George Monbiot began an article in the Guardian ‘You can learn as much about a country from its silences as you can from its obsessions. The issues politicians do not discuss are as telling and decisive as those they do … the loudest silence surrounds the issue of property taxes … the simplest, fairest and least avoidable levy is one that the major parties simply will not contemplate. It’s called land value tax. The term is a misnomer. It’s not really a tax. It’s a return to the public of the benefits we have donated to the landlords. When land rises in value, the government and the people deliver a great unearned gift to those who happen to own it.’ Click here for the full article.
In 1909 Winston Churchill explained the issue in a remarkable speech which pointed out, as Adam Smith and many others have, that those who own the land skim wealth from everyone else, without exertion or enterprise.
The history of the Liberal government’s attempt to introduce the land value tax is described in The People’s Budget and Labour’s later attempt in Standing for Justice.
