Quote of the day

I don’t believe in the “is-ought fallacy”. Objective shouldness simply doesn’t exist, whether derived from an “is” or not.

http://james-g.com/2012/07/salterism-refuted-removing-wheels-from-racial-idealist-heads/

Incidental improvements caused by Land Value Tax

(The distinction between Direct and Indirect improvements is dubious.)

Direct improvements caused by Land Value Tax (or Location Value Tax, or LVT):

• No taxes on income (which discourage production/work)
• No taxes on transactions (which discourage transactions)
• No taxes on capital (which discourage the building up of capital, and prevent people escaping inflation)
• No taxes on companies (which increase prices, decrease wages, and discourage entrepreneurship and the building up of capital)

Indirect improvements caused by LVT:

• No need for tax accountants
• No self-assessments or tax returns
• No need for pension funds or a distinct pensions industry
• You could invest your pension anywhere tax free (e.g. in wine, houses, loans...)

Please add suggestions in the comments.

Maurice Glasman is an idiot

I listened to "Start The Week" on Radio 4, on Monday 16th January 2012.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019f8b5

I listened to hear Detlev Schlichter, who is excellent. But Lord Maurice Glasman also featured.

Rob Fisher struggled to comprehend Glasman, and so wisely decided to ignore him.

http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/01/schlichter_on_s.html

I decided not to ignore Glasman, and found that he was talking nonsense.

He says at one point something like "the Labour Theory of Value is true; that's why I support the Labour Movement". What an idiot. The two things are not related, despite them sharing a word. The LTV is the theory that the value in a thing is a function of the amount of labour it took to create it. The Labour Movement is to do with workers' rights etc.

Later on, he elaborates. It turns out that he thinks the alternative to the Labour Theory of Value is the Capital Theory of Value: that the value of a thing is a function of the amount of capital it took to create it. This is why he thinks that it is relevant to the Labour Movement: if you think Labour is more important than Capital, you will want workers to be paid more. (In a free market, labour and capital will be remunerated according to the value they add.)

He apparently has not heard of the Subjective Theory of Value, despite the fact that it has been known to be correct, and the LTV and the CTV to be wrong, for well over a hundred years.

He later advocates banning foreign investment, saying that people should only be allowed to invest within their county. He doesn't notice the conflict between this and his bemoaning his claim that profits aren't as high as they used to be.

What an idiot. Why the hell is he in the House of Lords?