lvt and the causes of the housing war

[james armstrong]

Political opportunism and corporate malice and  greed underpinned by  the
landbanks  of plc house builders (not
forgetting the duchy of Cornwall) ,
and government cynicism and indifference bolstered by a ‘growth through credit’ monetary  policy are the ultimate
causes of  out of reach house prices. 

 The means of
achieving this imposition on the people of Britain

have been for the 
giant corporate housebuilders to corner virtually all the bulk  land with planning permission (circa 732,000
potential sites for new houses in 2002) and then to trickle out supply with a
view to higher prices ‘next year’, and next year...

In Poundbury, Dorchester  the figures are  2,500 sites with pp owned since 1994 by the
Duchy and with only 800 houses built to date) 

The planning  system
designed in 1946 for a vibrant market , as beneficent, in the face of non
supply becomes restrictive.   

HMG in cahoots with the City of London is complicit in
abusing the housing non-market for their own political reasons as a means of
boosting credit (liberal and irresponsible 
mortgages, 2nd mortgages and aggressively ‘forcing’ credit on
people, starting with student loans) and by spreading  widespread  false euphoria of apparent rising property
‘values’ by estate agents, building society spokesmen and  by the National Homebuilders (sic)
Federation.  The gullible seventy per
cent who have a share in ownership of their house are  prototype nimbys complicit in the housing
shortage. The  house-needy  suffer but don’t  see behind the  trade campaign of mis-information- (the planners
take the rap) 

There is a housing war on and people haven’t woken up to it
. Supply is at its lowest  (160,000 p.a.)
since 1924 and falling....

 

  Land value tax
already exists – in reverse – since 1973 and yields £3.3 bn per annum not to
Inland Revenue but to millionaire  landowners . It is mis-named as “CAP payments”
. (CAP = Common Agricultural Policy)

LVT could replace some of income tax and shift the burden of
taxation on to landowners.

CAP needs to be means tested at £10,244- to ensure the
minimum wage to struggling small holders. Saving £2.7billlion p.a. (and rising) The Queen doest need £500,000 CAP payment for privately owning Sandringham.

War and stock exchange fluctuations are epehemera. The
selfish greed of the powerful, 

exercised through monopoly of land and used against the
public interest, is the consistent theme of British history.  The housing scam and CAP payments are just
the modern efficient ,  refined and
hidden  variation - both are regressive
private taxes imposed unknowingly on the most vulnerable of the  public for the benefit of the  rich , the corporate and the few,  and come out of the same stable as the aids
and reliefs imposed on the medieval peasants 
and the tithes of produce imposed on manorial serfs – who incidentally
were more land-rich than 99% of us to-day. The peasant holding was a hyde- of
120 acres or a virgate of thirty or part thereof .

 

I have developed this argument in a longer paper.

James   		 	   		  
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