Peter Smith

A copy of some  correspondence  I have made on how a Land  Value  Rent system would  greatly  help rural planning and economics. Sue you have hit the nail on the head for rural people and rural jobs, but increased need for food or wood fuel is just a small part of the overall picture and the majority of the reasons behind this is to form a legal mechanism for very rich people to speculate and avoiding paying tax on their earnings: A rental charge on the value of land would remove the need for land purchase from speculators and so called ‘investors’. Only people wanting to use the land would want to buy it, so land prices would fall a lot, well over 70%, and it would be economic for small holders to purchase land if they are serious in farming it and thus incurring the rental charge as to its underlying value. (obviously there are ways to lower its value and thus rental charge to those who are serious about supporting wildlife on that land as I have descri...

  All Agricultural subsidies just end up in landowners pockets and are capitalised into increased land value - such is the logical extension of  Ricardo's Law of Economic Rent, for anyone interested classical economics.   We are essentially giving non means tested income support to the country's wealthiest people taken from the income taxes of hard working people.   I cannot believe that we do not have economists advising politicians and defra on this logical outcome of our agri environment system. Our land subsidies are basically saying the taxpayer must fund wildlife and the landowner is to be compensated for not destroying the wildlife on his land. The idea of subsidies giving a yearly rent to landowners for having some wildlife on their land is a logically very bad and is unsustainable for the tax payer, The privilege of holding freehold should conifer a duty to maintain its natural wealth without the direct input of the taxpayer. Landowners should be taxed if th...

The Great British Land Heist by Peter Smith The recent political turmoil provoked by the Government proposal to sell the nation’s woodland was a travesty of public policy. Unfortunately even though the Government has now ‘U turned,’ the sad fact is it will continue to sell off public woodland, but just at a slower pace. The historical trend of the loss of public land will continue, the taxpayer will continue to be burdened and wildlife will suffer because of the greed of the few. To understand the catastrophe that has befallen us we must first learn of the powerful political and economic forces that have been behind this policy. The calamity of the land continues, as it has generation after generation, and whenever a strange political idea or tax break comes to be public policy you have to ask who will gain from this. Politics, as so well put by Ambrose Bierce, is best described as “a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principle” and “the conduct of public affairs for ...