Countries don't become rich through basic industries and resource extraction. Yes there are plenty of exceptions like Saudi Arabia and Norway, but look at Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria, and several of the Russian federation states. The only resource that Singapore, HK and Taiwan have is human capital. Why your insistence on Starmer/Reeves style punitive taxes? Cowperthwaite anyone? This is not your best thought-through post ever.
Ah, no. Resource rents should be taxed until the pips squeak. Agreed entirely that we don;t want high taxes generally. But resource rents are akin to hte mere existence of land Henry George and all that LVT. Even in a minarchy we need some tax revenue, that's where to get it.
Indeed so, Resource rent is, by definition, the value of the simple existence of the stuff in that time and place. That's what gets taxed. The application of capital and labour to its extraction, purification, transport, is not a resource rent - and therefore doesn;t get taxed that way. That there's oil in the N Sea - should BP gain profit from that? Nope - but BP should, righteously, gain vast profit from allocating the capital, developing the tech, to get the oil out of the N Sea.
Put more simply, resource rent taxation is just another name for landowner royalties....
Countries don't become rich through basic industries and resource extraction. Yes there are plenty of exceptions like Saudi Arabia and Norway, but look at Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria, and several of the Russian federation states. The only resource that Singapore, HK and Taiwan have is human capital. Why your insistence on Starmer/Reeves style punitive taxes? Cowperthwaite anyone? This is not your best thought-through post ever.
Ah, no. Resource rents should be taxed until the pips squeak. Agreed entirely that we don;t want high taxes generally. But resource rents are akin to hte mere existence of land Henry George and all that LVT. Even in a minarchy we need some tax revenue, that's where to get it.
That's a very investor-friendly attitude.
Indeed so, Resource rent is, by definition, the value of the simple existence of the stuff in that time and place. That's what gets taxed. The application of capital and labour to its extraction, purification, transport, is not a resource rent - and therefore doesn;t get taxed that way. That there's oil in the N Sea - should BP gain profit from that? Nope - but BP should, righteously, gain vast profit from allocating the capital, developing the tech, to get the oil out of the N Sea.
Put more simply, resource rent taxation is just another name for landowner royalties....
So... scaring away investors with punitive taxation on the land part of the equation is a friendly thing to do? I think not.