Help-to-Buy won't help - Labour Land Campaign

[mark at tlio.org.uk]

Even if I (and many of you) don't agree with LVT,  this is a good 
critique of the Government's sure-to-create-another-housing-bubble 
'Help-to-Buy' scheme, devised by our sub-prime chancellor Mr Osbourne:

From: 	Carol Wilcox <carol.wilcox at labourland.org>
Subject: 	Fwd: LABOUR LAND CAMPAIGN PRESS RELEASE: HELP TO BUY WON’T 
HELP
Date: 	Sat, 12 Oct 2013

LABOUR LAND CAMPAIGN PRESS RELEASE: HELP TO BUY WON’T HELP

October 12th, 2013

In his Financial Times article (10 October 2013 “Buyers beware of 
Britain’s absurd property trap”) Martin Wolf exposes the real reason 
for the Government’s Help to Buy Scheme – to stimulate land 
speculation in the UK and give land owners
  even more unearned income as the next property bubble grows and 
grows at the expense of the economy. Land values are created by our 
collective demand for public and private services and production; it 
is our taxes, our investments and our consumption that create land 
value. Because we have monopoly ownership of land in the UK (70% of 
land is owned by less than 1% of the population) we have monopoly 
ownership of land wealth. The poorest taxpaying commercial and 
residential tenants are subsidising the richest land owners.

Carol Wilcox, Secretary of the Labour Land Campaign, says “The 
mythical housing ladder is unattainable to a growing number of 
households and the UK’s tax system sustains this economic injustice 
and actually encourages land
speculation. This is now so hideous that blocks of apartments are 
being built in London that have already been sold to overseas 
speculators before completion. We don’t need a government that fuels 
land price rises through subsidies which make homes even more 
unaffordable to a growing number to buy or rent. We need a courageous 
and imaginative government that tackles our tax system by shifting 
taxes off earned incomes and on to unearned incomes that the owners of 
our land and other natural resources take as theirs. By taxing the 
annual rental value of all land at its optimum permitted use value, 
the government will capture wealth that the whole of society creates 
to be reinvested in our public services.”

ENDS

For more details contact Steven Clarke at
steven.clarke at labourland.org, phone number 07817906299 or visit
www.labourland.org [1].

Steven Clarke
  Press Officer, Labour Land Campaign
  www.labourland.org
  H: 01752 215728
  M: 07817 906299

Links:
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[1] http://www.labourland.org