[article] The ‘Georgists’ Are Out There, and They Want to Tax Your Land | New York Times

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[article] The ‘Georgists’ Are Out There, and They Want to Tax Your Land | New York Times

www.nytimes.com

@Fried_out_KombiM to

Just Tax LandEnglish • 1 year ago

cross-posted to:
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The ‘Georgists’ Are Out There, and They Want to Tax Your Land

www.nytimes.com

Amid a crisis in affordable housing, the century-old ideas of Henry George have gained a new currency.

Non-paywall link: https://archive.is/umP8D

This article explains the recent re-emergence of Georgism, its origins, and the rising popularity of the land value tax as a solution to the housing crisis.

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Land Value Tax

From Wikipedia:

A land value tax (LVT) is a levy on the value of land without regard to buildings, personal property and other improvements.[1] It is also known as a location value tax, a point valuation tax, a site valuation tax, split rate tax, or a site-value rating.

Land value taxes are generally favored by economists as they do not cause economic inefficiency, and reduce inequality.[2] A land value tax is a progressive tax, in that the tax burden falls on land owners, because land ownership is correlated with wealth and income.[3][4] The land value tax has been referred to as “the perfect tax” and the economic efficiency of a land value tax has been accepted since the eighteenth century.[1][5][6]

…

Most taxes distort economic decisions and discourage beneficial economic activity.[14] For example, property taxes discourage construction, maintenance, and repair because taxes increase with improvements. LVT is not based on how land is used. Because the supply of land is essentially fixed, land rents depend on what tenants are prepared to pay, rather than on landlord expenses. Thus landlords cannot pass LVT to tenants, who would move or rent smaller spaces before absorbing increased rent.[15]

…

LVT’s efficiency has been observed in practice.[18] Fred Foldvary stated that LVT discourages speculative land holding because the tax reflects changes in land value (up and down), encouraging landowners to develop or sell vacant/underused plots in high demand. Foldvary claimed that LVT increases investment in dilapidated inner city areas because improvements don’t cause tax increases. This in turn reduces the incentive to build on remote sites and so reduces urban sprawl.[19] For example, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s LVT has operated since 1975. This policy was credited by mayor Stephen R. Reed with reducing the number of vacant downtown structures from around 4,200 in 1982 to fewer than 500.[20]

LVT is arguably an ecotax because it discourages the waste of prime locations, which are a finite resource.[21][22][23] Many urban planners claim that LVT is an effective method to promote transit-oriented development.[24][25]

Georgism

Georgism (otherwise known as geoism) is an economic philosophy holding that the economic value derived from land, including natural resources and natural opportunities, should belong equally to all residents of a community, but that people own the value that they create themselves.

Most Georgists support:

A broad-based land value taxation scheme, either to mostly or entirely replace existing harmful taxes on income, consumption, and corporations.
The social redistribution of this revenue either directly, through a Citizens’ Dividend, or indirectly, through government programs, to citizens.
Some (but not all) forms of market intervention by the state.
The abolition of tariffs, quotas, patents, and other barriers to trade and commerce.

The overall goal of Georgism can be summarized as follows: to eliminate rent-seeking and monopolism so that the economy can be free, fair, efficient, and prosperous for all.

The Georgist paradigm crosses the left-right political divide. This means that there are statist, anarchist, progressive, and conservative Georgists.

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