Labour’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has said that a Labour government would not raises taxes on wealth, capital gains or higher incomes. She does not, she says, see “the way to prosperity as being through taxation.”
Britain is asset rich. National wealth – a mix of property, business, financial and state assets – stands at almost seven times the size of the economy. That is double the level of the 1970s.
This has not come about as a result of investment and productivity growth. Instead, much of this private-wealth mountain is unearned – the product of windfall gains, resulting from state-driven asset inflation, the mass sell-off of former public and commonly held assets (from land to industries) and the exploitation of corporate power. As philosopher and civil servant John Stuart Mill quipped during the Industrial Revolution, it’s “getting rich while asleep”.
