Editorial introducing the January 2002 Issue of Land&Liberty
The secret of the riddle of whether cities can be renewed by placing emphasis on how tax reform is able to deliver the self-financing public services people want is to be found in the way these services cover their own costs by creating additional value.
This additional value surfaces in the land market, but unless it is captured as public revenue, the services people so desire can never be self-financing. It is a puzzle that has defeated all the world's governments - except for Hong Kong - until now, and it is the main theme of this issue.
Jubilee the biblical concept that ordained the restoration of land to the people who had lost it features significantly in many articles inside.
In Britain, the Jubilee Line of London's underground rail system has aroused significant political debate, stoked by the publication of Taken for a Ride, which quantifies the losses to the public sector through the land market, and explains why governments have to inflict damaging taxes on people's private earnings. The fallout from the book is described on page 16.
It is a volume that has caught the imagination of politicians and businessmen. In this issue Bob Kiley, London's transport commissioner, and Dave Wetzel, Transport for London's vice chairman, discuss the book's message and explain why they support the idea of harvesting land value for the benefit of the community as a whole.
You will find a report on controversial proposals being hotly debated in Philadelphia, where the Liberty Bell is etched with an extract from Leviticus: “And ye shall hallow the 50th year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. But can Philadelphia's government adopt this sacred message in a modern form?
Britain's media is now spreading the jubilee message. According to an editorial in The Guardian last November: “One impost that is both fair and inescapable is a tax on the increased value of land. This tax could potentially yield very large sums and would only be extracting part of the fortuitous capital gains people derive from land prices going up whether because of development (like the Jubilee Line) or scarcity.
If [the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon] Brown wants a debate about taxation, let it be as wide ranging as possible. Taxes will never be popular, but they can be democratic.
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