I know this sounds like a dumb question, but from my reading of Progress and Poverty, it seems like Henry George was using 'land value' to refer to land rents, yet looking at most uses of the phrase, it seems to refer to purchase price?

I'm referring to things like the LVT calculator from the Henry George School of Social Science where land value is based on county average price per acre.

Hi all, I am in grad school and looking to write a paper on Georgism broadly and the LVT specifically. What I am hoping to find is a resource that would help me demonstrate what a typical tax burden would look like under an LVT system. Basically I want to show comparisons between the tax experience of individuals under a single LVT system compared to the income/property/sales tax system of the US. Does anyone know of any resources that would assist with this? Thank you!

Link: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ipd/value_capture/defined/faq_land_value_tax.aspx

Just wanted to post this article here since it gives some really good answers to questions or qualms people might have about the LVT while they're learning about it.

As the title suggests, what else do Georgists believe in other than LVT? Are you free traders? Are you deficit hawks? Are you for a smaller state?

I came across this presentation to the Colorado Commission on Property Tax in January 2024. I’m unsure of what the follow up was, but I thought I would share anyways:

https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/images/land_value_tax.pdf

Georgism has excellent ideas but a popularity problem.

Now rent-seeking is a term that is already well-known among a certain class of people that discuss economics. My impression is that it's an popular catch-all term for a specific type of perceived evil. Those greedy landlords! Rent-seekers! You've heard it.

Wikipedia, in its article on rent-seeking, states:

Georgist economic theory describes rent-seeking in terms of land rent, where the value of land largely comes from the natural resources native to the land, as well as collectively paid for services, for example: State schools, law enforcement, fire prevention, mitigation services, etc. Rent seeking to the Georgist does not include those persons that may have invested substantial capital improvements to a piece of land, but rather those that perform in their role as mere titleholder. This is the dividing line between a rent-seeker and a property developer, which need not be the same person.

So the plug with Georgism is already there. All we need to do now is expand on this. Rent-seeking as the big evil thing that we need to fight, and the rent-seeking tax as the solution. I feel like this will sell better than LVT.

Thoughts?

Various propositions and initiatives in the US election propose increasing or decreasing property taxes of one kind or another. Obviously increasing land tax is good, and increasing building tax is bad, but which way do you vote when the two are in lock step? What factors should I consider in deciding which way to vote?

The UK has just had a very controversial Budget. Lots of tax rises, lots of extra spending announced, lots of extra borrowing forecast. What did you think of the measures? What would Georgists have done differently?

I used to be a Georgist, but I've become sceptical over time. Owning real estate isn't inherently profitable or speculative. The reason that prices outgrow general inflation is imo more due to other factors like:

• supply restrictions like zoning, parking requirements, height limits, bureaucracy, etc.

• demand subsidies like mortgage interest deductions, down payment assistance, and not to forget, cheap credit. Low interest rates drive up asset prices. We've seen in the last 15 years that monetay policy has been very loose, and during that time house prices have risen disproportionately. That's not all due to supply.

• other inefficient policies like tariffs (which drive up demand for domestic industrial real estate and thus push land prices), agricultural subsidies (which drive demand for agricultural land and thus raise land prices), subsidies for cars/roads that make public transit uncompetitive even though public transit requires less land, this also pushes up land prices. There's more, like restrictions on manufactured homes and immigration that also drive up construction prices, I can go on.

My point is that real estate owners do not inherently get richer just by owning land in the right locations, unlike what georgism claims. There are many, many government policies which make real estate artificially expensive, sometimes by intent one would think. Real estate isn't even that good an investment, the stock market can make you more money and in a more liquid and stable way.

I believe that in a free market, even without lvt, real estate prices would stay stable over time, not outpacing general inflation like now. It doesn't matter that land supply is restricted, because first of all, land supply is abundant. Yes, even if we exclude unhabitable land like the desert, it's still abundant. There's no shortage of space on the planet and there never will be. The fact that land supply is abundant means landowners always face competition which pushes down prices and rents. In the future, we might explore space which would open up even more land than now, by a large margin.

Second, while the market cannot increase land supply in response to higher demand unlike other goods (well, land reclamation is possible), we can use existing land more efficiently. Elevators and skyscrapers were invented to deal with space constraints. We can build up if we can't build out. The possibility for tall buildings to exist effectively increased land supply, so to speak.

But there's other innovations that reduce land demand and increase efficiency. Think of work from home, vertical farming, free trade, ecommerce, etc. Higher productivity means we can achieve higher output and quality of life while requiring less land. So landowners don't have a monopoly. In a free market, if they try to charge rents, the market will come up with solutions. Unless the government intervenes of course, as it does now.

I hope this piece convinced you why georgism is false. We don't need land value taxes, we just need the government to get out of the way. Owning land is not a bad thing that needs to be punished fiscally.

The BlueSwipe app is a clear example of the top down Cold War mentality that still lingers in the Democratic Party. It does not allow for the spread of ideas bottom up. You cannot meet other Democrats or Independents on BlueSwipe.

Of course, any discussion of George by the unwashed would quickly be the end of the rent seeking coastal elites and shill media who now run the Democratic Party top down.

If Harris loses it'll be because rent seeking coastal elites and legacy media just ain't popular.

There should be other Democratic Party Georgists here who spotted BlueSwipe for what it is : anti popular government.

Dutch Land Reclamation is often used as a response to the argument that new land cannot be created, but the Georgist knows that reclamation in the Netherlands was just a clever trick of human engineering, not actual creation of land.

In order to build the structures to reclaim land from the sea the Dutch had to move vast quantities of earth. They used local and imported materials to build a lot of these structures. Not only this, but in order to prevent the lands from flooding infrastructure needs to be maintained and work (like pumping) needs to constantly be done. So without labor, a lot of this "created" land would flood very quickly.

What the Dutch did was very impressive, but I didn't make this post as a debunking of that argument. I'm more interested in what Georgists think of land reclamation and other related things like geoengineering from practical or ethical standpoint.

When we reclaim land what is essentially being done is just moving land around and displacing water. When the Netherlands did this, the land area was small enoungh and the sea level shallow enough that the effects on the rest of the world were negligible, but if you were to drain a much larger body of water like the Mediterranean then the effects would be much more dramatic. This was an actual proposal at one time btw, and it was ignored for obvious reasons.

The other way to "create" land would be through climate engineering. Making the earth colder and dryer would cause sea levels to drop as ocean turns to ice near the poles. So basically oceans would decrease but there would be an increase land, and the Dutch wouldn't have to worry about pumping to keep the ocean back anymore. Except this runs into problems as well, because ice would advance into previously livable land, and so the amount of livable land still remains very much fixed.

You can probably guess where I stand on the issue of climate engineering. The Earth has a delicate balance of land, ocean, and ice which all of its ecosystems are dependent on, so I'm opposed. However, when it comes to land reclamation it's a little more complicated. It's sort of a weird in-between externality and public good. On one hand it displaces water to elsewhere in the world, but on the other hand it can benefit a lot of people. Do you support these things or oppose them? Do you think things like climate engineering or land reclamation are things Georgists should tax as externalities? Or are they things that should be supported by the revenue of LVT? Like how public goods and infrastructure are?

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