Sir, – Keith Dawson, in his View from the East (The SF, March 11 edition), is justifiably proud of his company’s role in helping to mitigate the impact of Russia’s invasion.
We hosted a Ukrainian family of five at Straiton Farm and they made us vividly aware of the trauma inflicted by Putin’s maniacal ambition to restore the USSR.
I noted Keith’s statement that: “It is not allowed to buy agricultural land so our rental model is still focused on production, rather than on land appreciation." I hope that Ukraine continues with this policy when the damage can be repaired after the war.
The cost will be huge and there will be plenty of ‘economists’ giving advice to borrow money from the IMF and the World Bank and to privatise as many state-owned assets as possible, including its land. This advice should be ignored.
A precedent for the correct policy was established by the state of California following the earthquake of 1906 which raised the money for repairs by collecting annual ground rent, otherwise known as Land Value Tax. There was no need to try to increase taxes on the earned incomes of employment and trade, which would have increased the costs of restoration.
A hint of what will happen in Ukraine if land is sold is contained in Keith’s use of the phrase 'production, rather than land appreciation'. In other words, Ukraine could eventually end up in a similar economic mess as we are in the UK, where speculation in landed property is the most profitable form of investment and productive industry is starved of capital, and employment and trade are punished by high taxes.
Ukraine has the chance to minimise taxes on earned incomes and raise the funds for the necessary functions of the state from the annual rental value of the land because it does not have the handicap of the vested interest of landed property owners such as we have in the UK.
It is politically impossible to radically reform the tax system here because those who own landed property are able to persuade politicians to allow the collection of the unearned income which has accumulated in the land we own.
Most politicians are too timid to promote what would be in the best interests of the majority of the population, especially the young, who will never be able to afford a house to live in or land to farm.
Duncan Pickard, Straiton Farm, Balmullo.
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