> Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains — all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is affected by the labor and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of these improvements does the land monopolist contribute, and yet, by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived…The unearned increment on the land is reaped by the land monopolist in exact proportion, not to the service, but to the disservice done.
But isn’t land ownership and renting free markets? If there is profit to be made by renting out land, investors should look to buy land to rent out, since both the land market and pool of renters are limited this should naturally drive up prices of land while driving down rents. And as such you should move towards buying land to rent out becoming a very low margin business and renters end up paying only marginally more than they would if they bought the land themselves.
That’s in theory though, so what’s keeping this from happening in practice?
Edit: In my own opinion, this iniquitous state of land ownership in Scotland is somewhat compensated for by the fact we have the Right To Roam - which means even though a lot of land is kept as hunting estates anyone can wander about pretty much as we please (with some fairly minor restrictions).
The article seems to suggest Right to Roam was only introduced in 2004 in Scotland. Is this really so?
In Scandinavia Right to Roam (alle-mans-rätt / All Men's Right) predates even the earliest modern laws, so is generally not even codified but based on an immemorial legal tradition.
1% of England's population is about 550,000, that is extreme inequality. You seem to think its OK for a small percentage of people to have everything as long as you have the right to roam around. I respectfully disagree. Wealth equals political and social power and it should be divided more evenly in order to ensure democracy. Make not mistake Capitalism mean fair and free - but in our warped form of Capitalism we have those with money rigging the rules for their own benefit and as such we don't have Capitalism we have Aristocracy.
...yep, and the fact that the population of Scotland is tiny and over 50% of that population live in the Central belt.
Afaik, the only solid evidence against is an apparent lack of "participation" from local communities on land use. Unfortunately, this is an issue that applies as much to council as private landowners in Scotland and also tends to elicit opinions on what "should" be the case, rather than what is actually possible (i.e. people who live in the middle of nowhere complaining about the lack of economic development, complaining that the landowner isn't selling them a house at a cheap enough price, complaining that the landowner only comes up from England to shoot, etc.)
There has been an abundance of loose reasoning on that is justified only by the perception that of unfairness (and, unf, a bit of light bigotry about the English). One of the sources for the rather brief Land Commission report was some political theory on power and participation (https://landcommission.gov.scot/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/R... - Section 5 - I studied Politics postgrad btw, theory shouldn't be used this way...it is basic). Madness.
This is oddly seen as something to be proud of rather than an embarrassment among some of the media:
>It is encouraging that a man whose family first got rich because his ancestor was the fat huntsman (gros veneur) of William the Conqueror has £9 billion today, 950 years later. It shows that our culture respects private property over government interference. It gives hope to us all.
> Upon his father's death, in August 2016, as well as the peerages, he inherited a wealth currently estimated at £9 billion, with considerable trust funds for his sisters. This wealth is held in a trust, of which the Duke is a beneficial owner but not the legal owner — an arrangement which received considerable press attention due to the inheritance tax exemption this confers.
That isn't too surprising as an extension of the Upton Sinclair quote
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Essentially those who benefit from the status quo will nearly always rationalize it as why it is a good thing even if it is transparently benefiting from and perpetuating travesties.
It sadly takes a good deal of integrity and self-awareness to not do so.
There seems to be a major cultural force in the UK of enforcing their own bubbles of hereditary elite self-justification at all costs - and that is sadly by no means unique. It has been seen many times throughout history and around globe and usually ends in utter disaster when reality comes along and slaps them in the face - often after many smaller disasters which should have been major warning signs were ignored.
Pandering to their readership. Daily Telegraph is mostly read by rich old white people who need constant reminders that they are upholding ancient and noble traditions to justify their choices.
Because this is the only positive aspect. In most continental countries family wealth doesn't go that far back not because of enlightened equality but because it was burned in a war or confiscated in a revolution.
all I'm thinking: it takes a lot of luck and discipline to keep a fortune for 950 years. You could say laws (might forbid sale unless...), but I imagine that they weren't enforced uniformly. Where do you store the title? Imagine what the country went through 950 years.
IIRC, they only lease the land for as much as 999 years, don't sell.
Well not everyone cares, the media gets clicks from the hoards people who can never qualify to even aspire to be in the same situation, but not everyone sees it as an embarrassment
The social class system in the UK has shown incredible resiliency over the centuries. The names of Normans who came over after the conquest in 1066 are apparently still over-represented at Oxbridge [0]. Further, and per one study, "social status, wealth, education and occupational status was highly heritable – even more so than one’s height – and could be correlated to one’s family name".
Before anyone reads this article. It is talking about actual acreage of land, not dollar value. Most of these 1% own large ranches in rural areas. For some of these people, the reason they own large rural lands is for conservation purposes. For example, the number two private land owner, Ted Turner, uses most of his land for environmental conservation.
it’s certainly preferable, but that is just once slice of data at one time... what is more important is the trend... are we in the midst of a huge reversal back towards those times?
it would seems so, and if so, i would argue it needs to be stopped before it becomes completely intractable...
It’s an observable reality that all gains in income by the unlanded class are captured by the landed class in the form of rents. There is hysteresis, so in the short term it can appear the landlord class is losing ground, but it’s just an illusion and they always catch up eventually.
Moral: if you have significant financial assets and no real property and you want to provide lasting wealth for your descendants, then a portfolio rebalance is in order.
It’s also an artifact of the leasehold/freehold system, most properties you buy do not come with a right to the land and you continue to pay a land use tax to the actual owner of the land.
This means that you for example can buy a flat in a newly built development and you’ll have to pay like £100 a month for the land use.
The lease itself is assigned to X number of years with laws being passed to force longer and longer leases as well automatic renewal as there have been issues with homes towards the end of their lease with <100 or even <50 years left essentially tanking in value since technically at the end of the lease the land reverts back to its owner.
Don’t get me wrong this system is completely shit but this is a click bait.
One of my favorite tidbits of history, introduced to me by the Poldark stories, is that of the Basset family of Devonshire. They are one of the few aristocratic families that has an intact patrilineal descent going back to the Norman conquest. Which means that in 2066, they will have maintained their family holdings for 1000 years.
That's a bit higher than I would have thought. I had to check my own country, UK's neighbour Norway.
"The distribution of net wealth is highly skewed in Norway. While average net wealth for households is NOK 1.6 million, the median net wealth is NOK 900 000. Households in the highest 10 percent for net wealth own roughly 53 per cent of total net wealth, the richest 1 per cent control 21 per cent, while the top 0.1 per cent own 10 per cent of total net wealth." [1]
So not as high but still quite high here as well. 10% is about 520.000 which is still substantially more people than the 25.000 that own 50% of the UK wealth.
Hansard 4 May 1931
Commons Sitting
ORDERS OF THE DAY
The Chancellor of the Exchequer
(Mr Philip Snowden)
1933 - 34 Financial Year
"... a tax at the rate of one penny for each pound of the land value of every unit of land in Great Britain..."
"By this measure we assert the right of a community to the ownership of land. If private individuals continue to possess a nominal claim to the land they must pay to the community for the enjoyment of it, and they cannot be permitted to enjoy that privilege to the detriment of the welfare of the community."
What amazes me most, is that they still have a queen/king thing going. I am completely unable to wrap my head around how that can happen, in a developed country, in 2019.
'Crown Land' in Canada is not owned directly by the Queen as some of the other properties. It's de-facto federal land. Whereas in the UK it's a different structure for her land.
Fun fact: 89% of Canada is 'Crown Land', so about the size of the continental US.
Are we? What suggest this? We’ve had very long stints of governments hell bent on increasing inequality and regaining all they “lost” after WW2, yet what violent revolutions have we had?
Look at the small army of police they deployed this weekend for some climate activists. What would the response be to anyone more violent...
Meritocracy depends of equality and you can't conceptually have equality with wildly differing starting points.
The transition from feudalism to capitalism would require land reform for equality and meritocracy to have some measure of credibility and meaning but capitalist states seem to have 'forgotten' the crucial step of equalization and moved straight to talking about conceptual 'equality' and 'meritocracy' as if they are operational. This is disingenuous.
'Capital'ism by definition favours capital and the only group that had it in the transition from feudalism were the feudal class who had monopolized all resources and used it to accumulate more wealth and power.
Humans have fought for land and resources for millenia and the equitable distribution of this most basic fundamental resource is the prerequisite for an equitable society. It can't be ignored in any discussion about equality and meritocracy and to do so is so deeply flawed and untenable it requires some level of self interest or simplemindedness to accept.
But a population who fail to have empathy for their fellow citizens and are disingenuous about equality and meritocracy every time they talk about it is perhaps a bigger problem.
What would you do with more land? Considering that in the UK there are significant restrictions on what you can do with the land.
It's a silly metric.
As someone else pointed out in this section, you need to look at holding by value not by area. That's the more important figure.
I can by 1 acre of land in the country for say £20k but I can do nothing with it except perhaps mow the grass. But that £20k wouldn't get me 1msq in the City of London - because that land (well more of it) can be used to generate lots of economic activity due to its proximity to/location within the world's economic centre.
[+] [-] aiisjustanif|6 years ago|reply
— Winston Churchill, 1909
[+] [-] zzzzzzzza|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hjk05|6 years ago|reply
That’s in theory though, so what’s keeping this from happening in practice?
[+] [-] whttheuuu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baybal2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arethuza|6 years ago|reply
https://www.holyrood.com/articles/comment/land-reform-and-in...
Edit: In my own opinion, this iniquitous state of land ownership in Scotland is somewhat compensated for by the fact we have the Right To Roam - which means even though a lot of land is kept as hunting estates anyone can wander about pretty much as we please (with some fairly minor restrictions).
[+] [-] vesinisa|6 years ago|reply
In Scandinavia Right to Roam (alle-mans-rätt / All Men's Right) predates even the earliest modern laws, so is generally not even codified but based on an immemorial legal tradition.
[+] [-] pytester|6 years ago|reply
>half the country belongs to just 25,000 landowners, some of them corporations.
[+] [-] jacobush|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OJFord|6 years ago|reply
English, and honestly can't tell the mood. (Sounds very roughly what I'd expect, for whatever that's worth.)
[+] [-] giardini|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdoering|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] externalreality|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] subjectHarold|6 years ago|reply
Afaik, the only solid evidence against is an apparent lack of "participation" from local communities on land use. Unfortunately, this is an issue that applies as much to council as private landowners in Scotland and also tends to elicit opinions on what "should" be the case, rather than what is actually possible (i.e. people who live in the middle of nowhere complaining about the lack of economic development, complaining that the landowner isn't selling them a house at a cheap enough price, complaining that the landowner only comes up from England to shoot, etc.)
There has been an abundance of loose reasoning on that is justified only by the perception that of unfairness (and, unf, a bit of light bigotry about the English). One of the sources for the rather brief Land Commission report was some political theory on power and participation (https://landcommission.gov.scot/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/R... - Section 5 - I studied Politics postgrad btw, theory shouldn't be used this way...it is basic). Madness.
[+] [-] pytester|6 years ago|reply
>It is encouraging that a man whose family first got rich because his ancestor was the fat huntsman (gros veneur) of William the Conqueror has £9 billion today, 950 years later. It shows that our culture respects private property over government interference. It gives hope to us all.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/13/a-dukes-wealth-i...
[+] [-] kristianc|6 years ago|reply
I'd love to know how they think William came to acquire that property.
[+] [-] speeq|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Grosvenor,_7th_Duke_of_We...
> Upon his father's death, in August 2016, as well as the peerages, he inherited a wealth currently estimated at £9 billion, with considerable trust funds for his sisters. This wealth is held in a trust, of which the Duke is a beneficial owner but not the legal owner — an arrangement which received considerable press attention due to the inheritance tax exemption this confers.
The standard Inheritance Tax rate is 40% in the UK when above a certain threshold - https://www.gov.uk/inheritance-tax
Seems fair!
[+] [-] Nasrudith|6 years ago|reply
There seems to be a major cultural force in the UK of enforcing their own bubbles of hereditary elite self-justification at all costs - and that is sadly by no means unique. It has been seen many times throughout history and around globe and usually ends in utter disaster when reality comes along and slaps them in the face - often after many smaller disasters which should have been major warning signs were ignored.
[+] [-] FearNotDaniel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blfr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edflsafoiewq|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onetimemanytime|6 years ago|reply
IIRC, they only lease the land for as much as 999 years, don't sell.
[+] [-] caprese|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatshisface|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pseudolus|6 years ago|reply
[0] http://www.lse.ac.uk/website-archive/newsAndMedia/news/archi...
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2013/10/30/whats-in-a-name-wealth-and-s...
[+] [-] Animats|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/21/ameri...
[+] [-] anonymous5133|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weyerhaeuser
[+] [-] avallark|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrekandre|6 years ago|reply
it would seems so, and if so, i would argue it needs to be stopped before it becomes completely intractable...
[+] [-] peteretep|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] User23|6 years ago|reply
Moral: if you have significant financial assets and no real property and you want to provide lasting wealth for your descendants, then a portfolio rebalance is in order.
[+] [-] dogma1138|6 years ago|reply
This means that you for example can buy a flat in a newly built development and you’ll have to pay like £100 a month for the land use.
The lease itself is assigned to X number of years with laws being passed to force longer and longer leases as well automatic renewal as there have been issues with homes towards the end of their lease with <100 or even <50 years left essentially tanking in value since technically at the end of the lease the land reverts back to its owner.
Don’t get me wrong this system is completely shit but this is a click bait.
[+] [-] jackcosgrove|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IshKebab|6 years ago|reply
How many people own 50% of Britain's land by value?
[+] [-] tyfon|6 years ago|reply
"The distribution of net wealth is highly skewed in Norway. While average net wealth for households is NOK 1.6 million, the median net wealth is NOK 900 000. Households in the highest 10 percent for net wealth own roughly 53 per cent of total net wealth, the richest 1 per cent control 21 per cent, while the top 0.1 per cent own 10 per cent of total net wealth." [1]
So not as high but still quite high here as well. 10% is about 520.000 which is still substantially more people than the 25.000 that own 50% of the UK wealth.
[1] https://www.ssb.no/en/inntekt-og-forbruk/artikler-og-publika...
[+] [-] Aelfred|6 years ago|reply
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Philip Snowden)
1933 - 34 Financial Year "... a tax at the rate of one penny for each pound of the land value of every unit of land in Great Britain..."
"By this measure we assert the right of a community to the ownership of land. If private individuals continue to possess a nominal claim to the land they must pay to the community for the enjoyment of it, and they cannot be permitted to enjoy that privilege to the detriment of the welfare of the community."
[+] [-] adolph|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curiousfiddler|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m463|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sonnyblarney|6 years ago|reply
Fun fact: 89% of Canada is 'Crown Land', so about the size of the continental US.
[+] [-] joelthelion|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] switch007|6 years ago|reply
Look at the small army of police they deployed this weekend for some climate activists. What would the response be to anyone more violent...
[+] [-] throw2016|6 years ago|reply
The transition from feudalism to capitalism would require land reform for equality and meritocracy to have some measure of credibility and meaning but capitalist states seem to have 'forgotten' the crucial step of equalization and moved straight to talking about conceptual 'equality' and 'meritocracy' as if they are operational. This is disingenuous.
'Capital'ism by definition favours capital and the only group that had it in the transition from feudalism were the feudal class who had monopolized all resources and used it to accumulate more wealth and power.
Humans have fought for land and resources for millenia and the equitable distribution of this most basic fundamental resource is the prerequisite for an equitable society. It can't be ignored in any discussion about equality and meritocracy and to do so is so deeply flawed and untenable it requires some level of self interest or simplemindedness to accept.
But a population who fail to have empathy for their fellow citizens and are disingenuous about equality and meritocracy every time they talk about it is perhaps a bigger problem.
[+] [-] jmpman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Defcon6|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielmg|6 years ago|reply
It's a silly metric.
As someone else pointed out in this section, you need to look at holding by value not by area. That's the more important figure.
I can by 1 acre of land in the country for say £20k but I can do nothing with it except perhaps mow the grass. But that £20k wouldn't get me 1msq in the City of London - because that land (well more of it) can be used to generate lots of economic activity due to its proximity to/location within the world's economic centre.