We need a land and wealth tax to replace income and transaction tax.

Itismehonest

CLAPTON wrote: »

I would very much doubt that world food prices are higher than EU prices so I would expect a drop rather than an increase.

Yes, we would have to relax our high standards to compete.
What then would all the consumers who expect high welfare, hygiene & production standards think?
As I said, as a nation our consumers have expected top quality for cheap prices which has actually led to subsidies. Although French farmers traditionally are the ones insisting on being subsidised.
If consumers wanted to get what they pay for then they would be getting products far inferior than they do.

While the horsemeat scandal was, obviously, a crime whereby someone was on the make that is exactly the sort of scenario which happens (along with silver sand in sugar & similar issues) when foodstuffs are sold for less than it costs to produce them.
Farmers ask x for a product (hopefully covering their costs but not always) but company/supermarket wants to sell at x & make a profit....... so they work a fiddle like the horsemeat in beef. Beef being more expensive than horsemeat. Most other countries eat horsemeat so were less appalled at the idea. The Brits, meanwhile, not only expect their beef to be beef (quite rightly) but are also a bit precious about eating equine. If that were not the case they'd have cheaper meat available & more farmers would consider raising horses for the food chain.

At the end of the day farmers produce what they can sell. What that may be is down entirely to the end buyers, the consumers.

grizzly1911

Itismehonest wrote: »

Yes, we would have to relax our high standards to compete.
What then would all the consumers who expect high welfare, hygiene & production standards think?

If consumers wanted to get what they pay for then they would be getting products far inferior than they do.



.

Fine relax them.

Do most consumers bother about welfare? I doubt many are that bothered about absolute production standards as long as they get why they expect. I would expect many consumers don't have much clue.

Hygiene should be a given in a food cycle.

Itismehonest wrote: »

If that were not the case they'd have cheaper meat available & more farmers would consider raising horses for the food chain.

Do horse cost less to rear pound for pound than cows?

Isn't the cheap price of horrsemeat down to the fact there is a surplus of carcasses?

Itismehonest wrote: »

At the end of the day farmers produce what they can sell. What that may be is down entirely to the end buyers, the consumers.

At the end of the day choice may not be in the equation.

Itismehonest

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Fine relax them.

Do most consumers bother about welfare? I doubt many are that bothered about absolute production standards as long as they get why they expect. I would expect many consumers don't have much clue.

Hygiene should be a given in a food cycle.

Yes, many consumers don't care as long as it's cheap but it's fairly obvious some people do care about welfare or there wouldn't be all the protests over the various things like live exports, battery hen housing, veal crates, etc.
See here for how not all countries do have our standards.

Until recently (not sure if it still applies) UK rules on Organic produce were higher than even the other EU countries. An example I remember was Dutch(?) organic tomatoes sold on our shelves which wouldn't have passed British standards to sell as organic.

New DNA testing regimes notwithstanding, the intense financial pressure on the meat and food processing industries is expected to only increase while shoppers continue to expect cheap, convenient processed foods made from raw ingredients whose prices continue to rise in the global marketplace.

from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21544335

Welfare is only one part of the equation with foreign imports. Some countries are better than others welfare-wise. The larger issues which make our home-grown products more expensive are in things like labour costs & feed costs among others.
Countries with higher production costs inevitably have to charge more than those where people work for '$1 a day'. China, for example. can produce meat & veg at a fraction of our costs. If we want all our food cheap then it will come from countries like China.

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Do horse cost less to rear pound for pound than cows?

Isn't the cheap price of horrsemeat down to the fact there is a surplus of carcasses?

At the end of the day choice may not be in the equation.

Yes, I understand that horses cost less to rear but also, as you say, there is currently a surplus, too.

John_Pierpoint

There were two problems with the horse mince scandal:

1. The packaging lied about the contents.

2. Horses can be fed drugs that might have a nasty effect on the humans eating their meat.

Other than that I am happy to eat horse - minced or otherwise - it seems like a waste not to.

Thanks to the fuss about horse meat, a broken down old nag now has a negative value, just like an old banger that failed its MOT 10 years ago, used to be taken on a one way trip to Calais and abandoned.

So what is the NFU demanding now, a new criminal offence for abandoning animals called "fly grazing", like "fly tipping", when the police have more important things to worry about; the government has recently responded to public pressure and eased the laws on "fly parking".

N1AK

CLAPTON wrote: »

Every businessman would like a decent 'price' for their products.

The price of their products should be determined by supply and demand (with appropriate regulations of course) and not by what producers feel they 'deserve'.

Whether prices rise or fall should depend upon the market.

I have some sympathy towards the view that some localised food production is beneficial to the country as a whole and thus limited intervention in the market can be justified.

CAP goes well beyond what I'd like to see; however some costs/benefits that wouldn't typically influence a free market should, imo, be accounted for.

CLAPTON

It would seem that food should be properly labelled so we can consumers can make their own well informed choices and let the market supply that demand.

I fully understand that UK farming has to accommodate appropriate open access, flooding, pollution etc standards that may require taxpayer subsidy.

cepheus

Excellent piece on Land Tax here, championed by one of the greatest Philosophers:

Land Value Tax: back on the table in the UK

Taxing land value therefore does not act to discourage economic activity in the same way that it is argued income taxes do. In fact we can use part of the income to bring down taxes on other areas of the economy which are regressive or difficult in other ways.

It is also a just tax, because you are taking the wealth which has not been created by the people owning that wealth, and using it to provide goods and services that we all benefit from.

The desirability of taxing unearned wealth was set out by John Stewart Mill in the 19th Century in his Principles of Political Economy. Referring to how landlords he said: They grow richer, as it were in their sleep, without working, risking, or economising. What claim have they, on the general principle of social justice, to this accession of riches? In what would they have been wronged if society had, from the beginning, reserved the right of taxing the spontaneous increase of rent, to the highest amount required by financial exigencies?

This leads to the third big reason for land value taxation, the potential for economic stimulus. The low cost of holding land encourages speculation. Investors may simply buy land and wait for the value to go up. With land value taxes the costs of holding land increases so land owners are encouraged to put it to productive use, or to sell it to someone who will. The result is that land prices fall.

A new tax that will reduce the value of your home is a tough sell in a country where most people still own their own home. Particularly when the public discourse is controlled by a media which is in the hands of a wealthy elite who stand to lose most from a dose of fiscally stimulated redistribution............

So how much is up for grabs? One tax expert has estimated that the amount of money available to the government could be up to £200 bn a year. And that’s just looking at residential property...........

The potential for reworking the entire tax system at this point becomes possible, and there lies the political solution. If a government could get the right balance between replacing existing taxes, plugging the deficit and increasing public expenditure from the proceeds of LVT, then it could put together a package that it can sell.

John_Pierpoint

I am paying £2k a year in land tax it is called council tax.

cepheus

Interesting that Burnham is making land tax a policy aim rather than Corbyn. I don't think Burnham is finished yet due to second preferences, or if one of the others drop out.

Generali

I have no problem with a land tax, especially if it replaces SDLT. A wealth tax is a dumb idea though.