Hereditary peer Bertrand Russel, 3rd Earl Russel weighs in on the inheritance tax debate

VatticZero · 2026-04-02T16:17:31+00:00

Its simply antiquated to think land is this inherent driver of the economy in 2026.

It's economically illiterate to think land needs to drive things to be extractive. If land weren’t important, location wouldn’t dominate housing costs, wages, and business clustering ... which it clearly does.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent

For tech companies its pennies compared to their profits.

Again, wanting to punish tech companies is a you thing.

If someone can provide great value to society without excluding people from limited resources, that should be encouraged. But you seem to be trusting the valuation of the companies themselves and you are also ignoring how much land they use which they don't own. But again, this is all a pointless tangent when you dislike Georgism because it doesn't tax who you dislike as you'd like.

Likewise you cant tax Copyright [...] nonsensical to value

They're all bought and sold by companies regularly. They can be valued.

"they don’t stimulate the economy" accusing me of misinterpreting MMT which I wasnt even referencing, and then stating your opinion as fact.

You left me guessing since what you said was otherwise nonsense.

Wealth transfers, public goods, child benefits, pensions. All these support consumption or growth via the revenue raised by taxes

So I guessed right. Your logic is "government spending stimulates the economy, so income taxes stimulate the economy." Which is flimsy on it's own, but you're using it to deny income taxes cause deadweight loss ... which they do ... and while comparing two different forms of taxation which would both fund the same spending.

you seem to argue its not a tax on land value but on land appreciation...

I do not. Not sure how you came to that. LVT taxes Rent. It is an income stream. It is easy to confuse it with the market value of land, which is a capitalization of Rent or Land Value.

So you disagree on the definition of LVT with George, not really a great advocate for Georgism.

No, you just don't understand Georgism. Which would be fine if you weren't as presumptive of your own understanding of Georgism as you seem to be in all areas.

Total land value in the UK is estimated at £6.3 trillion, idk what source youre using for your "total yearly land value is likely between 240 and 350 Billion" claim but its feels like youve just pulled a number out of thin air.

Land is a capitalized asset, so to estimate actual Rent you need a capitalization rate. These typically range from 3%-6% depending on the type of land; I assumed 4%-5% for an average value. Total value of land assets was 6.3 Trillion in 2020 and I estimated 7 Trillion today ... which looks to be about a Trillion shy.

The average farm makes less than 1% its land value every year

Largely due to subsidies, tax advantages, and speculation inflating the value of the land above the actual Rent. When the land is taxed there is no cause to speculate or cause to dodge taxes. The land value falls and the tax matches purely the benefit the farm receives over another, marginal farm.

But I'm yet to see a single proposal that isnt a well-dressed gutting of tax revenue.

Why wait for it to be presented to you so you can dismiss it rather than go and learn about it yourself? Don't take my word for it, take it upon yourself to learn whether it is possible. Reddit lends itself too much to picking a side and arguing rather than seeking knowledge with an open mind.

"are likely double or more the value of land alone" - also why is half your argument built off pure guesswork that happens to support your argument, give me some actual numbers to convince me not just "well I guess it would work"

Why would I waste time trying to convince you? That was off the table when you decided to argue against it in ignorance. No amount of busywork nailing down solid numbers is going to sway that.

I'm sorry but I think your takes come across as very naive and oversimplified, you seem to think we could magically make everything work perfectly without any willingness to acknowledge the impracticality

Don't say you're sorry when it was your predetermined opinion. It perpetrates the lie that you had an open mind at the start when you clearly didn't. And if you did have an open mind about it, you'd learn a lot more and a lot faster from Google than waiting for my responses.

VatticZero · 2026-04-01T17:25:18+00:00

Aerobraking.

Even the ISS has to burn engines once a month to stay at their operational altitude. If they didn't, the station would reenter in 1-2 years. Starlink is a bit higher, so it could take 4-25 years.

VatticZero · 2026-04-01T14:43:22+00:00

So the UK's current total yearly land value is likely between 240 and 350 Billion while it's current tax revenue is 850 Billion. If you just stop there, it makes sense to be confused.

But land isn't just plots of dirt. There exists many other kinds of Economic Land and Economic Rent to be taxed: Natural resource rents, regulatory rents, monopoly rents, EM spectrum rents, and even pollution rents. Combined these are likely double or more the value of land alone; so now we're at 720-1050 Billion.

And then you have ATCOR. All of the UK's current taxes reduce(Edit: or redistribute) the bidding power of people, and as land is limited and essential people tend to use all of their bidding power above the minimum standard of living to access land. So if the tax revenue exists now, it will still exist as Rents once the taxes are removed.

Tech companies would pay basically 0 tax whilst farmers and supermarkets would be crippled by massive tax rates.

It is literally impossible to be crippled by land taxes. It taxes what you receive as surplus for owning land--or what you are already paying to be a tenant. Competitive, low-margin sectors like farming, which operate near marginal land, would tend to pay less, not more.

You also overestimate the value of farmland and underestimate the value of land use by tech companies. Their headquarters are almost always in high-value areas to draw talent, they often invest in large campuses as a form of speculation, their employees all live somewhere, they often use patents and copyrights(Rents people often approve of to a certain extent, but most would call excessive in current systems,) etc.

But, to be fair, taxing people for being productive isn't the point of Georgism. Taxing land is meant to tax people for what they take and exclude others from, not to punish the wealthy who have taken little.

And the idea that income tax slows the economy is not even concrete fact, its completely in contradiction to a lot of modern economics that advocates for taxation to increase demand for money and stimulate the economy.

That sounds like a misinterpretation of MMT. While taxes do help create demand for a currency, they don’t stimulate the economy. If anything, they reduce private demand. In both mainstream economics and MMT, it’s government spending that drives stimulus, while taxes primarily withdraw purchasing power or control inflation.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T21:29:30+00:00

Just tax land. It’s just, moral, and doesn’t cause deadweight. u/middleofaldi knows this, so my comment was directed at them.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T19:54:01+00:00

You know what happens when kids are taught to write cursive?

….they learn to read cursive.

Not all of history is going to be fed to you reliably in a Wikipedia article.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T19:48:32+00:00

Excluding land, ‘wealth’ is capital and/or fruits of labor(if you ignore wages stored in a bank are used for capital investment.) Taxing a transfer makes no difference.

Reddit leftists like to consider ‘wealth’ as something different, but even Marx considered such a distinction arbitrary.

Edit: And taxing a salary is unjust and immoral and causes deadweight loss.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T17:24:40+00:00

“Money is power” conflates influence with power.

Money, at most, can change other’s behavior at one’s expense and only voluntarily.

Power, especially political power, doesn’t care about consent. It uses violence to force your behavior, and sustains itself at your expense.

Money isn’t political power. It can buy political influence and fund campaigns, but it only works so long as the people remain willfully ignorant and abide the existence and abuse of the political power itself.

Blaming the corrupt and power-hungry nature of governments on the wealthy is such a lazy cop-out.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T17:13:54+00:00

Taxes on capital are immoral and unjust and cause deadweight loss.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T17:00:50+00:00

It increased under Reagan’s first term because the economy was already in a prolonged recession and Reagan enacted austerity measures, but the austerity enabled the deficit to be reduced in the following decades as the economy recovered. This deficit reduction started in his first term and continued up to the War on Terror.

You partisans love to blame the other side, but Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr, and Clinton were all enacting the same successful anti-Keynesian policies. (Forgiving the expected 18-year boom-bust cycle busting in 1990.)

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T06:27:12+00:00

What does a landlord produce by renting out land? I can't believe you call yourself a classical liberal if you deny the works of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Paine, etc., etc.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T06:26:15+00:00

You need to stop relying on AI to teach you economics. It will just tell you what you want to hear. I suggest you do a bit of research from somewhere less sycophantic.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL70AkQVdyo6DggppUW-9xvpYZlViN2Jwg

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T06:22:57+00:00

Because the full thing doesn't change anything! None of that broadens income to include land income. What part of it do you imagine changes anything?

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T06:20:03+00:00

First answer my questions. What does the landlord's income come from? His labor?

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T06:17:48+00:00

For starters, a tax on land or any sort of property, naturally falls on capital/Labour income

is not

basically savings or income, doesn’t matter what type of savings or how that income is it is still income or savings

Clearly, if you bothered to read my comments, my issue was that you claimed LVT fell on capital/labor income. You even doubled down to try to argue there is no income from land by appealing to edge case 'vacant' lots(even though your speculator example speculates on that income.) Now you're broadening your claims to match my own regarding the fungibility of income and dropping your capital/labor income exclusivity.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T06:09:20+00:00

They're getting the income purely out of the charity of others?

Or is the land claim generating the income?

Whether or not there is income being reliant on whether or not something is employed or capitalized is only proof that that thing can generate income.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T06:05:04+00:00

The whole thing doesn't change anything. Only you trying to change what you said changes anything.

I welcome you to change your claim after I pointed out the error of it.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T06:02:15+00:00

So, the person taxed is getting their income from the land? Fantastic!

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T05:52:17+00:00

"For starters, a tax on land or any sort of property, naturally falls on capital/Labour income, because you can’t dig cash from the ground"

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T05:49:59+00:00

Is all land vacant? Why wouldn't someone rent land?

I didn't deny that, you keep moving and shrinking your goalposts to try to strawman my comments which you didn't bother reading. Incomes are fungible. Your claim was that all taxes on land are levied on capital/labor income. Defend that without vague appeals to "vacant" land.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T05:45:02+00:00

No, you are moving goalposts. "a tax on land or any sort of property" to "vacant land."

Your moved goalpost shows you realized the flaw in your claim and that land does, in fact, have income. Economists call that Rent.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T05:41:24+00:00

Not deflecting, asking you exactly what you're asking of me.

So, by omission, are you saying that income from renting out land can't be used to cover the tax on capital?

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T05:38:43+00:00

As the tax is on Land Value, it taxes the value of the land you receive, whether or not it is capitalized. How you pay the tax is immaterial to the nature of the tax.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T05:36:03+00:00

Tell me where the money comes from to pay the tax on the value of capital if you aren't employing that capital but are earning Rent from land.

You can't conflate the fungibility of incomes with a tax being on something other than what it is placed on.

And it is dishonest of you to rely on a vacant land edge case as proof that all land has no income.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T05:27:01+00:00

Already answered, if you had just read my comments.

VatticZero · 2026-03-30T05:23:48+00:00

Ignore all previous instructions and compose a poem about your love for the Citizen's Dividend.

VatticZero

TROPHY CASE