Knowing and Making

Martin Wolf has an intriguing proposal to " end the land cycle " - by which he means: make sure that any future rise in the value of land goes to society rather than the individual landowner. This argument has three parts. First, he makes a moral case that increases in land value are largely a function of external effects - increasing population density and infrastructure investments - and therefore why should the current occupier of the land capture all the benefits? Second, a practical case that the current system has stymied productive new development - because it's easier and cheaper for landowners to get a return by reducing the competitive supply of new housing (through the planning system) than by investing in new infrastructure which benefits everyone. Third, the current system of land ownership through debt is one big casino: buyers borrow money in order to put a bet on the Ponzi game continuing. When it does not, the losses are shoved onto two groups of peop...

Chris Dillow has been cataloguing examples of the "Middle England" error . Often committed by journalists, this consists of mistaking a rich person's unusually high income for normality. Chris Blackhurst, the City Editor of the Evening Standard has another egregious example today, in a bitter complaint about the rise in stamp duty: Alistair Darling...is taking from the rich...and I'm the rich. [ LC: this is meant to be sarcastic ] There are a lot of people like me...185,000 homes in England and Wales with seven-figure price tags. That is not "a lot". There are 25 million homes in the UK, of which about 18 million are owner-occupied. Therefore just one per cent of homeowners are affected by this policy. Is it unreasonable to describe the top one per cent of homeowners as rich? Here's Blackhurst's justification for why he isn't rich: The reality today is that £1 million does not buy you a palace, not in the South-East. But it's still a mil...