly
>>> visible tax,
>>> they believe that the proposal can be justified on the grounds that
>>> part of
>>> the big windfalls now being enjoyed by the private sector should be
>>> used to
>>> finance the public services that new housing developments will need.
>>> 
>>> Land is already subject to capital gains tax. Ms Barker argued in her
>>> report
>>> that the forms of development gains tax that had been tried in the
>>> past had
>>> failed because they distorted behaviour and raised less money than
>>> expected.
>>> Large landowners and speculators managed to avoid the tax but smaller
>>> landowners were hit.
>>> 
>>> She said the proposed tax would have to be accompanied by transitional
>>> measures to soften the blow for developers, with land sales contracts
>>> drawn
>>> up before it was introduced and for those holding large amounts of
>>> land for
>>> which planning permission has not yet been given.
>>> 
>>> But the plan will be opposed by the Tories, who warn that it would
>>> provide an
>>> incentive for developers to build expensive executive homes in the
>>> green
>>> belt.
>>> 
>>> Yesterday, the Tories accused Mr Prescott of breaking a pledge that a
>>> revaluation of business rates would not raise any extra revenue after
>>> figures
>>> showed companies were paying an extra £1.2bn a year in England.
>>> 
>>> Caroline Spelman, the shadow Local Government Secretary, said: "
>>> Business
>>> rates, like council tax, are being used as a stealth tax.
>>> 
>>> "Thanks to John Prescott's rigged rates revaluation, local firms are
>>> being
>>> taxed to the hilt, taking the average bill to £10,000 for the first
>>> time."
>>> She warned that householders would be hit when a revaluation of
>>> council tax
>>> took place.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> - --
>>> 
>>> 
>>> "We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government,
>>> nor are we for this party nor against the other but we are
>>> for justice and mercy and truth and peace and true freedom,
>>> that these may be exalted in our nation, and that goodness,
>>> righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace and unity with
>>> God, and with one another, that these things may abound."
>>> (Edward Burroughs, 1659 - from 'Quaker Faith and Practice')
>>> 
>>> Paul's new book, "Energy Beyond Oil", is out now!
>>> For details see http://www.fraw.org.uk/ebo/book.html
>>> 
>>> Paul Mobbs, Mobbs' Environmental Investigations
>>> 3 Grosvenor Road, Banbury OX16 5HN, England
>>> tel./fax (+44/0)1295 261864
>>> email - mobbsey at gn.apc.org
>>> website - http://www.fraw.org.uk/mobbsey/index.html
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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>>> 
>>> iD8DBQFDFMLpwRj1MJJ12hcRAj2hAKDHr86R2svn2RTM7YGlamdCIRxEgACeMu2S
>>> 8ZFUmsec3vEg4ExGSTJaZb8=
>>> =rQls
>>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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>>> contribution. Find out more about the Diggers and see illustrations
>>> at:
>>> http://www.bilderberg.org/diggers.htm
>>> Yahoo! Groups Links
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Diggers350 - an e-mail discussion/information-share list for
>> campaigners involved with THE LAND IS OURS landrights network (based
>> in the UK ..web ref. www.thelandisours.org). The list was originally
>> concerned with the 350th anniversary of The Diggers (& still is
>> concerned with their history). The Diggers appeared at the end of the
>> English Civil war with a mission to make the earth 'a common treasury
>> for all'. In the spring of 1999 there were celebrations to remember
>> the Diggers vision and their contribution. Find out more about the
>> Diggers and see illustrations at:
>> http://www.bilderberg.org/diggers.htm
>> Yahoo! Groups Links
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> --
> Jock Coats
> At:
> Corporate Information Systems, Computer Services,
> AG17, Gipsy Lane Campus, Oxford Brookes University,
> OX3 0BP
> Work: +44 1865 483353
> and at:
> Wardens' Lodgings, Flat 1e, Block J Morrell Hall,
> John Garne Way, OXFORD, OX3 0FF.
> Home: +44 1865 485019 Mobile: +44 7769 695767
>