The failure of the land value tax – Works in Progress | Land value taxes are once again becoming a popular all-purpose solution to housing issues. But implementing them in early 1900s Britain destroyed the then-dominant Liberal Party.

!ping YIMBY

Absolutely zero of the issues here have anything to do with Land Value Tax itself, and everything to do with Britain being bad at implementing this. It has no critique at all for the actual policy and is only focused on the *implementation* of the policy.

Yes, a land value tax that doesn’t bother to enforce itself ends up being shit. Any policy that is done poorly will give poor results. There are plenty of examples of land taxes being done well, and taking a single example of an ineffective government as proof the whole thing doesn’t work is nonsense.

> Landowners formed an organization known as the Land Union, which began a program of high-profile legal attrition – subjecting every ambiguity of the law to judicial review – to test the complex and hurriedly made legislation in the courts. The campaign was successful, eventually resulting in the Scrutton judgment of February 1914, which invalidated all valuations of agricultural land – effectively blocking the 2.5 percent tax on undeveloped land and the collection of the increment tax as it applied to farmland.

Who’s to blame for this, exactly? It seems to me the blame is on the landowners, not the policy they are desperately trying to get around.

Lars Doucet has written *plenty* about assessing land separate from improvements, if you want to actually look at how you would do it instead of thinking Britain’s terrible implementation is the *only* way to do it.

I think it’s a good article (but I’m sceptical if some of the arguments presented would apply to the 21st century) but I don’t think the failure of land value taxes were even in the top 5 reasons the Liberals were annihilated as the century progressed.

The liberal split during the “coupon election” of 1918 allowing the Labour Party to get a foot in the door and another split during the National Government election in 1931 relegated the party to small outskirts across the country. Extension of the franchise to all men in 1918 and eventually women in 1928 (which is mentioned in the article tbf) preferring Labour and Conservatives platforms respectively made the Liberal base relatively smaller. The party going against the very values it held for it’s entire existence to win the Great War destroying their moral authority and their credibility. FPTP preferring two parties meaning they were ripped apart from both sides in 1924. The liberal party also seemed like it implemented most of the policies that the party existed for and now seemed irrelevant (I’m sure social-democratic parties can related).

I think these all mattered more than a poor economic policy.