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Thursday 19 October 2017

INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM WILTS WHILE THE 1% RENTIER ECONOMY FLOURISHES

Michael Hudson writes a long but very well argued piece (19 Oct 2017) on this topic "Socialism, Land and Banking: 2017 compared to 1917" He says
  • " the world has un-taxed land rent and is still grappling with the problem of how to keep housing affordable. Instead it is siphoned off rent to a landlord class – more recently transmuted into mortgage interest paid to banks by owners who pledge the rental value for loans. Most bank lending today is for real estate mortgages. The effect is to bid up land prices toward the point where the entire rental value is paid as interest.
and   the only way to save society from the financial power [is] a policy of          
  •             nationalizing natural resources,
  •             fully taxing land rent
  •             and [nationalising] infrastructure and other key sectors.
Note the need to fully tax Land Rent.

You can read the full article here (wonkish and marxist!)
http://thesaker.is/socialism-land-and-banking-2017-compared-to-1917/



Tuesday 17 October 2017

HOUSE PRICES MUST FALL!

No amount of tinkering with the housing market — help-to-buy, build on the Green Belt, more Social Housing—will fix it. Only a really good lasting crash down in the prices of houses will work. Only when we have permanently lower house prices will young people be able to get on ‘the housing ladder’ as it is quaintly called. Only when houses get a lot cheaper will they become ‘affordable’ to use the weasel-words of housing policy wonks and politicians.

Tuesday 10 October 2017

Britain can't cope with a fall in house prices – here's why
            Alexander Tziamalis     i Newspaper 
                        Monday 9 October 2017 13:00 BST
 [I've lifted this from the i  because it explains why politicians cannot Do What It Takes to fix Housing. HOUSE PRICES MUST FALL, but here's why they won't!]

Friday 6 October 2017


FIXING THE SNAG WITH switching SDLT to mini-LVT
                                                                                                     
Is there a problem? As I’ve said, Stamp Duty is a ‘voluntary’ tax. If you don’t want to pay it, then don’t buy a house or flat. My proposed small LVT replacement will also be ‘voluntary’.

Since the new LVT is a straight replacement for the old Stamp Duty there will be no need for parallel running while bringing it in.

But is that enough, politically? Can we rely on homebuyers forgetting how the old SDLT worked? It was steeply progressive. Cheap houses paid NO Stamp Duty. To buy a mansion in Chelsea cost a huge whack of SDLT.