
Half of England Is Owned by Less Than 1% of Its Population, Researcher Says - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/world/europe/england-land-inequality.html
======
aiisjustanif
> 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.

— Winston Churchill, 1909

~~~
whttheuuu
Uhm, has Winston Churchill never heard of taxes? Property tax, income tax,
capital gains tax.

~~~
tialaramex
Winston was writing in England (which is what the article is about) in 1909.

Property taxes in the UK essentially don't distinguish between "nice house"
and "an actual palace". A tiny bedsit pays grade A taxes, my nice flat is
grade B, My mother's old house (a four bedroom cottage in a pleasant village
where lots of rich people live) would be category H. There aren't any
categories above H. They're charged to the occupants, so if you own a town of
a hundred dwellings and let them out, the residents pay those taxes, not you.
The exact mechanism has changed substantially since Winston's time (and indeed
was the cause of major riots decades ago) but this general thrust has been
true for generations.

It's true that rental income due to a landlord is taxable income, after
expenses, but I don't see how that's relevant?

Capital Gains Taxes only kick in if you sell. If you're content to profit off
ownership indefinitely you are never charged CGT.

~~~
lozenge
To put a number on it, band H properties are at least 8 times the value of a
band A property, but pay only 3 times as much tax.

(From A POOR TAX COUNCIL TAX IN LONDON: TIME FOR REFORM, although the same
info is on government websites).

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Council tax and poll tax before it were very clearly examples of trickle up
taxes. Massively regressive compared to the rates.

Yet no one is complaining, demonstrating or rioting.

~~~
randomsearch
They did protest and riot, but the government ignored them.

------
arethuza
Worth noting 1% of England's population is about 550,000 people, as is
mentioned in a linked article - half of Scotland is owned by ~600 people!

[https://www.holyrood.com/articles/comment/land-reform-and-
in...](https://www.holyrood.com/articles/comment/land-reform-and-inequality-
what-does-debate-tell-us-about-scotland)

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).

~~~
externalreality
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.

~~~
deepstream
how can we cure these poor people from this delusion that they have a right to
possess what they have not earned?

life is inequitable you have to fight to get a higher station. substituting
taking responsibility to create wealth for convincing yourself you're entitled
to it just disempowers you.

I'm not saying it's not hard. but that it is hard is not special and that it
is hard is the motivation to overcome it. and when you get there that your
hard earned achievement can be taken away by people who don't want to overcome
is wrong.

The fundamental point is this wealth is not some free right it's not some
magical thing that just exists. wealth is precisely the value created by
overcoming difficulties.

wealth is made by work and the people who make it ought to be free to choose
what they do with it rather than coerced into surrendering it in the name of
equity, a false equity which is inequitable to the moral nature of wealth,
responsibility and hard work. that kind of idea is a disease that will erode
away the social foundation.

I'm not saying wealth disparity is easy nor that it creates no problems. it
creates a lot of problems but I don't believe the solution is by
redistribution. at least not at this stage of human and economic evolution.
while our species is still bounded by the amount of energy we can extract from
our surroundings.

taxes yes, State yes, a social welfare net yes, but not to an excessive
degree, and not to cure inequality.

if energy was free of course it should be distributed to all without cost.
like air.

but it's not. to do so would bankrupt our species in the name of compassion.
the greater compassion is the realization of the poor state we're in, and the
preservation of all. not the temporary satisfaction of some who convinced
themselves that things should be easy.

one day as a species we will get there. no crushing disparity. but we're not
there yet. trying to live like we are already there is a toxic delusion that
doesn't help us get to that more compassionate future.

~~~
mbrock
> wealth is made by work

It’s also naturally abundant in the form of land, those cadastral game tiles
on which life plays out, dominion of which are allocated by the state in a
system of hereditary monopolies.

Wealth is not allocated the same way it’s created. That’s why we have the
concept of rent-seeking, behavior that increases one’s share of wealth without
creating more wealth.

Owning wealth lets you accumulate more wealth without working, because you can
charge other people rent in exchange for using your wealth. Not only that; you
can also hire people in an arrangement where you automatically own everything
they produce using your capital goods.

Rich people know that labor is a very inefficient and tedious way to increase
one’s own share of wealth. That’s why they prefer rent, interest, and staying
on the top of the employment hierarchy where they have a legal claim on the
products of others’ labor.

Yes, work is a true source of wealth, and so is capital and land and the other
factors of production. There’s a long history of criticizing how most of the
wealth created by working ends up owned by the owners of capital and
land—that’s the essential critical point in the discussion of capitalism,
whether Marxist or Georgist or Ellermanite.

Or you could say the crucial question is _how can we cure the rich people from
the delusion that they have a right to appropriate what they have not
produced?”_

~~~
vixen99
How do you extend this argument to, let's say, three of the richest people on
the planet namely Bill G, Mark Z and Jeff B ? What cure do you suggest for
them?

~~~
snidane
That's why the Marxist critique of capital is wrong. Was use of capital to
extract rent from others ethical or not? Maybe yes, maybe not, who knows. It
is impossible to decide.

Georgist perspective doesn't blame the rich capitalist, but the rentier, no
matter if rich or poor. Rentiers provably extract others people's and
businesses' labor.

~~~
mbrock
Renting out capital is not an ethical problem, but renting labor is. Human
actions are not a commodity, and treating persons as tools is wrong for the
same reasons “voluntary slavery” is wrong—it violates inalienable rights. The
problem with capitalism is that capital owners alienate persons from their own
natural property rights through the injustice of employment contracts. (Land
ownership is also a problem in our world but it’s sort of orthogonal to
capitalism, although it depends on how you define capitalism. Georgists make a
big distinction between capital and land; maybe we can talk about both
capitalism and “landism” as different strands of the economic system?)

------
pytester
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.

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/13/a-dukes-
wealth-i...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/13/a-dukes-wealth-is-
the-natural-result-of-a-free-society---and-sho/)

~~~
kristianc
> William the Conqueror has £9 billion today, 950 years later. It shows that
> our culture respects private property over government interference.

I'd love to know how they think William came to acquire that property.

~~~
shoo
If you're open to a bit of interesting fiction, _The Wake_ by Paul Kingsnorth
is a post apocalyptic novel set after the Norman invasion of 1066. Kingsnorth
wrote the book in an invented version of old english:

[https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/27232308-the-
wake](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/27232308-the-wake)

Here's Kingsnorth writing about the consequences of the Norman invasion upon
England today:

> [...] legacies of 1066 remain with us. Take that law enacted by Guillaume in
> 1067. In Anglo-Saxon England, the idea that one man — the king — literally
> owned the entire landbase of the nation would have been unthinkable. Today,
> it remains a legal reality: England is still owned, as a whole, by the
> Crown. The hereditary monarchy introduced by the Normans remains too, and
> the French concept known as ‘primogeniture’ — in which estates are inherited
> wholesale by the first-born son, rather than parceled out between children
> as was more common in Anglo-Saxon England

> [...] Today, Britain is the country with the second most unequal
> distribution of land on Earth, after Brazil. More than 70 per cent of the
> land is owned by fewer than two per cent of the population. Much of this is
> directly traceable to Guillaume, whose 22nd-great-granddaughter sits on the
> English throne today.

> [...] ask yourself whether the development of early modern capitalism in
> England would have been possible without that concentration of land, and
> therefore power and wealth. What about the consequent empire? Did the
> industrial revolution begin in England because that funnel of power and
> money made it possible? Or what about class, which is directly connected to
> all of those things? We are still one of the most socially and economically
> stratified countries in Europe. In today’s England, the rulers still drink
> wine and the ‘plebs’ still drink beer, just as they did in 1066.

[https://aeon.co/essays/why-1066-wasn-t-all-that-england-s-
en...](https://aeon.co/essays/why-1066-wasn-t-all-that-england-s-endless-
resistance)

~~~
kristianc
> [...] The Duke dealt with this problem in characteristic style: with
> violence. He marched his army up through the south-east, burning, looting
> and raping. He circled London, burnt Southwark to the ground and then
> marched west, brutalising the populations of Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire,
> Middlesex, and Hertfordshire.

Quite, some good old fashioned respect for the rule of law there...

------
pseudolus
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".

[0] [http://www.lse.ac.uk/website-
archive/newsAndMedia/news/archi...](http://www.lse.ac.uk/website-
archive/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2013/10/SocialClasses.aspx)

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2013/10/30/whats-in-a-name-wealth-
and-s...](https://www.cnbc.com/2013/10/30/whats-in-a-name-wealth-and-social-
mobility.html)

------
Animats
About 40% of US non-residential land is owned by 1% of US families.[1] Up 50%
in a decade.

[1]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/21/ameri...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/21/american-
land-barons-100-wealthy-families-now-own-nearly-as-much-land-as-that-of-new-
england/?utm_term=.dc66dcecb389)

~~~
anonymous5133
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.

------
avallark
It's certainly preferable to the old situation where more than half of the
__world__ was owned by less than 1% of the the British.

~~~
andrekandre
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...

~~~
povertyworld
There's a sobering book "The Great Leveler" that argues that the only time
growing inequality is reversed is during large scale war or other mass death
event like plague.

~~~
FabHK
Both Thomas Piketty and Branko Milanovic have made similar arguments in their
respective tomes. The 1950s to 70s in the West were an exception, maybe.

------
User23
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.

------
dogma1138
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.

------
jackcosgrove
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_.

------
IshKebab
By land area. But that's to be expected really. Most people live in towns and
cities.

How many people own 50% of Britain's land by _value_?

~~~
inflatableDodo
In towns and cities you often cannot buy a freehold. Is all 100 year leases.
The land is rarely up for grabs compared to the countryside.

~~~
switch007
> In towns and cities you often cannot buy a freehold. Is all 100 year leases.

Are you talking about England?

I'd bet quite heavily that in every city in England outside of London 99% of
people would have no trouble finding an adequate freehold home

------
tyfon
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.

[1] [https://www.ssb.no/en/inntekt-og-forbruk/artikler-og-
publika...](https://www.ssb.no/en/inntekt-og-forbruk/artikler-og-
publikasjoner/wealth-distribution-in-norway)

~~~
vesinisa
You seem to be confounding wealth in general and land ownership. I'd be
actually surprised if Norway had as inequal land ownership distribution as UK.

~~~
tyfon
Ah, that is true.

Home ownership is quite high here [1], 77% of households own their own home. A
lot of that is mortgaged. I can't really find equivalent numbers to that in
the UK. A lot of the land is "utmark", like out side of cultivated areas, and
can be used by pretty much anyone and a lot is just government owned.

[1] [https://www.ssb.no/bygg-bolig-og-eiendom/artikler-og-
publika...](https://www.ssb.no/bygg-bolig-og-eiendom/artikler-og-
publikasjoner/stort-flertall-eier-boligen)

------
Aelfred
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."

------
adolph
This is an improvement from before, right?

------
curiousfiddler
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.

~~~
rleigh
Britain's democracy evolved gradually from feudalism, without much in the way
of violent uprisings or outright revolution. The entire system is based upon
incremental changes to give us the democracy we have today with various checks
and balances. The monarchy is a vestigial part of that system. Look at stuff
like the Privy Council which continues today, and Magna Carta, which was one
of the starting points for it all. Technically, the monarch still has a huge
amount of power, but in practice they are required not to exercise it. They
have to sign everything into law; in a very real sense the law still is what
the monarch signs their name to, as is the freehold system of property rights.
All the land is owned by the monarchy; you get a freehold on it.

Like the enlightenment and the industrial revolution, democracy wasn't
imposed, it came into being here for the first time, and while it's not
perfect, there's a lot of factors, including sentimentality and inertia,
keeping the status quo going. You could argue that a clean start with a proper
written constitution and federal government (with separate state governments
for the different countries) would be a good move. But like for any working
system, it's painful to disturb entrenched structures, and there's always the
risk of breaking something important. The US was able to do a better job; it's
easier when you can start from a clean slate with the knowledge of hindsight.

Also, the monarchy has for the most part been a net positive. Compared with
what elected MPs have done to the country, I see it as a rather more benign
institution in comparison, in recent centuries anyway.

~~~
curiousfiddler
"All the land is owned by the monarchy; you get a freehold on it."

I know I'll get downvoted, but I am genuinely amazed by how a small minority
of people can gain so much control, and absolutely no one complains. I know
there are historical reasons, but it is fascinating nevertheless.

~~~
frosted-flakes
All the land is "owned" by the monarchy, but in reality, that theoretical
control would be removed in the blink of an eye if they ever made a claim on
it.

------
m463
I remember a friend telling me when looking at maps of canada, this one person
HMQ seemed to own an awful lot of land.

~~~
sonnyblarney
'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.

~~~
sideshowb
90 percent of the uk crown estate revenue also goes to the public purse.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Yes, but I think it's different.

'Crown Land' in Canada is de-facto literally government land, parks, open
spaces etc...

In the UK there is 'Crown Estate' (which you are referring to), i.e. the
Queen's landholdings, from which a bunch of revenue is derived ... and 'Public
Estate' i.e. regular public land in the UK, which is more like 'Crown Land' in
Canada.

------
joelthelion
Either we find a way to avoid excessive wealth concentration, or we are headed
for a violent revolution.

~~~
switch007
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...

~~~
NeedMoreTea
History suggests this pretty clearly.

The small army of police being friendly and respectful as the demonstrators
are being entirely peaceful. Demonstrators who are going out of their way _to
get arrested,_ and who have complained enough have not been yet. How did the
civil rights protests achieve change? By civil disobedience. Which two
deprived regions of England got most immediate help, and a regeneration
programme led by Heseltine, during the 1980s deindustrialisation? Why the two
that had riots of course - Toxteth and Brixton. Not the regions hardest hit or
the only deprived or affected regions.

For a more violent protest you might not even need as many police. They would
no longer need to be quite so considerate and use 4 officers to carry away
each lying down protester, or other friendly methods of control and
containment.

In many ways the extinction rebellion protests have been truly heart warming -
in the nature and scale of protest and also in the police response. Mainstream
media is finally discussing the issue properly.

Funny that.

------
throw2016
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.

------
jmpman
What form of estate taxes would resolve this issue?

~~~
mac01021
Say I die and the state wants to decide what to do with my million-acre farm.

They either have to give it to one person, split it up amongst multiple
people, or run it themselves. If they do the first, the headline is
unaffected, if they do the last, the headline becomes "half of England is
owned by the state".

That leaves splitting it up. But splitting up a farm in a useful way is not
always trivial. And if you split one farm into three, how do you choose which
three people should inherit these tremendous blocks of land?

It seems almost like we have a simple choice between socialism on one side and
pronounced inequality in land ownership on the other, when it comes to large-
scale agriculture.

------
Defcon6
That’s why we’re the 99%

~~~
danielmg
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.

------
Creationer
This doesn't account for land value. Much of this land might be worthless on a
m2 basis.

------
LifeLiverTransp
This is the crowd that wants to stay in europe- if you get support per square
kilometer for farming, and you are a noble with a estate- this is why you want
the poor to support the rich.

------
spork12
Am I only one who thinks it's absolutely insane to advocate stealing from
someone because some people think they are too rich? That is mob rule.

You don't have a right to the wealth of the 1% anymore than they have the
right to your wealth.

~~~
frankbreetz
I guess, you have to answer the question as to how the 1% earned it. If they
started on a level playing field and just worked harder or were smarter than
everyone else, I would say keep it. More likely though it was passed down for
generations and they did nothing to deserve it, I find that situation
absolutely insane. We found out in the great depression having an insanely
wealthy class of people (Rockafellers,Gatsbys, Vanderbilts... )is not good for
society.

~~~
gbacon
You did nothing to deserve winning multiple genetic lotteries, namely having
sufficient intelligence to fall into the HN cohort and being born into a
wealthy country and household with access to it and similar resources. You
didn’t earn your spot in the global 1%, but it in no way follows that you
should be expropriated to correct the alleged injustice.

 _Ex post facto_ law has since the Enlightenment recognized as unjust and even
tyrannical. Digging back across generations in search of some offense
generations ago and punishing innocent parties today is at best a recipe for
chaos.

Lavrentiy Beria was head of Stalin’s secret police and famous for saying,
“Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” Expropriating _present_ people
because of unfair advantages — a criterion never precisely defined and forever
subject to political fads of the day, which is to say meaningless — allegedly
enjoyed by _past_ ancestors or owners of property is merely another form of
the Beria method.

By your own reasoning, neither did the state today do anything to deserve the
property that they’d seize. Even if it were justly redistributed, you’re
forgetting about the cut taken by the middlemen in charge of carrying it out —
who also did nothing to deserve taking a share of the loot.

No sound economic case can be made that the distribution of wealth was a cause
for the Great Depression. Considering how many human abilities have normal and
power-law distributions, _e.g._ , attractiveness, musical ability,
intelligence, vertical leap, height, programming skill, lifetime poker
winnings, writing quality, golf handicap, typing speed, cooking skill, time to
change a tire, ability to plan and manage complex tasks, future orientation,
_etc._ , _etc._ , _etc._ , income and wealth accumulation being anywhere
remotely uniform would be amazing. Considering the math of power-law
distributions, your approach would have a huge majority ganging up on a
comparatively tiny minority but ironically in the name of fairness.

“No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability,
harmony and logic.”

~~~
claudiawerner
>Ex post facto law has since the Enlightenment recognized as unjust and even
tyrannical. Digging back across generations in search of some offense
generations ago and punishing innocent parties today is at best a recipe for
chaos.

That's not what's going on here at all. The idea is that property gained
through unjust means originally means that the wealth derived from it is still
unjustly derived, even if this unjust appropriation happened long ago when it
was not deemed unjust then. You would be right if the case were if you were to
be punished for the fact your ancestors owned slaves, but the issue is the
benefit gained which is currently there.

>income and wealth accumulation being anywhere remotely uniform would be
amazing.

Nobody is saying it would be uniform, they're saying that the situation at the
moment is _not_ due to the difference in those abilities other than perhaps
brute strength in subjugation and plunder. It is difficult to imagine what the
world would look like if it hadn't happened, but the distribution of wealth
would not be as we see it today in any case.

>By your own reasoning, neither did the state today do anything to deserve the
property that they’d seize.

The state may act on behalf of those at a comparative disadvantage, and we
have an easier case for arguing they deserve something.

------
deepsun
I know only one _real_ revolution in history, where the elites were replaced
by new blood -- the communist one. Communists killed/expelled anyone who was a
little richer than others.

In all other revolutions elites stayed mostly the same.

~~~
lainga
Why was there only one communist revolution? If you're feeling up for seconds,
which one was the real one?

------
codedokode
Isn't this how capitalism works? The riches buy out or grab all the valuable
assets and everyone else has no choice but to work for them.

~~~
stupidcar
No, because the rich in this case didn't buy the assets, they inherited them
from people who were gifted them for being lieutenants in an invading army
1000 years ago. England is still an occupied country, and the only solution is
to revolt against the occupiers.

~~~
toasterlovin
What’s the temporal cutoff to your line of reasoning? England was invaded
continuously by the Norse before William conquered in 1066. Should we
appropriate private property from people who have Norse surnames?

~~~
perilunar
No, we recognise that all pretty much land in England has been appropriated by
force from the original inhabitants, and that all claims of ownership are
tainted by blood.

~~~
toasterlovin
Agree. Except expand your sentence to include the entire world, rather than
just England.

------
douglaswlance
The other 99% needs to stop slacking.

~~~
benj111
Sorry, I'm only working 6 days 18 hours a day this week in the cotton mill.
The master has given us Easter Sunday off, because he's a good Christian man.
I will endeavor to make up for it next week.

~~~
douglaswlance
You should learn how to contribute more to society.

~~~
screye
/s? I sincerely hope you are joking.

~~~
gbacon
The point is that it’s always easy to spend someone else’s money or to call
for taking it away to fund the latest Good Idea.

Flipping it around to suggest that the _real_ problem is the original
proponent needs to step it up so the state can take more of her money triggers
a shift in perspective. Everyone thinks _he_ pays his fair share, but that guy
down the street is another matter.

~~~
benj111
I didn't read the thread parent as being completely serious, and my not
entirely serious reply highlighted the flaws in the argument.

You talk about 'fairness' but you could argue that many different ways.
Everyone paying $10000 a year flat rate tax is 'fair', as is leaving everyone
with the average income.

Clearly those 2 approaches have problems. At minimum the rich don't want a
French revolution type event. But society benefits when people attempt risky
ventures, that work out. So clearly you want a balance between these 2
extremes.

The traditional defense of letting richer people keep more of their money is
that they worked to earn it through their superior skills. This kind of
generational wealth makes a mockery of that.

 _Personally_ I would argue for a higher inheritance tax, let each generation
compete on a leveller playing field, decrease the tax burden on the living.

~~~
gbacon
The UK’s generational wealth discussed in the article and the generational
wealth in France at the time of the revolution were propped up by special
treatment in the law for nobles, aristocrats, and the “upper class.” I believe
you and I agree that grants of special privilege by the state are unjust.

As for leveling the playing field, what evidence do you present that it is not
already more or less level in jurisdictions that do not prop up class systems?
Sure, you can cherry pick Paris Hiltons, but the plural of anecdote is not
data. What is the distribution of wealth inherited by present millionaires?
What studies can you point to that show conclusively that people who are good
at building wealth are also good at transmitting these skills to their
children, which would be remarkable?

Perhaps natural processes take care of the problem well enough already if
overcontrolling micromanagers would only get out of the way.

------
ti3
Typical myopic NY times static view. Omission of dynamics.

Did the same families/people/organizations own this land five centuries? If
so, England is in the company of Florence families.

Who was the owner at different points in time?

See Taleb on inequality [https://medium.com/incerto/inequality-and-skin-in-
the-game-d...](https://medium.com/incerto/inequality-and-skin-in-the-
game-d8f00bc0cb46).

------
droithomme
This is not necessarily good or bad, one has to look at everything.

An alternate interpretation is half of the property taxes are paid for by less
than 1% of the population, who also are acting as environmental conservators
by not subdividing and developing large tracts of unspoiled wilderness.

~~~
irpapakons
The UK has no property taxes while it has high income taxes therefore
increasing the inequality.

~~~
rleigh
Property taxes (including inheritance taxes) can introduce huge inequalities
of their own. Look at Italy for an example, where there are many beautiful
villas left to go to ruin because the taxes were unaffordable for the families
who owned them. Many landowners both in Britain and Italy are not really rich,
particularly when they inherited them. Taxing them simply forces them off the
land their families have owned for generations, and that's not really fair
either.

You can buy whole Scottish estates, complete with castles and lochs and
hundreds of square miles of wilderness, for less than the cost of a small flat
in London. They aren't necessarily particularly viable economically, despite
their size, and the owners aren't necessarily wealthy (though some are of
course). They get put up for sale all the time for a good reason! They are a
huge money sink.

