"If you are young in Britain today, you are being taken for a ride"

Via HPC Survivor's Group, from The New Statesman:

The young are discriminated against in ways in which it would be illegal to differentiate between men and women, or between more and less disabled people, or on the basis of race or religion…

Concluding with this:

It is the very poorest of the young who are suffering most, but the living standards of the average young person in Britain are also deteriorating and young people’s hopes are evaporating. Young people who do comparatively well are also being hit hard. The £9,000-a-year university tuition fee looks very similar to a 49 per cent marginal rate of tax for future graduates, a rate being held in reserve, ready for when they achieve a modest income in the future. However, unlike a general tax that can be used for the common good, their 9 per cent top-up tax rate will go to the rich who buy the loan book.

Finally, what of the most successful of university graduates, the ones who go on to get a starter job in the City, and look to buy that tiny flat close to work? What will happen when they take out their 95 per cent mortgage and start repaying one-twenty-fifth of the borrowed capital out of what they take home after tax? For a few years they might be able to do it, just – until interest rates rise.

The vast majority of our young people are being ripped off. Have we taught them so badly that they do not know it?

Friday meet-up

Same time, same place.

i.e. Friday evening (8 November) from about 5.20 pm onwards at The Brewmaster pub near Leicester Square Tube station.

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From the FT:

 

Queen Bess was the first Georgist (1)

 

Sir, In your report Taxpayers to lose out over 'Crossrail effect' on property" (October 29) you quote transport expert Christian Wolmar as saying: "In the UK we've never developed a sophisticated way of capturing that added value."

 

The system was developed and introduced hundreds of years ago by Queen Elizabeth I and was known as Poor Rates, an early or simplified form of land value tax and the direct precursor of Agricultural Rates, Domestic Rates (both phased out long ago) and Business Rates (still in existence).

 

It is worth noting that Poor Rates were used to finance a very basic welfare system, thus making her the first Georgist!

 

The beauty of land value tax is that there is no need to establish exactly why rental values go up or down or to correlate it to particular amenities, whether provided by the government, natural features or the general benefits of "location, location, location".

 

But in the case of Crossrail, it is worth noting that the resulting rental value uplift on the eastern end of Oxford Street alone, if captured by land value tax, would be sufficient to cover a half the costs of the entire Crossrail project.(2)

 

Mark Wadsworth, Treasurer, Young People's Party, Buckhurst Hill, Essex

 

1) They accompanied the letter with a picture of Henry George, with the caption "Henry George was an American writer, politician and political economist"

 

2) Workings here.