{"id":1047,"date":"2018-03-14T14:50:42","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T14:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slrg.scot\/?p=1047"},"modified":"2018-03-14T15:29:34","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T15:29:34","slug":"the-uk-idea-as-currently-structured-cannot-work-for-many-scots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slrg.scot\/blog\/the-uk-idea-as-currently-structured-cannot-work-for-many-scots\/","title":{"rendered":"The ‘UK idea’, as currently structured, cannot work for most Scots"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ian Kirkwood<\/strong><\/p>\n

Life at the UK margin, including much of Scotland, is blotted out by taxes on wages and trade. It’s why enterprises and jobs hardly exist at Scotland’s more remote or otherwise marginal locations. But this imbalance can be addressed: by instead collecting the site values we all generate together. Because site rental values are high at the economic centre and low at the margin<\/em>. If these were treated as state revenue, everyone would pay their surplus and no more: life would be revived and enterprises reborn at the margin.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Wages and trade taxes are jealously guarded\u00a0at Westminster with ‘good’ reason: Taxes invested in London and the southeast automatically boost site values by 400% (e.g. site values were multiplied by a factor of four to five on completion of\u00a0the Jubilee Line extension).<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

But those returns belong to tax payers<\/em>, including those attempting to live at the geographic and economic periphery. The UK Idea could and would serve all its citizens – even at the margin – if the returns on invested taxes were fairly shared. But only site owners get them (and\u00a0in outrageous disproportion\u00a0at the economic centres), despite the fact that\u00a0they do nothing<\/em> to earn the \u00a3millions they pocket largely tax free. It is unearned wealth extracted<\/em> form its producers (…you and me!). Hence underfunded public services, widespread social dislocation and rampant inequality.<\/p>\n

It’s time to replace damaging VAT and income taxes with AGR\/LVT. Holyrood now has devolved power to cancel one third of the annual Westminster damage (1\/3 of up to \u00a372bn\/year in Scotland) by replacing a large slice of Income Tax with locally collected AGR\/LVT.<\/p>\n

What will Holyrood do?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ian Kirkwood Life at the UK margin, including much of Scotland, is blotted out by taxes on wages and trade. It’s why enterprises and jobs hardly exist at Scotland’s more remote or otherwise marginal locations. But this imbalance can be addressed: by instead collecting the site values we all generate together. Because site rental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slrg.scot\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slrg.scot\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slrg.scot\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slrg.scot\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slrg.scot\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1047"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/slrg.scot\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1059,"href":"https:\/\/slrg.scot\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions\/1059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slrg.scot\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slrg.scot\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slrg.scot\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}