Tag Archives: history

Wealth taxes: On property or land?

Economist Gary Stevenson points out that the wealth of the very rich has grown so much that they are buying assets, such as property, forcing up prices for everybody else: Fewer people can afford to buy their own homes. Stevenson”s advocates taxing wealth to stop the rich getting too rich.

For the present, he avoids being to specific about the exact nature of a wealth tax. Here, I propose two specific solutions. First: taxing property and returning the proceeds equally to each of UK’s 52 million adults. Second: Taxing land to do the same. I have developed these with the help of the chatbot, Claude AI.

A property tax

Continue reading Wealth taxes: On property or land?

Architects trained to like buildings we don’t?

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Building Soul on Radio 4

Listening to Building Soul on Radio 4 has given me some depressing deja vu – I’d heard similar stuff when I worked at Leeds School of Architecture for most of the 1970s. The presenter, Thomas Heatherwick started the programme with

“There’s been an epidemic of inhuman building plaguing or cities stripping them of character, joy and soul. I call it the blandemic.”

Heatherwick criticised today’s buildings for their box shapes and ubiquitous flat surfaces of Modern Movement Architecture with its rejection of ornament.

Continue reading Architects trained to like buildings we don’t?