Local Government Funding in the UK: Trip, Stumble and Fall?

I have quite a few pals in the UK, who are trying hard to get the word out about LVT. Naturally, it isn't easy. The Tories think that land value taxes are unfair to the Duke of Westminsters of the world, a relic knee-jerk from the threat that Churchill and Lloyd George's People's Budget 0f 1910 posed. During that bloodletting, the Lords gave up their power of the purse, rather than give up their private land rent.
Labour, or at least New Labour, contends that the land value tax is quaint, like (ha ha ha) the window tax of yore. Nothing like sniggering yuppies to put the country on the right track!

Yet, the winds of change are buffeting the somnolent minds of Britain. Today's Guardian
has a great bit of commentary by Ashley Seager, the Guardian's Economics Correspondent. titled A Land Tax is 200 Years Overdue. Amen.

Also, The Daily Mail - which seems to specialize in expressing the "we can't take it any more" segment of the British population - leads with a Labour scheme to change local council ratings (the local property tax to Americans) from a vague banding system of value to one based on frequent reassessments, the better to snatch value from improvements to property.

As Paul Weller used to shout "Oi!" The worst way to reform a property tax is to tax more of what we want people to do: fix up, build and invest in new homes. Already, council tax rewards unused and vacant buildings. this new twist will discourage use and reuse of property further.
Stories like this are popping up all over the UK, and everyone should read them and contribute. I managed to get a comment into the readers' forum...

Oi! All over the country
(We want a new direction)

Government Action = Landowner Benefit

Brendan Buck runs a fascinating blog on planning and development in the Dublin area. He writes about the increase in land values after the Dublin Port Tunnel opened. Dear Dirty Dublin's taxpayers chipped in 750 Million Euros, yet I bet that the land owners situated where the tunnel pops out of the water won't pay more than anyone else for this unearned windfall.

I wonder what my friends at Eire's own Feasta - who try and rationalize the public economy for sustainability and prosperity for all would make of this?

Fat Boy Sings Last Sad Song

I've never been to Smyrna, Georgia, but if I ever, it would have been plopped down at Fat Boy, my kind of joint. It sounds like an old greasy spoon of my youth Dan's Place in 1980s Albany.

Well, Smyrna's getting hot, like the rest of Metro Atlanta. Hotlanta is not truly Southern anymore, so that means a sea of pampered yups want their Sushi, Trader Joe's and that damnable Panera. So, that means an old comfy place like Fat Boy has to go...

The Atlanta Journal article claims, per usual, that the weird and savage beast gentrification is causing Fat Boy's demise. "Gentrification." It's one of those words that can explain and define anything like spiritual, globalization or post-modern.

But - really truly - high land values caused Fat Boy to die. Nothing else. The business didn't own the land, so the landowner knew that a corporate client would be able to absorb the higher rent. this drives homes a point about land value taxation (LVT).

The whole community made Smyrna hot: The dog's dinner of Interstates and Beltways that drained Atlanta of people increased land values in the exurbs. Newt Gringrich increased land values by making Cobb County the babe at the teat of Federal largess. The government by somnambulism that is Atlanta City increases land values outside the city be decreasing them inside the city.

Urban Planet has a nice discussion of this issue, with input from your blogporter.

Ups and Downs: Land Values in New York City

Taxing land values (LVT) is supposed to make the earth accessible to all. Big idea. Real world, what does that mean?

Well, it means that in the richest city of all, some people can't get housing without government stepping in (actually, stomping in). Land values are so high, they require high-end condos, with high-end price tags. In addition to building taxes, there are the unofficial taxes of high construction costs due to the mob, official corruption by assessors, and the mind-bending permit and inspection process. and passing laws that require cheap housing, as a set aside.

Of course, most of THIS government action (fixing an exemption program to include affordable housing) has been jimmied into the body politic to redress the distortions cause by THAT government action. "So it goes", as Kurt Vonnegut as always hiccoughs

Example: The heap big New York Sun real estate writer tells us that land values are set to take a tumble in 2007. In itself, not a surprise but the peculiar institution that is New York City has a lot to do with it.

Everyday, I bless the fact that believing in the economics of land rent liberates me from belonging to the camps (or gulags) of damnable redistributionists or contemptible rent-seeking pirates.

Just chatted with a Mayor...

...And he suggested I blog my trips when I travel to speak about LVT. That's why he's the Mayor, I guess. Alas, I can't identify him. Here's a news article about one such expedition to Titusville, Pa. where I presented a study to the city outlining the awful property assessments provided by Crawford County.

Although LVT has cut taxes for most homeowners, the commercial and industrial values are so out of whack that the city could tax land values 100% and still not move a vacant land owner to dump his land (or build on it). We have more work to do in that charming little town.

Titusville also has a nice new brewpub downtown and a clean little Comfort Inn to rest my weary head. The modern oil industry started in Titusville, but it peaked in about 1890. Oops.

Anyway, Jeannie Seeley comes from Titusville, and that's cool.

Politics and Taxes

Here's the start. I run a non-profit foundation that researches alternatives to our current systems of taxation. Dull? Sometimes. Yet, the collision between what I think is a way-cool economic policy and politics can be interesting. I hope you'll think so too.

I hear from dozens of people a month frustrated by their inability to be heard by their elected leaders and the wonks that advise them. This space will report on news about saving cities, taxes and all the self serving that prevents real reform. I'll comment on that news.

I always thought about a blog to comment on what I run into, and think there may be some sympaticos out there.

The reason this is getting launched is that I believe land value taxation is the way governments ought to tax. Knowing you're likely saying "Say, what?" here's a quick and dirty: http://www.urbantools.org

Now that's out of the way, I can say that this blogspiration came from Jonathan Saidel, a good man who got waylaid by a bad system. He believes in LVT, and was willing to go the mat for it.
He used to be the City Controller of Philadelphia and had a better than good chance to be the next Mayor.

Philadelphia is a funny kind of a city. It's where my mentor, as it were, Henry George was born. It's a place where the people are are bluntly realistic, almost downbeat, but the leaders are generally delusional about the state of the city and have been for about a hundred years.

One reason why the city is in such trouble is the tax system. That's the hook I hang my hat on.

Later!