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The recent Georgist uprising in the rat-sphere seems to be spreading outward, and gathering steam if anything. Lars Doucet, who wrote the original ACX post that blew up, is now releasing a book called Land is a Big Deal which summarizes his writings thus far.
There was also a major takedown of Detroit land assessment practices by a major land parcel data collector, ReGrid that dropped a few days ago. Major takeaways:
In addition, some fairly mainstream political candidates such as Chloe Brown who's running for Mayor of Toronto, seem to be gaining steam. Land value tax is a large plank in her platform.
I got interested in land reform through the original series of ACX posts, and frankly I'm surprised how interesting the problem is and how overall neglected the topic seems to be. Even extremely intelligent and well read folks I talk to about it are surprised when they learn that land value is usually just pulled out of thin air - the industry standard is to just take 25% of the purchase price and not give a shit about location or any other factors, which seems bizarre upon a critical review.
I've seen some discussion about Georgism/LVT here, but curious if anyone else has been following this?
Also, what are the arguments against LVT, besides low-effort "taxes are always bad and raising them is evil?" Genuinely curious for well thought out reasons why an LVT would be a bad idea.
Edit: For those new to this idea, a Land Value Tax in it's most basic form simply says we should tax away the value of the land, and only let people who sell land profit off of the 'improvements' they make, such as buildings, restorations, etc. For instance if you bought a piece of land and tried to sell it 1 year later off pure speculation, doing nothing to the land, you would not receive any profit.
Here are my objections:
People don't care about sophisticated philosophical arguments concerning taxes; they merely care about how much they have to pay. If I have to pay 20k a year in taxes I really don't care whether they tax my income, purchases, or property. I still have to pay it. Sure you can (and Georgists do) make the argument that there are certain inefficiencies with regard to most methods of taxation, and I don't necessarily disagree, but this seems like nibbling around the edges. I don't think we're experiencing some kind of huge GDP loss simply because our tax system isn't optimized to create the right incentives for absolutely everyone. And no one is going to support any kind of tax reform that results in them paying more taxes for roughly the same amount of services. This is a fairly minor objection on the whole (I have no personal objection to land taxes as such), but when people tout the benefits of some sort of philosophical efficiency absent significant tangible benefits it seems like a rhetorical weakness. A system's elegance isn't a great argument for its implementation.
It won't end land speculation. I often see Georgists act like "Speculators" are sitting on large developable tracts in urban areas just waiting for them to gain a little more value. While I'm sure you could find examples of this if you looked, most vacant land is vacant for a reason. Speculators buy land in areas where land is cheap now but where they expect it to gain in value in the future. Emphasis on the "cheap now" part. If the land has little value at present, the taxes on it aren't going to be all that high, and it may be worth it for an investor to hold it for a while. For example, suppose there's a 100 acre cow pasture outside a city that I can buy for $1,000/acre. I can buy it for that price because that's what it's worth, regardless of whether a speculator owns it or someone making the most productive use of it (in this case, as a cow pasture) owns it. And I'm not necessarily just letting it sit. If it's a cow pasture the owner will probably lease it for grazing to whoever owned the cows that were grazing it before. Either way, the land taxes while the land is cheap are just part of the investment formula. If the land increases in value to the point that holding it is uneconomical, the land gets sold. That's the same as it is now—why would I speculate in land I had no intention of selling? I don't understand this argument.
This is perhaps my biggest objection: It's too easy to game the system. Any improvements to efficiency of land use will be totally subject to zoning regulations. Changing land-use patterns would still be subject to the same political considerations they are now. "So what", you may say, "eliminating zoning restrictions is part of it". And this may be the case. But lack of zoning restrictions only makes the gaming worse. Value of property is dependent on its potential use, and while land-use restrictions can limit potential uses, a more permanent limitation is based on size. If I own a 10,000 sq. ft. vacant lot in the central business district of a major city, and no surrounding property, the value of the land is limited because not much can be built on it that would suit the area. If instead I had a 1 acre lot then it may be worth more than an equivalent number of small lots simply because the development possibilities are more in line with the economic desires of the area. Eventually a lot is so small that it's practically worthless. If I had a large amount of vacant land I wanted to dodge taxes on, the goal would be to subdivide the land to the point that each individual tract was practically worthless. There would be survey costs in doing so, and costs again at the back end to recombine the parcels, but during the period the land is held the tax would be nominal.
So what's preventing people from doing this now with existing property taxes? One big one is minimum parcel sizes; in some areas the municipality simply won't let you subdivide below a certain point. But this brings back our old friend zoning. Such minimums are part of the zoning code, and while they don't sound as disruptive as outright use restrictions, they can still be use to great effect to influence patterns of development. For example, a lot of semi-rural areas near me that don't want residential subdivisions will set the minimum lot size at one acre or larger to prevent sprawl. This may sound like a good thing to those who want more density, but it's usually used as a means of limiting density. To maximize the space you'd need a fairly large building, and if there's no demand for such a building then you're getting houses on 1 acre lots. Set the minimum smaller and you optimize for density but make it easy for a developer to subdivide into oblivion. Commercial and industrial land is generally more expensive (and is thus taxed higher) than residential land. If you want to speculate on land for commercial purposes, just subdivide it into a bunch of lots designed for single-family homes and get a lower tax bill than if the parcel was intact; you've essentially zoned it for single-family use to the outside observer but since you own all the lots yourself you reserve the right to recombine them how you see fit. Or you could just separate out the land fronting the existing roads and landlock a big portion in the middle (nothing reduces a property's value like eliminating access).
I could go on forever like this but I need to head out the door.
On (2), most of the speculators aren't sitting on vacant land. They are sitting on underused land.
For example, one may wish to capture a large and increasing stream of owner equivalent rent. (This is a major use case.) For example, one might speculatively buy a home in NYC in the 1970's and then continue to live in it until their death.
Generally speaking, most of truly distortionary problems in the US today consist of middle class people exploiting the system to gain long term stable revenue streams. (See also government pensions.)
Part of the value of an LVT is to tax land as if it's not in a NIMBY area in order to charge NIMBYs a high price for being NIMBYs. As in, consider local SF single family homeowners who prevent apartments from being built. Lets make them pay taxes as if their land were usable for apartments.
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