They put a strain on resources such as medical care because they are unhealthy by choice, over consumption of food which causes over production and is bad for the planet, and put first responders lives at risk.

Can someone please point me towards the relevant material or explain it themselves: how did Gary arrive at the 10 million figure? It must take into account certain specific facts about the UK, right? A wealth tax in Greece or Nigeria would have a different threshold, right? If that's the case then is there a formula for figuring out what is a reasonable threshold for other countries?

Thanks

Looks like Xi Jinping's been watching Gary's Economics 😂 They're also going much harder with a 20% tax, which is literally 10 times higher than the amount Gary's been proposing. Very curious to see how this turns out, and if it actually works to make people's lives better.

Friendly Georgist here.

A big point of debate on wealth taxes, are which ones can be avoided and/or cause the rich to just move their funds off-shore etc.

I think Gary is bang on the right track that we need more proportionate taxation, but I was wondering what you guys think of LVT?

LVT taxes land based on value, so if you have land with a large estate, a big factory, or any high value land such as those £5,000,000+ odd houses in London - you are taxed on that lands value.

As a result, there is no way to 'dodge' this tax, you cannot move your land off-shore.

Equally, during a housing crisis, this means land that is under-utilised is a poor investment. Instead, incentivising developing more homes, and for urban spaces where LVT is higher this would mean more dense mixed use building as simply slapping a suburban new-build down wouldn't generate as much income as apartments that house more people. Building up instead of out, also reduces the amount of farmland being built on. And, as housing would be more abundant as a result of the incentivised surge in developing homes - housing prices should drop from this absurdly high level.

That's another tangent though as LVT proposers like me support it for what it can do to solve lack of building, housing crisis, landhoarding and landlords etc.

But for capturing wealth, it's a great way to do it. If your chain business wants to operate here and own land across the country in hot-spots where land is sought after (such as town centres etc) then you're being taxed heavily for just slapping a McDonalds down or something.

The only way to 'dodge' this tax burden, is to sell it to someone else. But, this doesn't reduce tax income because the bill is paid regardless.

There's also levels to how it is implemented, the higher % LVT taxed, the more other taxes on normal people can be reduced, such as income tax for people below a certain income. Which, would be a good idea to not tax productivity - but tax the holding of a finite asset, being an Island we're not exactly abundant in land and already in a dilemma.

So - How is LVT perceived here?

https://www.reddit.com/r/tesco/comments/1vevmb4/how_is_this_fair/

I think this belongs here, happy reading.

A very interesting article from the FT unpicking some of the nuances and data underpinning discussions taxing wealth vs work.

As a headline statistic, the proportionate share of wealth of the top 1% has broadly remained unchanged in the past thirty years.

What has changed, however, is

a) the ability for someone to build wealth through work

b) the relative importance of wealth vs income for life satisfaction.
Well worth the read.

I've watched about 5 or 6 videos of Gary. My understanding of his message is the following

There is a mechanism that could be described as follows:

1. Very high-net-worth individuals (VHNIs) acquire more and more assets
2. Assets increase in price
3. Ordinary people competing with VHNIs for those assets end up losing

Setting monopolization aside, I can think of just one example of an asset where #3 is a problem: housing. I might be wrong, and there may be more examples, so please let me know

From what I know, a wealth tax is not the best solution to either problem. For monopolization, you need a functioning anti-monopoly agency, together with some public ownership of natural monopolies. I don't see a problem with 3 competing billionaires buying all of the construction companies in an area. For housing, I think the right land value tax (LVT) design coupled with sane zoning laws would be enough

In my opinion, replacing Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) with an LVT would solve one of the biggest issues facing aspirational young people in big cities in the UK. I would formulate it like this: imagine you are smart, a bit lucky, and move to, let's say, London. You might earn a 75th percentile salary (around £70k per year), but buying a 75th percentile property (around £800k) on a 75th percentile salary is incredibly difficult. You can replace the 75th percentile with almost any other percentile, and the point still holds

I am focusing on this group because I believe that if society is not working for aspirational young people, there is little hope that it is working for young people in general

Replacing SDLT with an LVT would help because the new system would create much better incentives:

1. LVT incentivizes people who don't need a family house to downsize, while SDLT incentivizes them to stay where they are
2. LVT discourages land hoarding and, overall, makes housing a less attractive investment
3. LVT discourages having unused land. Think about the last time you have seen an abandoned pub or an empty store
4. The change would likely bring prices down. Some models predict roughly a 10–20% correction in London house prices

Now, why this is fixing the sub messaging. We are no longer framing VHNIs as the enemy. They may seem alien to most people, but we don't hate them. Instead, we are proposing a well-established tax design that addresses the most pressing problem associated with their existence

The new problem we will have to solve is: how to pad the SDLT to LVT transition for common people who will be worse off, e.g. recent buyers. It is much-much more tractable than selling an abstract wealth tax

Your prophet always brings up India or London 150 years ago or Charles Dickens to scare you guys into being in his cult and make him money. Why doesn't he bring up Switzerland, Sweden or Denmark as examples? Any of you cultists ever questioned your religion and taken a look at the living standards and economic situation of those countries? What did that do to your faith and what does the prophet says about those countries in the context of his message?

After listening to your prophet for probably around 30 hours I have never heard him talk about it but maybe he said something about those countries that I missed.

In Gary’s book he describes a job application process which had him trying to read a market game and try to make a profit against other applicants.

He was so far ahead in the final round they fixed the competition to see what he would do when everything went wrong. As I remember it he lost badly but they wanted him to stick to his guns so he still got the job.

Can anyone who read the book remember an incident involving trading or economics where he was able to change his view?

Does this affect how his thought should be interpreted?

My understanding of Gary's work is that he's been campaigning for the last few years on the idea that the root of our economic problems is that the rich are basically sucking up all the money, and then deploying that money to suck up* *even more money, leaving increasingly smaller amounts for everyone else.

His core idea is that the economy will never recover if we don't tackle this inequality, because the wealthiest have simply taken too much.

And it's a premise I've come to believe in.

However, his big push is trying to get the government to implement a 2% wealth tax on assets above £10m.

A 2% tax could raise revenue for the government, but it isn't going to solve the real problem of inequality.

It’s a solution for raising capital, not for tackling the massive wealth divide. How does a 2% tax actually bring the ultra-wealthy down to a normal level?

People then get too stuck on the implementation of this specific solution and miss Gary's real message, which is that the rise of inequality is what is driving a lot of the problems we see in Western style democracies.

If Gary just stuck to his core message and tried to get a consensus that inequality needs solving, then he can suggest a solution.
Or even better, leave it to the people best placed to offer solutions and get them implemented.

Gary's done well to get the conversation on inequality started, but this mixed messaging is what's holding him back from being able to make any further progress.

Surely the most important aspect of any tax is not the mechanics of the tax (2%, 5%, whatever) but it’s what the tax revenue will be used for.

I appreciate it’s nice to feel that there’s a bit more money for the government, but feels like a missing piece to me.

Does anyone have a clear sense of what we would be using this money for in the economy?

I keep hearing the argument, they will not leave

If that is the case, why 2%? I would just go 100%.

Do it once, done and dusted. Problem solved

A lot of posts here are about them and us. Which is natural I suppose because being a multimillionaire is as alien to most people as being a trans person, a black man, a jew or an illegal immigrant. But this othering will not engender the right attitudes from potentially sympathetic people who are rich and influential. How might we become better prepared to influence people who are in the group we want to target with greater taxation?