[To THE EDITOR OP TEE " SPECTLTOC.1 SIR,—In his letter
last week Mr•. Hemmerde adduced the instance of the Duke of Northumberland selling land for £931 14s. an acre which was rated at £2 an acre, and you com- mented upon the case in a footnote. In criticism of that footnote, may I be allowed to state what I conceive to be the contention of advocates of the taxation or local taxation of land values ? The contention is not so much that landowners are lacking in morality or in public spirit in getting as much as they can for their land, but rather that we British people are lacking in intelligence in allowing those who follow the trade of landowning to be rated upon the nominal value of land, the actual rental return from valuable land, rather than upon the yearly equivalent of its market value, of its true capital value. It is our vicious rating system that prevents land from coming freely into the market for use, and causes unemployment and bad housing and low wages by constantly facilitating and encouraging a " lock-out " of labour and capital from the land.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Previous page
