Q. How would the North-South Divide be healed with Annual Ground Rent/Land Value Tax?
A. By collecting and distributing the returns (growing site values – biggest at the economic centre) on taxes invested in amenities by EVERYONE.
A proportional distribution of returns on taxes invested in amenities by the UK regions (including Scotland) would have made the UK Idea a union of equals. Prosperity produced by working together would have been shared.
Instead we have endemic and accelerating inequality: those socially-produced returns go to UK site owners, engendering a community of landlords fattened on unearned wealth (extracted from its producers).
Government failure to collect the AGR/LVT we all produce causes the rabid land speculation at the root of the housing crisis. Public services are starved whilst landlords celebrate. Renters of homes become their indentured servants for life. Communities at the margin decay: businesses there cannot afford the landlords’ replacement taxes on wages and trade. They are destroyed. Employment is gone and citizens there must die on average up to 20 years early.
AGR/LVT please!