When reading a new book Political Philosophy and Taxation, I became curious about how my fellow political philosophers would approach the topic.
To test my assumptions about this I set up a poll - thanks to those who responded!
I will set out the results below.
Method
I created an anonymous poll with two questions:
- What is your own preferred approach to the issue of taxation? [Multiple choice with an optional write-in option]
- What do you think would be the dominant approach to taxation among political philosophers generally? [checkbox of the same options as the above, with a write-in option]
I thought asking these two questions was a good idea as each of these questions on their own might not have been informative and comparing the two might prove useful (it did).
On reflection, perhaps I should have asked a third question to check what sort of level the respondent was working at, since the survey was open to anyone.
I spread awareness of the poll in two ways:
- via a tweet. I didn't have that many followers (around 450), but I requested (begged) retweets from fellow political philosophers and some specialist publishers, academic centres and professional associations. I focused on accounts with a reasonable amount of followers (but not too many) who were likely to also be political philosophers.
The tweet was retweeted by 20 account and received 6,000 'impressions.' Apparently over 100 clicked on the link via twitter which is a lot fewer than took the survey. - via the PHILOS-L email list. This is an email list for philosophers with 13,000 members. Many of these will be moral and political philosophers.
The number of people taking the survey had a big rise after I posted on PHILOS-L and an even bigger rise (the most substantial) in the 24 hours after it was included in the digest.
Results
I received 79 responses in 5 days, though one was blank so it says 78 below.
Response to Q1
A third of the responses were for "Liberal Egalitarian/Contractualist (e.g. Rawls, Dworkin, Barry, Scanlon)"
Just behind was 30% who went for "Socialist/Marxist/Social democratic (e.g. Marx, Bernstein)"
15% went for Welfare-maximizing options, though they split with only 1/3 of those being on the economic right.
10% gave economically right-leaning responses (classical liberal or libertarian) with a further 2% going for Conservative.
5% went for the broad participatory communitarian or democratic common good option that I offered.
5% went for other radical options, including a write-in answer of 'anarchist' (which I assume must be left-wing anarchist given the anarcho-capitalist option offered)
Response to Q2
The response to the second question proved to be a useful check on the first, and also telling about what political philosophers think of their fellows.
69% of the responses were for "Liberal Egalitarian/Contractualist (e.g. Rawls, Dworkin, Barry, Scanlon)." This is the approach that I take, and I assumed it would be the most common one. It is clearly considered the 'mainstream' approach by members of the profession.
I didn't find any obvious patterns in comparing the way that individuals responded to q1 & q2 directly.
Overall conclusions
As mentioned I undertook this for my own curiosity, but several people contacted me to express interest in the results and I can see why!
The question is essentially 'how do political philosophers approach the topic of distributive justice.'
It is very interesting for us to check the theoretical/political leanings of the profession and find out what others in the profession think about the leanings of the profession as well.
The responses were roughly what I expected, with socialist/social democratic being more popular than I expected. There are of course many overlaps between the options. For instance, liberal egalitarianism can overlap somewhat with social democracy (particularly with regard to Rawls and Piketty).
The responses prove my thesis that free market desert theories (0%) and libertarianism (1%) are very much outside the mainstream (I would say correctly so!).
I would be happy to get your thoughts on these results in the comments below!
39 comments:
For reasons which I do not understand, I keep receiving emails from Academia, recommending your paper "Ethical Taxation: Progressivity, Efficiency and Hourly Averaging", written in 2015.
Having followed this topic for the best part of 50 years, I have yet to find a coherent moral argument for the taxation of earned wages in any shape or form.
I have also yet to find any coherent arguments against the charges that such taxation is damaging and inefficient, that these taxes ultimately come out of land rental value and that they amplify the effects of geographical disadvantage, thereby aggravating the world wide problem of regional economic imbalances to be found in most countries of the world.
Good to hear from you, Physiocrat! It has been a while.
I think you just look at everything through a particular classical economic lens in which land is a special category and that that distorts your vision. (I'm sure those with other economic lenses are distorted in different ways.)
In terms of the arguments, if you start with the premise that the government can tax what it likes then the next question is what tax base is the best. Income/consumption is the main part of GDP so taxing that provides a much greater revenue than a land tax would. People don't stop working because they are taxed on their income, so it clearly works.
All a land tax would do would be to nullify the value of land so it would be a wealth tax on land owners.
How much would the introduction of a land tax affect the share price of British Land or Taylor Wimpey vs. Google or Apple?
Land is indeed a special category. We ignore that at our peril. Nobody made it. "Land" includes natural resources such as fish in the sea, mineral deposits in the ground and radio spectrum. In the case of the latter, it is accepted that their value should not be privatised. This is why we have had auctions of exploration rights and radio spectrum.
"if you start with the premise that the government can tax what it likes..."
Why should anyone start with that premise? It could, for example, send out requests for money at random, or count people's windows. Why not?
"then the next question is what tax base is the best."
Best for whom? What are the criteria for good-ness?
"Income/consumption is the main part of GDP"
How much income consists of land rent, buried in categories such as profits, dividends and imputed income?
"so taxing that provides a much greater revenue than a land tax would."
All taxes are ultimately at the expense of land rental value. They are competing with each other for a cut from the same revenue stream.
Your comment also ignores the realities of churning (taxpayers' money paid to people to pay taxes with eg NHS workers), deadweight losses, associated welfare costs, and the costs of administration and compliance. We have an army of bureaucrats, and armies of accountants and lawyers - some of the best brains in the country waste their lives in the tax game when they could have been producing something useful.
"People don't stop working because they are taxed on their income"
That is exactly what they do, at the margin. Tax is the deal-breaker. A lot of people conclude that it isn't worth working if they already have enough to get by with.
"so it clearly works"
It doesn't. There are huge deadweight losses. The retail sector is reduced by at least 0.5% for each 1% of VAT. That was the IFS assumption.
"All a land tax would do would be to nullify the value of land so it would be a wealth tax on land owners."
Why is that a bad thing? Landowners as such produce nothing. They collect a value created by everyone else. Reducing land values means that everyone would be able to afford business premises and somewhere to live. Is that bad?
"How much would the introduction of a land tax affect the share price of British Land or Taylor Wimpey vs. Google or Apple?"
The technical giants make their fortunes from IPR monopolies given away too cheaply. This is another issue that needs to be addressed. Ultimately, though, the profits from their activities end up in land values in Silicon Value and the posh areas of Surrey.
Dear Physiocrat,
Please excuse my ignorance as a novice philosopher.
I'm curious about my own profession as a programmer. My work is pure ideas. In practical terms it has no real location. I struggle to understand how it is constrained by any essential substance of creation such as land or radio spectrum. Sometimes my work is published as open source so I'm not sure how one could argue such work could be a monopoly: it's free to consume (though may still be valuable).
Can you help me understand how my work fits into your framework? Am I, as a producer, and my consumers, completely detached from the physyocratic realm, at liberty from taxes?
Michael.
"Your work is pure ideas". You are not a disembodied spirit are you? How did you communicate this message? How do you obtain your means of bodily sustenance? Where do you rest your head at night? Are you living on the surface of the planet?
No living human being is detached from the physical world.
Thanks for the comments Michael and Henry!
Henry - isn't Michael's point that if his country were to apply a land value tax then knowledge workers could move to another place which does not tax it, do the same work, and be untaxed for the service they provide to those in that area?
I guess your answer would be that the other country should also impose an LVT. But what if they do not?
Surely a worker or business moves to the location where the net effect, including the tax delivers the best bet income? I think you are confusing LVT, which is an economic rent with a tax. It's only called a tax to make it simpler to discuss. How familiar are you with how rent works within an economy?
You could start by doing a quick calculation on how much rent exists and compare it with total revenue and total production. And get a quick and clear picture if the distortions.
If course all else being equal the worker would have to price in the additional costs of the "move'. Nonetheless this is what would happen and it would be driven entirely by the prices, in the end.
Surely a worker or business moves to the location where the net effect, including the tax delivers the best net income? I think you are confusing LVT, which is an economic rent with a tax. It's only called a tax to make it simpler to discuss. How familiar are you with how rent works within an economy?
You could start by doing a quick calculation on how much rent exists and compare it with total revenue and total production. And get a quick and clear picture of the distortions.
Of course all else being equal the worker would have to price in the additional costs of the 'move'. Nonetheless this is what would happen and it would be driven entirely by the prices, in the end.
Land is not free in the non-LVT country. It is a significant cost, either in mortgage interest charges, or as an opportunity cost if the land is owned outright.
Non-LVT systems also impose substantial compliance costs on taxpayers. These, plus the cost of the tax itself, must be passed on to the customers so as to leave the worker with an acceptable real wage ie pay net of taxes on wages, and sales taxes on goods and services consumed.
Knowledge workers will be drawn to the country with LVT, since they can offer services at a lower price than in the country where their work is taxed.
This is of course a problem for the non LVT countries, which suffer a brain drain, but the solution is obvious. It's what tax competition does and is why it is desirable.
Tax competition is an important reason why manufacturing has been priced out of Western countries. In the UK, 45% of labour costs are tax. In Sweden it is 53%. Economic suicide, but the lesson does not sink in. People in countries with dysfunctional tax systems pay the price and when they have noticed, they eventually punish their politicians.
These are excellent points.
Some good replies!
I think it comes back to what you think should by rights be taxed. If you are an income person like me you won't like that some income isn't being taxed. If you are a land tax person you just assume land should be taxed and it is wrong not to.
Since LVT works like a wealth tax then imposing it won't impact any economic decisions. It is a transfer of value from the current landowner to a future revenue stream for the state.
Knowledge workers would be better of living in a state which already had an LVT than one without.
But do knowledge workers challenge the process of ever increasing rents? They can move anywhere, so high earners can avoid the high rents if they want to.
Also - if we want to tax rents, why not tax the rents that those knowledge owners earn on their knowledge? It seems exactly the same to me as taxing rents on land.
Knowledge owners won't like a knowledge tax just like landowners won't like a land tax. Their knowledge that they got in the hope of making big rent gains is suddenly worth significantly less once the tax is imposed.
So is the point about rental income vs effort/pains income (the economic efficiency argument), or is it about the fact that land should be owned collectively and individuals' knowledge should not be owned collectively (the left-libertarian political position)?
Yes thats a good question: by rights what should be taxed.
Surely it is anything for which you have received a benefit, which was provided by that authority? In other words, taxation based on benefits received.
Presently taxation is based on ones ability to pay it, regardless of where it comes from. There is no accounting for if one received a benefit from paying it - you may have paid too much and been scammed or too little and got a windfall. All that matters to the authority in today's distorted world is that you are able to pay it. Sure, it might be possible that the tax was taken and by accident it matched perfectly with the benefits you received too. But are these teeny exceptions a hard problem to deal with even in the highly unlikely event that they happen?
So what then should be taxed on that basis? Isn't it anything for which I receive a benefit from the taxing authority? While everything else remains tax free to preserve the justice in the distribution of the common stock of wealth produced within the bounds of that governed community.
Next we can decide on what are these things which benefit us and need taxing?
1) Location value
2) Wait... there is nothing else
Most people will be astonished to hear this and discount it out of hand immediately. Why not rise above these ones and discover something new and innovative?
It's claimed that the NHS delivers extraordinary benefit and should be paid for. Likewise for the highways which no one would say provide no economic benefit to a nation. And how about our academies of learning? Protection of the military, police and from fire. And public trnasport. This list goes on and on and on... Surely we must tax the people to pay for these things. "its just common sense right?"
Now then. Find a quiet moment and place to sit down. And take a deep breath.
All of these highly valued services are what determines the value of locations. And this value is measured in economic rent. The better the services in that location the higher the rent will climb all else being equal. And often the rise in location value measured in rent will climb higher than the costs of delivering these services. The demand for the use of those locations rises at a higher rate that the costs of the delivered service. This has been proven, in scientific measured fact, over and over. A classic exposition is the Jubilee Line Extension. Others examples are legion.
The immediate response to this staggering revelation is that there must be an error because none of the experts and professors ever mentioned it.
Well, I can only leave it to your own imagination to decide on why they do not ever discuss it. And remain in the hope that using your own perfectly adequate and skilled mind you will decided about it independently of external forces. And wherever it leads, you will proceed with courage.
"I think it comes back to what you think should by rights be taxed. If you are an income person like me you won't like that some income isn't being taxed."
Whether or not income should be taxed surely depends on how the income has come in?
If you apply your labour to produce something for your own use, it is not taxed. If you sell that item for your own good, you incur "income" which is taxed. If you use what remains of that income to buy something that someone else has produced, then both you and the whoever you have bought from are subject to tax, and the state has taken its cut from both of you. If, on the other hand, you barter the goods and services, you escape tax; likewise, if the exchange takes place within the household, or between friends or neighbours. In this way, the tax is a penalty for using the "coin of the realm".
Taxation of incomes also ignores the effect of tax incidence, its effects on marginal labour and marginal locations, and the inherent intrusiveness and inefficiency of such systems.
Wages are the least that someone will accept in order to do a job. Any tax on wages must be borne by the employer. The effects of this is to drive marginal labour into unemployment, promote the replacement of labour by capital eg self-service checkout machines, and load an undue burden on labour intensive activities such as health care; at least 40% of the cost of the NHS is tax!
Taxation of wages also places an undue burden on all economic activity in locations which suffer from geographical disadvantages due to factors such as transport or energy costs. Look no further if you want to know why regional economic imbalance is such an intractable problem; note that under an LVT-only system, such locations are effectively tax havens.
LVT is a transfer of an existing revenue stream from the current landowner to the state. It does not distort economic activity and decisions.
"Knowledge workers would be better of living in a state which already had an LVT than one without."
Yes.
"But do knowledge workers challenge the process of ever increasing rents? They can move anywhere, so high earners can avoid the high rents if they want to."
If high earners move to a particular area, they will drive up the rents in the favoured areas, and therefore the LVT base will grow. In practice, knowledge workers tend to cluster, a trend which on-line meetings will only reduce to a certain extent. Knowledge work depends on the presence of good quality and reliable communications infrastructure. Land values will be buoyant where this is available.
"Also - if we want to tax rents, why not tax the rents that those knowledge owners earn on their knowledge?"
Knowledge owners earn nothing unless they apply that knowledge through hard work. Their reward is the reward for labour. It is not rent. This is an obfuscation of the meaning of "rent". The rent that accrues to land is the product of everyone else's labour.
"It seems exactly the same to me as taxing rents on land."
It is completely different. People can choose to bury their talent if it is not worth applying it ie through labour.
"Knowledge owners won't like a knowledge tax just like landowners won't like a land tax. Their knowledge that they got in the hope of making big rent gains is suddenly worth significantly less once the tax is imposed."
"Rent of knowledge" is not rent. A huge amount of labour has to be applied just in order to become a barrister or a professional footballer; it is hard graft ever after.
"So is the point about rental income vs effort/pains income (the economic efficiency argument), or is it about the fact that land should be owned collectively and individuals' knowledge should not be owned collectively (the left-libertarian political position)?"
The arguments against taxation of wages, goods and services are on grounds of natural justice, freedom, and economic and administrative efficiency; they all take us in the same direction.
Land ownership as such not the issue. The rental value of land arises from the presence and activities of the community. It is, in justice, the primary source of public revenue.
@Robin Smith
Benefits received under the protection of the government include
Land titles
Licences to extract natural resources eg minerals, fish
Sole rights to use intellectual property eg patents, domain names
Other monopoly rights: wayleaves, electomagnetic spectrum
Rights to operate natural monopolies eg service and distribution networks, toll roads
A properly designed market-based auction system should suffice to establish the value of these public goods. It should also yield enough money to pay the legitimate expenses of government. Why the government needs to stick its nose into people's private affairs is a mystery.
Oh yes, thank you for the clarification. It is indeed a mystery. Unless one recognises this is how people want things to be. Then our academies of learning will be geared toward that goal. For better or for worse. And we will pay respect to the leading thinkers on that basis.
* Land titles
* Licences to extract natural resources eg minerals, fish
* Sole rights to use intellectual property eg patents, domain names
* Other monopoly rights: wayleaves, electromagnetic spectrum
* Rights to operate natural monopolies eg service and distribution networks, toll roads.
I referred to these as "public goods" but this is incorrect. They are "commons", and the sole rights to their use are, strictly speaking, inclosures of commons.
These rights are necessary in order that the resources can be effectively and efficiently utilised. Only government can provide the necessary protection of the rights to enable this to happen.
The precedent for a payment of resource rentals is widely accepted in regard to oil exploration and extraction, radiomagnetic spectrum, where public auctions were held in order to maximise revenue. It seems that this principle is for some reason unacceptable where the surface of the earth is concerned, with the notable exception of the Crown Estate, which delivers a useful revenue stream to the Exchequer.
Physiocrat, you wrote ""Rent of knowledge" is not rent. A huge amount of labour has to be applied ...". However the overwhelming majority of the labour supplied to create that value isn't from the elite footballer (etc) but from the myriad workers who create the stage on which that player performs. A player like Phil Foden earns over £11M/year. That's because he's the hook to draw in an audience watching on flashy TVs (so include the workers who made them), paid for by adverts created by a huge advertising industry, playing in a stadium maintained by all kinds of people from high to low; this means the audience he can reach, and the quality with which he can reach it, is vastly greater than, say, Bobby Moore - who might have been a better player but earned only £14k at his peak. In short, for most of us, the bulk of our value comes from the leverage the social and physical institutions around us provide. How much would your skill be worth if you were, say, on a desert island the same size as the property you now own? Could you even survive? The rest would not exist without the institutions which government provides.
Your perspective has fascinated and entertained me. However in the end, I don't find the Physiocratic worldview convincing. At the turn of the 18th century, it made some pragmatic sense: about 9 in 10 Frenchmen were involved in primary production, most of the rest were dependent on it. This is no longer the case, and to a large degree: the UK produces 60% of the calories it needs using under 1% of the workforce; making a living off the land is simply irrelevant to most of us. You argue that the value of land in cities is also a valid target for a physiocrat, ignoring that the value comes overwhelmingly from the cumulative effect of society and institutions, not the land itself - so that high land value, from your arguments, is in a contested state, taxable because its land, yet as its value is an artefact, not taxable. Meanwhile the information economy I work in would be almost entirely untaxable as it increasingly needs minimal land of indeterminate location and almost no minerals. If land and minerals were the sole tax base, this would work out a bit like a poll tax with food prices so high many people would starve.
We're a democracy. Let's assume the interests median voter by income determines the outcome of elections (a simplification but good enough). They will rationally vote for a tax level such that the marginal taxation on them personally delivers the same utility as the same money in their pocket. That will be too high a tax rate because the rich pay most of the bill, but not too excessive (that median voter doesn't want to strangle the cash cow of the high earners!) - but it will result in a higher level of taxation and a different distribution than a physiocratic approach can deliver. The Physiocratic scheme was a nice and pragmatic approach 200 years ago, if a little unprincipled, but wholly unfit for the modern world.
"However the overwhelming majority of the labour supplied to create that value isn't from the elite footballer (etc) but from the myriad workers who create the stage on which that player performs."
We need to be clear about definitions here. Wages are reward for labour. The footballer's labour is creating an object that millions of people desire (goodness knows why, but that is another matter - I would pay money not to go and watch football if required).
"A player like Phil Foden earns over £11M/year. That's because he's the hook to draw in an audience watching on flashy TVs (so include the workers who made them), paid for by adverts created by a huge advertising industry, playing in a stadium maintained by all kinds of people from high to low; this means the audience he can reach, and the quality with which he can reach it, is vastly greater than, say, Bobby Moore - who might have been a better player but earned only £14k at his peak."
I get it that you think the payment is obscene and undeserved, but it does not alter the fact that the payment is reward for labour, ie wages. You would have a better case to argue that train drivers are extracting rent by exploiting the monopoly power of the unions.
"In short, for most of us, the bulk of our value comes from the leverage the social and physical institutions around us provide."
That ends up as rent of land used for production, business and living on. Millionaire footballers do not normally choose to remain in the terrace houses or council flats in Tottenham or Sunderland where they might have grown up.
"How much would your skill be worth if you were, say, on a desert island the same size as the property you now own? Could you even survive? The rest would not exist without the institutions which government provides."
Nothing, and that is why land on a desert island is of next to no value. You have just made the case for LVT.
"Your perspective has fascinated and entertained me. However in the end, I don't find the Physiocratic worldview convincing. At the turn of the 18th century, it made some pragmatic sense: about 9 in 10 Frenchmen were involved in primary production, most of the rest were dependent on it. This is no longer the case, and to a large degree: the UK produces 60% of the calories it needs using under 1% of the workforce; making a living off the land is simply irrelevant to most of us."
That is not sustainable. It has already resulted in two huge wars. It is a general rule that a population should be able to feed itself on the land it lives upon, which for Britain is probably around 30 million people.
"You argue that the value of land in cities is also a valid target for a physiocrat, ignoring that the value comes overwhelmingly from the cumulative effect of society and institutions, not the land itself"
In your previous post you pointed out that none of this could take place on a desert island. People and institutions are able and willing to pay for the value of the locations where they can live and work with greatest efficiency. The payment is what is known as economic rent of land. It is land value.
"so that high land value, from your arguments, is in a contested state,
taxable because its land, yet as its value is an artefact, not taxable.
Land generates a revenue flow known as rent. There is nothing that can be taxed more easily.
"Meanwhile the information economy I work in would be almost entirely untaxable as it increasingly needs minimal land of indeterminate location and almost no minerals."
Are you on your hypothetical desert island? Why doesn't the information industry locate itself on desert islands - or at least places like the lovely Maldives or Bali?
"If land and minerals were the sole tax base, this would work out a bit like a poll tax with food prices so high many people would starve."
Land rental values are a surplus. Prices of goods in Central London - where shop rents are the highest in the country - are much the same as prices anywhere else. Rents are not part of the price.
"We're a democracy. Let's assume the interests median voter by income determines the outcome of elections (a simplification but good enough). They will rationally vote for a tax level such that the marginal taxation on them personally delivers the same utility as the same money in their pocket. That will be too high a tax rate because the rich pay most of the bill, but not too excessive (that median voter doesn't want to strangle the cash cow of the high earners!) - but it will result in a higher level of taxation and a different distribution than a physiocratic approach can deliver."
You have just made another argument against democracy; Plato was scathing about the system, pointing out that it is the precursor to tyranny, a process which we might be seeing at this very moment.
Even assuming a representative system (which Britain patently does not have), democracy does not produce optimal results. We end up with a votes auction. People do not understand the implications of what they are voting for. Even a well informed person such as yourself evidently does not understand a basic principle in economics - that rents are a surplus value and cannot be passed on in higher prices.
Is democracy an ultimate and absolute value? Democratic countries have sent their economies into a death spiral since 1945 by applying welfare systems based on the taxation of wages, goods and services. This has been done in ignorance of the fact that government spending creates money which has to be removed from circulation by taxation so as to prevent inflation. Since the taxes are unfit for purpose, the results have been that money has lost 98% of its value over the past 50 years, and that labour costs to employers - around 45% of the total being tax - are so high that manufacturing in the UK has been all but destroyed, basic service industries must operate at staffing levels cut to the bone, while millions are unemployed or not active in the economy. The UK is by no means the worst - the country where I live, Sweden, has got into extreme difficulties - despite, or because of its perfectly representative democracy and a poorly informed electorate.
"The Physiocratic scheme was a nice and pragmatic approach 200 years ago, if a little unprincipled, but wholly unfit for the modern world."
You have not made the case. You have based it on commonly held fallacies.
All good points Physiocrat. I'm not sure why you engage uni professors . You know they will be fired if they start being authentic. The thing I don't understand is it's our descendants being taught by them? Then again, this is nothing new. The barons always built the unis.
Democracy can only deliver winners and losers, while the law is monopolised by the state. Because the law is ruled on by politics, not a concrete set of objective rules. Both sides in any case can be right, legally.
@Robin Smith
The denouement seems to be approaching. We are in for interesting times.
I reckon things have always been like this. We're just becoming aware of what upholds such a grotesque systemic theft between individuals
"You know they will be fired if they start being authentic" - that's quite a scurrilous claim! Is that based on any evidence? Nobody has told me not to publish anything.
Left-libertarianism is a view discussed and advocated in academic circles (Hillel Steiner for instance) but it gets few adherents. Most academics are unconvinced by libertarianism because the particular interpretation of property rights is unappealing and hard to justify.
Are you familiar with Hillel Steiner's metaphors - the fixed Monopoly game and "The Voice"?
Property rights are derived from, and protected by, the sovereign power. It says it on every land title. That is not very difficult to understand. It would follow logically that those who enjoy the property rights should pay for the service they get. This is explicit in Smith's First Canon of Taxation. Here is a fact of law which needs no justification.
I don't know about scurrilous claims, but many of the Oxbridge colleges derive substantial incomes from their land holdings. Lincoln owns most of the block between Cornmarket, Market Street, Turl Street and the High, as well as properties on the south side of the High. St John's makes a tidy amount from lease extensions in the whole of North Oxford.
If a Fellow said anything which threatened to reduce those reliable income streams, they would get a tap on the shoulder from the Bursar and reminded that was where their remuneration come from.
I know of at least one case where silence followed an appointment to a Professorship.
It's not a claim. I have primary evidence for it many times over. Some of it astonishing and almost obscene, given the students harmed by it. Also I've seen it in government and the health service. It is systemic and not limited to the unis. I remain in the hope some bold leaders come out on it.
"those who enjoy the property rights should pay for the service they get"
Sure - but why not apply that to workers as well? Or the owners of any capital other than land?
The points of disagreement are easy to diagnose:
1. To what property do people have an absolute moral right?
2. Is land a special economic category different from other forms of ownership?
I disagree with Libertarians on point 1. and disagree with Classical economists and Georgists on point 2.
I'm very much in favour of taxing realised gains on land. Just as I'm happy to tax gains from income, gifts, inheritances or capital investments.
You've just adopted a position that seems perfectly natural to you but that most people either don't understand, or if they do they don't agree with it.
I certainly know how you feel, but at least some people bothered to understand your position!
"those who enjoy the property rights should pay for the service they get"
Sure - but why not apply that to workers as well? Or the owners of any capital other than land?"
What service is that? Workers and owners of capital pay rent for the right to live, work and deploy their capital on land.
"1. To what property do people have an absolute moral right?"
That which they have produced through their own labour. If you go out picking berries I have no right to any of them. You might, out of the kindness of your heart, or as an act of charity, offer me some, but I have no moral right to them. You have a duty to offer them to others if they are starving, but only after you have satisfied your own needs and those of your family. But it is a voluntary decision.
"2. Is land a special economic category different from other forms of ownership?"
Yes. It is a gift of God. If you don't believe in God as a philosophical necessity, the immediate problem arises is that something can come from nothing. However, there is a work-around - that land and natural resources are a gift of nature.
Taxing realised gains on land is a dumb idea. People don't sell, or cannot afford to sell. This is the situation in Sweden. Pensioners are living in places they can barely manage and afford to keep up, but they will be hit with a heavy tax if they sell. This leads to a chronic shortage of family sized houses. The tax is a scam, because much of the gain is just a paper gain caused by inflation.
I agree that people cannot or refuse to understand this position, but the economy in countries which tax wages, goods, services and capital has been in a death spiral since the end of WW2 and is now approaching the final implosion.
Now is your opportunity to demonstrate that Robin Smith's scurrilous claim is false.
You should sympathise here. He has been brought up and earned an income in a social world that prefers slavery to freedom. It's extraordinarily hard to step outside of that. Fact, logic and reason cannot persuade. It goes deeper still. But you can't remain in the hope people discover love of their descendants in their own way before the die.
"If you go out picking berries I have no right to any of them." From common land you mean? Sure, I'll buy that. I don't think it extends to wider economic transactions.
When you are working for an employer they are an entity given support by the rules and infrastructure of the society.
The money that you earn from any transaction, and the gains you make on any trades, only happen because of that society.
Just as the value of the land in society depends on the wider society, so the value of your labour and capital depends on those things. No man is an island.
If you want to live off the common land and your own labour that is fine, but if you are part of the economy then all options are open when it comes to tax. It determines who get what. I've proposed a tax system that rewards people for the time they spend labouring and taxes returns to capital (income without labouring) relatively more highly.
I agree that labour is taxed too heavily and gains to capital (including, perhaps especially in the UK, land).
So I don't think there is any kind of "gotcha" there. Unless the "gotcha" is that I'm not a libertarian, like 99% of the rest of the population.
Basically, I agree with Rawls rather than Nozick. There is no conspiracy there, its literally in my academic work which no one forced me to write or told what to include.
Oh, and I think you should index gains to inflation to partially avoid the problem you rightly picked out about the disincentive to sell long-term investments.
Common land no longer exists. Except in limited amounts. The entire land area of the UK is now owned outright in perpetuity. About 70% in private hands. 30 by the state. Which is why its such a terrible policy when the state sells its land to fund capital projects. They will be paying ever increasing rent from now on. Within 5 years they will be underwater relatively.
"If you go out picking berries I have no right to any of them." From common land you mean?"
No, I mean picking berries on marginal land. This is a flexible term. If people do not think it is worth picking less than, say, a kilo of berries in an hour, then the land where berries are less plentiful is sub marginal ie nobody will bother to make the effort. The land will not be used.
Now imagine some better land nearby where 1.5 kilos can be picked in an hour. A picker will be willing to hand over 33% of the berries to the landowner, or in "tax", as he will end up with the one kilo which is enough to satisfy. However, if all pickings from whatever site are taxed at 33%, then anyone who picks at the marginal site ends up with 660 grammes ie it would not be worth the effort to go picking.
Under an LVT scheme, the total pickings are 2.5 kg. Under a system where wages or profit or total production is taxed, the total pickings are only 1.5 kg as the marginal site is out of use. This is the application of standard Ricardian theory and nothing to do with Henry George.
The principle that applies to our two fields of berries applies also to the entire country. It explains why something like 80% of the country is in the bottom right-hand quarter, while nothing much happens, or can happen, in places like the Durham and Cumberland coasts, Cornwall, West Wales, much of Scotland and even East Kent and parts of Greater London.
"Sure, I'll buy that. I don't think it extends to wider economic transactions."
It does because what is not taken in tax remains as rent, but the tax on production makes economic activity on a lot of land non-viable.
"When you are working for an employer they are an entity given support by the rules and infrastructure of the society."
Yes
"The money that you earn from any transaction, and the gains you make on any trades, only happen because of that society."
Yes. But what is not collected in tax ends up as land rental value.
"Just as the value of the land in society depends on the wider society, so the value of your labour and capital depends on those things. No man is an island."
There is a fallacy here. The assumption is that the burden of the tax falls entirely on whoever is formally responsible for making the payment. Taxes on wages are passed on to the employer who passes them on to the customers or backwards onto the landlord as they cut into rental value. They are functionally equivalent to a payroll tax.
"If you want to live off the common land and your own labour that is fine, but if you are part of the economy then all options are open when it comes to tax."
Only if you don't mind shrinking the economy due to deadweight losses, and administrative and compliance costs. The latter are not insignificant. My cousin was a brilliant mathematician, chess player and later, bridge player. He became an accountant, specialising in tax affairs, which is the main work of most accountants. In his sixty year working life, the amount of wealth he created was vanishingly small. Since he could have become an eminent scientist, this was a complete waste of talent. There are 250,000 accountants in the UK, plus, probably, another half million employed in the sector. Tax also generates a substantial amount of work for lawyers. All of this the tax-related work carried out by among the most gifted people in the country adds nothing to the country's production of wealth. That is a huge cost
.
"It determines who get what."
Not when the phenomenon of tax incidences is concerned. It guarantees that a lot of people get nothing, thereby adding to welfare costs. Also, the tax system is not fit for purpose, which is why sterling has fallen by 98% of its value during the past half century. Savers have been systematically robbed.
"I agree that labour is taxed too heavily and gains to capital (including, perhaps especially in the UK, land)."
Any coherent definition of the term "capital" does not include land.
"So I don't think there is any kind of "gotcha" there. Unless the "gotcha" is that I'm not a libertarian, like 99% of the rest of the population."
The gotcha is that you appear to be willing to leave unchallenged the system of taxation which gives rise to, and renders intractable, the economic problems which afflict Britain and most of the western world.
Basically, I agree with Rawls rather than Nozick. There is no conspiracy there, its literally in my academic work which no one forced me to write or told what to include.
As an academic and fellow of an august institution, don't you think you have a duty to seek the truth wherever it is to be found?
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