The Cat and the Secret of Land Value

Posted on May 6, 2026 by Housingresearch.solutions

The cat and Dick Twittingham meet a wise Innkeeper

This article is from landisfree.co.uk, and I have copied and pasted it; all credit therefore goes to the writer, who explains/interpetesd Henry George’s original article rent theory quite brilliantly as a tale of an encounter.

This further reinforces my own internal argument for less academic malarchy and more stories to explain dull theory in an everyday example (i.e., The Wizard of Oz and the board game Monopoly)

SA 72. CAN YOU SEE THE CAT?

It’s there in the picture. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

The Cat and Dick Twittingham

Once upon a time, there was a cat and his master, Richard Twittingham.

Dick was determined to make his fortune in London and planned to set off on the long walk from the Forest of Dean, where he lived. But …

Outside a tavern in the year 1367, the first year in the reign of King Henry IV of England.

“Have you seen the cat?” asked Dick of the innkeeper.

“Do you mean THE cat?” enquired the innkeeper. “I don’t understand,” said Dick.

“Ah, well, either you see THE cat or you don’ t,” said the innkeeper, going about his business.

“Of course I can see my cat when he is here,” snapped Dick, “he is black and white with four legs and a tail and goes by the name of Tom.”

“Ah,” said the innkeeper. “Whither are you bound with your cat, then?”

“London, of course,” exclaimed Dick, “I’ve heard tell the streets are paved with gold.”

“So they are,” said the innkeeper, “so they are for them what can see THE cat.”

“Innkeeper, I’ve had enough of this nonsense . Either you explain what you are talking about or I will have no_further truck with you.”

” I see you have spirit,” said the innkeeper. “Rest ye awhile at my tavern and I will let you into a secret.”

“A secret!” said Dick, wide-eyed with interest. “Gosh, do I have to keep it for ever and ever? Are the streets of London really paved with gold, then?”

“They be that,” whispered the innkeeper,” but only those with eyes to see justice and a heart ready to understand natural rights can see who creates the gold and those that pocket it for their own gain.”

“Speak on, my good man,” said Dick, “for I am as eager as anyone to see a fair distribution of wealth in society and poverty banished from this fair land of ours.”

And so it was that the innkeeper explained how the streets of London were paved with gold, but that only a few privileged folk, them what had titles, them who lived in luxury in fancy London Houses and great estates in the country and what did no work yet were rich and powerful were able to acquire the gold, while them that were called peasants and common people scraped but a bare existence on low wages, heavy tithes and, to cap it all, lived in disgusting hovels, many dependent on charity.

“Ye see, young fellow,” said the innkeeper, “after the Conquest the land was given to a handful of the bastard’s principal knights who kept the people in what amounted to slavery, forced them to work for nothing on the lord’s land and made them pay rent.

But God never intended the land to be in private hands. In Anglo-Saxon times, we were independent Freemen who worked the land for ourselves and kept the produce. It is society that creates the value in land, and that value should rightly be returned to the community so it can grow and improve with everybody sharing the benefits. Today, that value is taken – nay, stolen – by the descendants of the Norman Lords and Barons. They claim they own the land and this gives them the power to demand rent from the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker and the innkeeper, extracting the most they can get to leave their tenants with a bare living. And the threat of instant eviction if they are so much as a day behind with the payment.

“Trouble is that folks have become so oppressed that they suffer the burdens but don’t see the chains”.

You mark my words, young lad, one day there will be a revolt and the peasants will rise up and free themselves from oppression. (Indeed, the Peasants’ Revolt took place I 4 years later in June 1381, in the first year of the 14-year old King Richard 11) I just hope and pray that when the time comes they don’t go for the wrong target and put the blame on them what employs them. Capitalists they calls ’em. It’s not the capitalists. It’s the lords and landowners what be the tyrants – they are the ones that reap where they have not sown and fill their pockets with the fruit of other men’s labour.”

“And scrape the gold off the streets,” cried Dick. “You mean it is the Land….” said Dick before the innkeeper interrupted.

“Just you be careful. Now you know the secret you better hold your tongue when you get to London less you loose it in some dark alley.”

And so it was that Dick came to understand natural law and the importance of land in society. That land value is created by the community, and if collected as land rental for the community, then society as a whole would reap the benefits of a growing population and demand for more goods and services. He also came to appreciate that all improvements to the infrastructure, paid for by tax impositions on the poor, go to increase land value and provide an opportunity for the landowner to increase the rent of properties they let out to farmers and townsfolk. So the poor work their socks off while the landowners dress themselves in silk and ermine.

Historical note: The expression ‘do you see the cat’ was a popular saying in the early 20th century among the followers of Henry George, the American political economist who recognised that poverty and unemployment resulted when access to land, the essential element of production, was appropriated by a small number of landowners and speculators while the majority of people competed with each other for work and were forced to accept the least wage they were prepared to accept. George was one of the foremost exponents of the theory that if land value was used to pay for public infrastructure, there would be no need for taxes on wages, production and exchange.

This little tale will hopefully stir your desire to understand the basic economic principles explained in Progress & Poverty- the book written by George in 1857 that later inspired Winston Churchill, Lloyd George, Asquith and the Liberal Party to advocate Land Value Taxation in the Budget of 1909. If you want to see the cat and discover for yourself how to make a fairer society, then why not become a regular visitor to the sites below? Once you see THE cat, you will realise the causes of the problems facing people in every country of the world, and, more importantly, how they might be solved.

www.landvaluetax.org	www.henrygeorgefoundation.org
http://www.coo12erativeindividualism.org	www.labourland.org
http://www.landisfree.co.uk	wv,.rw.coalitionforeconomicjustice.com

My thanks to this website

Rachael Reeves Rent Control! Surely not.

Featured

Posted on April 29, 2026 by Housingresearch.solutions

A conversation on the basics and where I’m at in 2026 concerning solutions to Housing unaffordability

At the end of April, Chancellor Racheal Reeves let it slip that she was considering a one-year Rent Freeze. My political cynicism says this was put out to see what the reaction would be, as usual, all the rentier landlords screamed the end of civilisation (well, theirs at least), and very few understood what the fuss was about.

AI slop image but does what it says on the tin — AI slop image but gets the point across.

So I wrote a brief outline as a comment and waited for the usual replies, thankfully I received a great one giving me a chance to further expound,

So sit back, read and enjoy the banter, as a conversation is often better at retrieving solutions than just a mere one-sided thought.

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Unveiling the Truth about Rent Control and Land Values in Housing

Posted on May 28, 2024 by Housingresearch.solutions

Further analysis of where Vicky didn’t go!

A great interview with Housing journalist and author

My comments on the interview and replies to other’s comments are in parts two and three.

I’ve been researching housing unaffordability for seven years and am about to start writing a dissertation on Rent Control (℅ Dr Anna Minton). After all these years of trying to find solutions, the elephant in the room is Rent Control. Why?

Because it gets right to the heart of the issue, which is, in fact (drum roll)… land values.

This is a disappointing and slightly dull answer, but it’s one of the keys that has unlocked many doors for working—and middle-class people who don’t want to spend 30-50% of their income on a 40-year mortgage or rent to a landlord.

Some of the main authors to thank for this conclusion are John Doling (tries to be neutral), Danny Dorling (left), Nick Bano (left), Kemp (right), and Christine Whitehead (LSE, right). It is always good to see if there is a counter-argument of value—there isn’t.
(As well as Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Keynes, Piketty, Blyth, Mazzucato, Christophers, Kelton, Richard Murry and Minton)

Why? An example: I’m a former bricklayer who ran a business in construction, so I know about house building pricing. My humble little flat;
In 1994, it was purchased for £47,700 with a floor area of 42m². In 1994, it cost £600 per m² to build, thus £25,200 to rebuild. Therefore, 53% build/47% land value = £47,700.

Now (without all the breakdowns), it’s 33% build/67% land value! @£250K purchase price (based on £2K/m² rebuild).

The killer point: in the 1950s, land values of new builds dropped to 3%. Based on those values and present-day build values (£2K per/m²), my flat would be on the market for £86,600, which equates to 2.4 times the full-time national average income (£35K). 2.4 times was also needed in the 1950s-60s for a single average income to buy an average 2.5-bed semi (.5 being the box room).

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Ref; The Housing Crisis is Even Worse Than You Think | Aaron Bastani meets Vicky Spratt | Downstream

Posted on April 10, 2023 by Housingresearch.solutions

At present I’m working on a paper that will be finished by the 26th of April, once completed I will write a timeline for the Video filling in the areas that some may want more information on. As well as the Buy-To-Let Quetion that was left unanswered.

Post 26th I’ll have more info as the area I’m working on is the periods of; 1930-42, 1945-70, followed by 1979 to the present concerning universalist approach to housing/welfare until 1979 then the selectivist approach to housing/welfare.

Keynes; The role of Government is to create a society where all can have the opportunity to have a ‘good life’ and not just the few.

What actually is the point of the Private Rental Sector (PRS)?

Posted on December 3, 2022 by Housingresearch.solutions

The Housing Act of 1988 deregulated new lettings to encourage the PRS to return, 44 years later the potential for 1910 rent strikes of pre The Rent Control Act of 1914 look like they may return.

Sitting in the library, grinding my way through various papers and journals on Rent Control (RC), I started to read a report from the much admired Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) published in 1992 with various academic, housing pressure groups, practitioners and financiers together with advisors to politicians from different parties all contributing to the discussion. So far so good, but…..

The book in question amongst my usual chaos

Two issues of cognitive bias became increasingly apparent, both of which we all suffer from as emotional beings, so I’m not specifically criticising the authors of the report, but taking the more cautious route of an anthropologists like, the sadly departed David Graeber and also the political economist Thomas Piketty. Graeber in his book (and the secret is in the title) Debt; The First 5000 years and Piketty to a lesser extent focussed on the past 200 years in his highly acclaimed and fascinating book Capital of the 21st Century.

“Recency bias is a cognitive bias that favors recent events over historic ones“

The first bias was the effect of just looking to the lived and experienced recent past (recency bias) and making a judgment that a correlation of rent controls of the recent past have meant that the PRS has reduced due to not enough yield being available from old RC properties, that is a fair judgment, but does that mean that to get more rented properties available for the small sector (at the time of the report) of transient renters, namely young people on their way to purchase and temporary work force ( in fact a red herring) moving around the country, you just simply reverse the model?

So with that logic, if rent control causes PRS shortages then abandon rent control and supplement the PRS and a ‘fair’ rental market will return with the benefit of landlords now also getting a ‘fair return’.

“What could possibly go wrong’?

The issue with this decision is that now in 2022 we are seeing the true consequences of this reversal, rather than market rates settling to a ‘fair rent’ level they are driving people into cohabitation and single room conversions with shared bathrooms as incomes have stagnated (not so much trickle down, but rather, trickle up), but rents increase as scarcity within the ‘free market’ predicts.

Whereas if they had taken the time and effort to look back to pre 1914 Rent Act they would’ve seen the issues of free market rents gradually consuming and therefore monopolising a sector that even Winston Churchill in 1909 fumed and rallied against to the greed and slothfulness of the rentier class.

Churchill in his mid thirties around 1909

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Rent Control Paradox No 1

Featured

Posted on November 16, 2022 by Housingresearch.solutions

An outline of a strategy to address the commodified housing market. The idea originated from a thought experiment in 2018.

One of the first paradoxical issues surrounding Rent Control (RC) is the difficulty of implementing it, particularly because it would most negatively impact the wealthy establishment. This often leads to a refusal to even consider the proposal.

This post is a response to a question I didn’t have time to address at the end of a presentation. I discussed the fundamental aspects of the current housing model and explained why unregulated private purchases and rents have become entirely market-driven, driven by the finalisation of the mortgage debt market and the commodification of the living spaces we call home.

The question is an obvious first hurdle to even thinking about the introduction of private RC,

Slightly paraphrased question from my classmate Mark;

“How are you going to get an acceptance from small private landlords let alone institutions”?

My response stems from ideas I’ve been developing for a few years, inspired by a theoretical Beveridge 2.0 report. This includes addressing the “five giants” of a 21st-century neoliberal society in the UK.
It’s very broad, but the main point is how you convince people that the stick of RC will benefit the nervous middle (50-90 percentile) and suspicious asset wealth (top 10%).

Addressing bias

According to behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman, we tend to exhibit a stronger bias toward loss—known as “loss aversion”—than toward gain. This bias significantly influences our decision-making. Initially, it may seem beneficial to be overly cautious, as common sense suggests that careful consideration of financial decisions is wise.

However, this tendency can lead to poor judgment in certain situations, as illustrated by gamblers who obsessively chase losses while ignoring the more rational option of accepting a loss and walking away (Kahneman, 2011). In contrast, an AI algorithm would evaluate the odds and likely accept the initial loss if it determined that doing so was the best course for maximising long-term gains.

Humans, on the other hand, often struggle with this due to the emotional weight of the initial loss, often reacting with the fast-thinking, emotion-led part of our decision-making dual apparatus (the other being the slow, rational side).

So, with this in mind, to counter the loss, we need a greater gain. Thus, in this report, I figured four carrots to the one stick. This is so important to creating societal jewels (i.e., the NHS) that can be justified to the majority over the small minority of self-seeking short-termists ( and we will see in the paper that all benefit long-term, again, the NHS).

Though it should be stated that any welfare fiscal spending cannot show a direct profit by its very nature, it’s once, twice, thrice removed. The measurement of GDP growth is only seen as a fiscal measurement of ‘production’ ( highlighted as the definition of production has been constantly manipulated; for example, only recently has rentier landlordism been included as a product, even though its extraction, nothing is actually created).

The separation of generations cared for, educated from birth to grave, kept healthy, with food, shelter, warmth, and no fear of retirement, to concentrate on producing measurable wealth during the hours of productive employment.

“Not all can be commodified for direct profit, but what can be produced unhindered by welfare concerns will be measurably more efficient in final output. A sick, hungry workforce is absent in mind and body”.

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Próblēma, “anything thrown forward,

Posted on October 29, 2022 by Housingresearch.solutions

Albert solving some problems, or so it looks.

Why we need problems.

Recently watched a Vpro ( documentary maker from the Netherlands) documentary. Highlighting the issue of University inventions and thus patents being given away free to private industry to use and then profit from, with the bizarre reality of the state buying them back including a rent for the patent! Think pharmaceuticals and the NHS.

The well known and often quoted is the iphone, most of the internal components were government funded projects for defence, navigation and general public funded university research, all used by Steve Jobs and co, and cleverly put together to create the ubiquitous smartphone which was then marketed for huge profits, with none going back to the publicly funded organisations as if it was all the ideas of just the private sector (remember these corporations also avoid taxation).

So Mariana Mazzucato goes through this in her book The Entrepreneurial State (debunking public v private sector myths, video further down the page) and the Vpro video.

One section near the end caught my imagination.
Problems are there to be solved, the Kennedy moonshot speech;

“We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon… We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too”.