Letters - 22 April 2016
From the EU referendum to kindness
EU referendum
It is not surprising that Quakers would tend towards ‘remain’ (15 April); after all, William Penn published his essay, ‘Towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe’, in 1693. However, it is essential to know what the UK would actually remain in. The European Union is dedicated to political union, entailing the loss of sovereignty of disparate nations, to be governed and controlled by an undemocratic structure, in the interest of ‘the whole’. This is well beyond the concept of nations working together, in a neighbourly fashion, on basic matters of common interest.
The body in which the UK should indeed remain is the Council of Europe, formed in 1949, which now has forty-seven national members, including Russia. The website of ‘Europe’s Human Rights Watchdog’ includes an account of William Penn’s essay, saying his ‘proposals… sound like a slightly old-fashioned description of the Council of Europe’. Its central object is not political union, entailing loss of national sovereignty, but neighbourly working together on human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
For an insider’s account of the workings of the EU, I am enjoying Why Vote Leave by Daniel Hannan, a well-versed and articulate member of the European parliament. The EU can hardly be seen as neighbourly in its demeanour towards Greece and Russia, for example. I intend to vote ‘leave’ the EU, as an expression of true neighbourliness, especially as reinforced by studying the website of the Council of Europe.
John Arnold
Land Value Tax
My sense is that Antonia Swinson is right: now is the time for Quakers in Britain to campaign with others for ‘property and social justice’ (25 March) by means of a Land Value Tax. This tax, if levied on residential properties where the rental values exceed a national threshold sum per resident (perhaps around £5,000), together with the removal of the capital gains tax exemption on homeowners, could forever get rid of the cycle of residential property bubbles and negative equity that has bedeviled the UK economy for centuries. It would also redistribute excess riches through our elected governments.
Those of us who chose to remove a portion of our excess capital from investment markets and spend it, instead, on exceptional personal goods such as extra bedrooms or luxury and highly desired locations, would compensate the rest of us for this loss of capital by paying the tax. The campaign might be more clearly called the Elective Rent Tax Campaign, so highlighting the personal choice element in the liability to the tax: no one forces us to acquire homes with rental value in excess of our needs.
As Thomas Piketty has pointed out, in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, ever since Elizabethan times, as long as capital grows faster than the economy, riches always accrue to those who have capital in the first place, so increasing the income divide in the economy. This tax, together with capital gains tax on homes, would go a long way to ensuring that the distribution of excess riches was mediated by elected government rather than rich individuals.
Eoin McCarthy
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