We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Down with the hoarders! Will Hutton: “Farmers have hoarded land for too long. Inheritance tax will bring new life to rural Britain”.
“Inheritance tax springs from the universally held belief that society has the right to share when wealth is transferred on death as a matter of justice.”
It is not universal.
“This is not confiscation, especially if the lion’s share of the bequest is left intact.”
It is confiscation.
“It is asking for a share.”
It is not asking.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
When every other sentence is a lie.
David Thompson, I was going to quip that you could probably delete the word “other”, but as a matter of fact Will Hutton does have a whole true paragraph in there:
I sometimes thought I was the only person left who knew about the Primrose League, having found about it from a P.G. Wodehouse story. Hutton frames the League as being a survival of feudalism, but its membership did indeed eclipse that of the trade unions – yet the influence of trade unions on British history is discussed a thousand times more than the Primrose League is.
So Will Hutton thinks that theft is just fine and dandy just because reasons? The obvious response to that is to go around to his place and help yourself to his stuff.
Ah but, Natalie Solent, the police probably didn’t round up and beat the Primrose leaguers. What were trade union numbers in 1891? It wasn’t really until after the Great War that unions became mass movements with a bit of power. The Primrose leaguers probably had the power but never the numbers to be a mass movement.
gnome, according to its Wikipedia entry, the membership of the Primrose League was “well over a million by the early 1890s”. The article suggests that it reached its peak around 1900. That is not incompatible with your comments about the unions only really becoming mass movements after the Great War, but the League undoubtedly was a mass movement. Mass popular Conservatism preceded mass popular socialism.
There’s a whole literature showing that through itself and associated groups like the Primrose League, the conservatives were the most massive movement party well up to past the 1950s, even taking into account the unions being associated with Labour.
I am completely contemptuous of today’s Conservative party, but the party of Disraeli, Salisbury, Baldwin, etc had some very praiseworthy characteristics.
If, by “new life”, you mean the consolidation of many many small farm properties into the ownership of four or six very-large food-based conglomerates within ten years, then, yes. Whee! New life!
I’ll guess that it’s easier for government to rule over and tax and take from six huge farm corporations rather than hundreds of small unruly limited holdings. No messy kulaks to handle as the profit – and even sustenance – goes out of food production. You can do firm five-year plans with that kind of consolidation.
I will translate the dishonest Will Hutton’s statement.
He means that tax should be used to force families to sell their land to financial entities – pension funds and so on. Often today international financial entities.
And by “society” Will Hutton does NOT mean society (i.e. the voluntary cooperation of people) he means the state (which is based upon force and fear) – the opposite of Civil Society.
The great mistake is to think that people like Will Hutton are making honest intellectual errors – they are not, in reality they know very well the harm the Collectivism they demand does.
They enjoy doing harm – that is why they do harm. There is no honest intellectual error involved – no “knowledge problem”.
Will Hutton was writing in the Guardian newspaper (he often does) – which, as far back as the 1930s, covered up the deaths of millions of people in the socialist Soviet Union and sacked any journalist who tried to get the truth to the public. This was not an isolated incident – the Guardian has supported totalitarian regimes, again and again.
The Collectivists know what their policies lead to – and they like, they enjoy, the suffering of the public (the people) that their policies lead to.
To defeat the enemy we must first understand that they are enemies (that they are motivated by the desire to do harm) – they are not misguided friends.
Martin – Disraeli started the rise of the state, even as a proportion of society.
He went into the 1874 election promising to get rid of income tax (Lord Liverpool had done so – but it came back a couple of decades later), but, instead, increased it – and Disraeli also put about 40 functions onto local government (whether the local taxpayers wanted these things done by the council or not) and put unions partly above the law (thus pushing structural unemployment) – both of these things were done in 1875 and were called “Social Reform”. Already the Liberal Party government (headed by Gladstone – sadly badly advised by others) had pushed Education Boards (the 1870 Act – although these were not compulsory till 1891) and had started “Public Prosecution” – the idea that the state should be in charge of prosecution of offences committed against private individuals (not just offences committed against the Crown).
Yes a modest amount of statism compared to the nightmare of today – but the 1870s were the start (the modest start, it was still basically a free society) of the decline of liberty in the United Kingdom.
For a very long time living standards continued to improve, in spite of (in spite of – not because of) the increase in statism. Due to capital growth and improving technology. For example, living standards were vastly better in 1960 than they had been in 1860 – in spite of the state being vastly bigger.
But even living standards have started to slip in recent times – if one looks at the real standard of life rather than underestimated official inflation figures.
I am not in favour of inheritance taxes.
I realise that farms have to be of a minimum size to be viable.
But – the inheritors of a department store or chain of shops have to pay inheritance tax while the inheritors of a farm do not. Both may have a land value which makes the actual income a very poor return. There are business reliefs but I don’t think that they apply to real property assets.
So, in all seriousness, I am asking why farms are exempt. Being close to death why not invest your assets in a farm?
Disraeli was famously (or infamously) uninterested in the “details” of policy – what policy would actually lead to, the sort of facts that had so interested Lord Liverpool, Robinson, Canning and others in the 1820s (when “Dizzy” was a very young man).
As long as the intentions were good (“help the poor” or some other slogan) he did not really care about anything else – for example, Disraeli did not even read his own housing Bill – the intention was to “help the people”, so who cared what the Act of Parliament said or would do in practice.
The liberal John Morley started off as a supporter of some “Social Reform” – but study and thought led him to the conclusion that more government spending and regulations (i.e. “Social Reform”) made things worse, rather than better, than they otherwise would be.
Sadly John Morley could not convince his young friend Winston Churchill of this fact – Churchill did, eventually (basically) come to this conclusion – but not till much later in life.
Alexander “Boris” Johnson sometimes reminded me of Disraeli and the young Churchill (and I am sure the comparison would please Mr Johnson) – as long as the intentions are good, who cares what the policy (for example wild government spending) will actually do (that is their attitude).
Still at least the intentions of these men were good (even though their domestic policies had bad results) – the point about Will Hutton and co is that their intentions are bad, they know that their policies will lead to harm – and that pleases them (they enjoy it).
What Bobby b said.
The taxes of envy.
If the principal was to raise tax money to pay for stuff then it is better to leave assets in the hands of those who make use of them and pay taxes ongoing on their earnings.
Depriving a tax paying productive farmer of the means to pay those taxes is not going to achieve a constant income.
The proposal is nothing to do with paying for the NHS, it is about controlling people.
I believe that the business relief does cover business assets
A thousand years’ worth of hoarders are dead but the land is still there.
The nature of land and its uses are terrible problems for government.
Can’t make it do what you tell it, can’t just switch one gang of enemy farmers for your political cronies who don’t know how, can’t destroy it, can’t inflate it away…
Clarkson is doing a better thing than he knows.
This budget was characterized by stupidity and spite.
Stupidity because, despite the pressing need to increase Government revenues, few if any of the measures proposed will do so.
Spite needing no further explanation.
Staghounds wrote: ‘A thousand years’ worth of hoarders are dead but the land is still there.’
Not to go all OT, but this made me think. I like to watch an old UK TV show called ‘Time Team’, where a bunch of telegenic archaeologists go out and dig up a cornfield somewhere in the UK, and a foot or two below the surface, they expose a flawless Roman mosaic floor, or the post-holes of an Iron Ahe round house. It’s hard to grasp how very close we are to such ancient activities, just a foot or two away. And the amazing arrogance of those who think that their enlightened thinking, taught to them at the finest universities, will somehow produce better results on the land and in society than the thousands of years of experience embodied in that couple of feet of separation. To pay for the NHS, my arse. The NHS will be long-forgotten before even a couple more inches of soil separate us from those hidden memories.
I warned you it was OT 🙂
llater,
llamas
I like Time Team also! I know a British farmer who has an iron age hill fort, a Roman villa farm, and a plague destroyed village all on his 400 acres.
Didn’t take off in the U. S. though.
Because there is no “enough”, and because those who sell the service are the ones who order it up, the NHS will eventually absorb everything and still need more.
I thought death duties came along in the 1890s although I could be wrong. Whatever the case, they had their effect. By the 1920s, estate after estate was being broken up. I’m sure that’s what broke aristocratic power – for better or worse; probably worse.
By the way, the Primrose League was far from unique. As I understand it, the German Navy League, for instance, also had a huge membership.
I collected political badges at one point and have a Primrose League one, circa 1900 iirc
I’m against inheritance taxes. The assets that are to be taxed after death have (mostly) been built from income already taxed.
I’m afraid it is just another twist of the Labour Class War against classes they dislike for ideological reasons.
Well I did say they had ‘some praiseworthy characteristics’, not that I approved of everything they did. In the context of the Primrose League (named in honour of Disraeli as Primrose was said to be his favourite flower), I was referring to the fact that the Tories under leaders like Disraeli, Salisbury, and Baldwin were very good at adapting to an increasingly mass democracy and transforming it from an arguably aristocratic rump into the predominant party and a mass movement that buried the Liberals and for the longest time eclipsed Labour.
I will say that whatever errors Disraeli had, his opposition to civil service ‘reform’ redeems him. Under a spoils system you can get rid of obstructive bureaucracies and even entire departments if you wish following a successful election. As we have seen, under a professional civil service, you really can’t reverse the size of the state, whatever happens come election time. By supporting such ‘reform’ of the civil service, Gladstone was more pernicious in the long run than Disraeli.
As for the contemporary farmers protests, the media are doing their best to be even more awful than the Labour government. What a set of horrible cretins.
Question: each of the points Natalie makes: it is not universal, it is confiscation and it is not “asking” are true of all taxes. I think these death taxes are horrible, but I also think the income tax is horrible. So most of the arguments against it are just as valid against the income tax. I suppose you can be especially outraged at inheritance tax because it is money that has already been taxed, it is imposed on people at the worst time in their lives, and it breaks up ongoing businesses. But a lot of those are true of the income tax too.
I’m not saying I’m in favor of this. I hate the inheritance tax. I just hate the income tax with almost as much vehemence.
Universally held belief?
I assume Hutton means that it is universally believed by everyone he knows.
‘Liberals’ are very insular.
It has much more in common with Kami’s proposed taxation of unrealized gain.
An income tax is generally paid from an easily divisible pile of money. An inheritance tax – like a tax on the gain in your house’s value year to year – will frequently require liquidation of that asset for payment.
It is indeed taxable gain. But, as in so many other taxation discussions, the decision as to the timing of the taxable event is as important as the level.
One of the most pernicious practices of liberals (and practically any progressive) is they arrogantly claim they hold universal beliefs, too insular and stuffed with hubris to realise that what they believe is just another particularism among many.
bobby b
It has much more in common with Kami’s proposed taxation of unrealized gain.
I think this is a great point, that is indeed the problem — liquidiation on an asset that has been assessed a value rather than sold for a price.
I still hate the income tax.
FWIW, I understand that the government needs funds, so my preference is that they just grow the money supply by a fixed amount — preferably fixed in the constitution — of maybe 4% each year and use that to fund operations. That way we all pay a flat tax via inflation and rich people pay a lot more that poor people. Being a fan of federalism — where government is kept in check by giving people the option to opt out — this fulfills that. If I don’t like it I can put my money in some non dollar denominated value like pesos or gold or bitcoin, and all the government’s inflation doesn’t impact me much. This offers a constraint on how much the government can charge. I see it kind of like a charge for using the US Dollar (or UKP.) Of course it would require a balanced budget amendment. I think Milton Friedman is the originator of this idea. And of course it is a flight of fancy. The income tax is really more about controlling people than funding government these days.
Supposedly the forced sale of farmland to meet inheritance tax bills will make land available to ‘new entrants to farming’ desperate to sign up for a life of seven-day working weeks tending crops and livestock for a financial return that’s probably less than they could earn flipping burgers or delivering parcels.
Presumably these ‘new entrants to farming’ don’t have the necessary millions stashed under the bed or down the back of the sofa, so let’s imagine the reaction of the financiers:
Bank: “So you want a loan for £3million to buy a farm? Hmmm…. let’s say the annual interest on repayments will be about 4 to 5%. And yet the market prices of farm produce means the annual yield on that farm will be about 1 to 2% of its value. So how do you expect to service the loan, let alone have anything left over to live on? In your dreams, kiddo; stop wasting our time.”
@Zerren Yeoville: I fear you do not see the fullness of the socialist plan which includes a new Farm Finance Department of HM Treasury where careful and wise advisors will provide farm purchase finance to young, intelligent, hard working and honest youth of the proletariat.
Or maybe to old, stupid, lazy, corrupt and well connected friends of the regime.
Banks will have nothing to do with it.
Llamas:
Time Team once did a dig at a site a few miles from me. They didn’t find a thing! Not a button, not a coin. Nothing. I conclude either that nothing much has ever happened in that part of Cheshire (possible, it’s a quiet place) or that its farmers were very careful people who never lost anything (also possible). It did make for a disappointing programme though.
Corporations and other artificial “persons” such as pension funds (commercial or charitable) do not pay inheritance tax (because they do not die) and in many countries (including the United Kingdom and the United Kingdom) pay lower income and property taxes (they can deduct their property tax from their taxable income before it is subject to corporation tax – and Corporation Tax is much lower than the top rate of Individual Income Tax anyway) than individuals and families do.
The late Milton Friedman argued that this was O.K. – because corporate entities were just tools of the individuals who owned them, but this is clearly not the case – as most shares are not controlled by individuals (in the United Kingdom most shares have not been owned and controlled by individuals since 1965), the idea that (for example) BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard are controlled by little individual “Aunt Agatha” style shareholders is utterly absurd.
So the question follows – is the control of the economy by corporate entities (such as, in the United States, Black Rock, State Street and Vanguard – plus the Credit Bubble banks who, like Black Rock and co, are dependent on the Corporate Welfare Money of the Federal Reserve) a good idea or not?
I think it is a bad idea. The economy, of the United States the United Kingdom and so on, should NOT be controlled by a handful of vast corporate entities who depend on the Corporate Welfare funny money of the Central Bank (which they get first and at lower rates of interest – Cantillon Effect).
A future where most land (including most homes) is either owned by the government or owned by these “partner corporations” would be a very bad future.
Socialists have always hated & envied the kulaks. Rafal Ganowicz’s apposite remark comes to mind often these days.
I left a similar comment on a Linkedin page where a tax advisor rightly horrified by the Hutton article made a comment. This is my response in the main, but I add some other points:
The case for forced redistribution of wealth stems from the collectivist premise that all wealth, including the ideas and skills we have as people as well as our physical “stuff”, are owned by everyone, and that it is wrong for anyone to benefit from good fortune.
The point has even been made that we cannot claim credit for being hardworking, or diligent or for having ambition because these traits are ultimately down to luck, such as having good parents. Then the collectivist, based on what is this determinist view, says that all the end-state inequalities that are generated, even in consensual interactions in a market, must be destroyed. The only exception to this is to keep incentives in place if that expands the whole pie. This is the argument presented by the Harvard academic John Rawls in the early 1970s in his book, A Theory of Justice.
This argument is essentially nonsense, because it starts from what is basically an assertion, namely, that the collective mass of all people, including those not even born yet, have a collective claim, that can be made real by threat of jail if needed, on our wealth, our skills, our very persons. In its purest form, this leads to tyranny. In the form we see in the UK and other countries, it leads to surliness, resentment, a declining worth ethic, and an understandable sense of why should anyone give a damn about trying to improve one’s lot if the tax collector gets to work?
Patterns of land holding can be, true, influenced by taxation. However, in the case of modern agriculture, while land prices were certainly influenced by tariffs and subsidies after WW2 in the UK, such as from the old Common Agricultural Policy of the EEC, forces can go the other way too, such as in the form of higher energy costs, rising fertiliser prices, changing dietary fads and so on. I cannot be bothered to read the whole Hutton article but I wonder if he mentions central bank quantitative easing as an inflationary factor, because that would be a decent point to make. But it is odd in my view that a lot of socialists, which is what he is, give central banks a pass too often.
The “hoarding” point is nonsense anyway: farmers in much of the UK are making tight margins and spend much of their lives living on a 364-revolving credit facility, aka bank overdraft, because of their mismatch of cash and assets. (If you think about it, this is why banks exist.) It is a strange sort of “hoarding” where you see such thin margins. Also, farmers whose land is classed as prime land for food typically cannot build on it, or turn it into golf courses, factories, sports centres or rocket launchpads. I’d actually like to see land use planning liberalised to encourage a more diverse use of some land, including putting it within reach of lots of small hobbyists who might want to grow a bit of their own food, or keep animals, and so on. (Ferdinand Mount, a former advisor to Mrs Thatcher, argues this in his book, Mind The Gap, which does talk about inequalities but in a way that is far more practical and liberty-friendly than Hutton, who is essentially hostile the very idea of land ownership at all, as far as I can see.
It’s also a universally held belief that every now and then politicians and bureaucrats need to hang from lamp posts with the help of piano wire.
Fraser Orr
November 19, 2024 at 10:04 pm
In Robert Heinlein’s 1942 novel Beyond This Horizon, the government expanded the money supply to keep pace with the increase in productivity. This funded the entire government and the surplus was distributed to all citizens. The quarterly increment was calculated by an elaborate cams-and-gears mechanism.
The envisioned society was not explicitly described as libertarian, but had distinctly libertarian aspects. Citizens routinely went armed, which kept down crime and defeated an attempted revolution.
I have come to realize than with age many, if not most of us, labour more for our children and grandchildren than ourselves.
I can barely accept that when I die my estate should be deemed to sell my assets and required to pay taxes on any deemed profits and capital gains.
Anything more than that means war.
“So, in all seriousness, I am asking why farms are exempt. Being close to death why not invest your assets in a farm?”
I agree entirely. Owners of farms should pay the same taxes as owners of other businesses. Whatever the rate of inheritance tax – and zero is a good number – it should be the same for everybody.
In the USA, at least, there was always a policy preference to keep small family farms small and family-owned. It was thought that that diversification was an overall “good” for society.
Letting Con-Agra or Cargill buy up ALL the land (instead of 75% of it) has some implications that are not great for society. But I’ll not get into that particular argument here.
Point is, that’s what has always driven these farm-protective policies in the USA.
(I suspect that that same logic has driven the tax protections given to small family businesses, to a lesser extent. But I’m less personally familiar with that issue.)
Johnathan Pearce – I agree with you.
However, Will Hutton is not really asking for the state to take this land, via taxation, so the poor will get the land – as he FALSELY claims.
Mr Hutton knows, he knows very well, that the land will NOT go to the poor – it will go, from families, to vast Corporate entities (national and international).
His words about “new blood” implying plucky small holders, are LIES.
Mr Hutton is not really making some complex intellectual error – he is just a liar.