Jun 152009
I spoke at the Compass ‚Äò‘No turning back’ event on Saturday.
I recorded this before I went just to test timing, but I have been encouraged to put it up, with apologies for quality:
And yes, I really do believe tax is a good thing.
And I really do believe a lot of people want to pay it.
And that we have a duty to say so.
But I’d stress: the opinions stated are my own.
4 Responses to “Tax is a good thing”
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Richard,
I left this on another area of your blog but this seems more appropriate. I was in your audience (with Michael Meacher) at the Compass “No Turning Back” event on Saturday. In response to a question from the audience on the Land Value Tax – as promoted by The Observer in a recent article, you commented (according to my notes) that “this was OK but not enough on its own”. Would you be kind enough to clarisy that so that I can report back to my group here in Oxford?
Regards and thanks for an inspiring address
Paddy Magee
Paddy
My point was simple: there is nothing wrong with LVT. It’s a good tax
But it cannot be, as some claim, the only or main source of tax revenue
To make a tax system work you need a wide variety of tools to ensure that the tax base is as wide as possible and the gaps between them as small as possible. In that way justice is created
So LVT needs to be one of many taxes
That was my point
Richard
The point that we supporters wish you to accept is that land value tax is a MAJOR tax base. It’s a tax shift which could bring about huge benefits to the economy if collected at the full rate. Tinkering about with tiny fractions as is done in many countries does the principle no service. Most of us do not try to push the single-tax advocated by Henry George in the 19th century.
By the way, I don’t know Paddy and am curious about his ‘group … in Oxford’.