If I understand it correctly, it’s basically the economic view that all taxes should be eliminated and replaced with a land value tax. A land value tax is basically the equivalent of the renting value of the land that you own, not taking into account any improvements (or the lack thereof). Proponents seem to think that this would be more equitable, would punish people for having empty lots that they don’t do anything with, and would make communities more densely populated (which would help reduce our contributions to climate change).
I’m a bit skeptical of this working as the only tax applied to people, and I’m not entirely sure how this is viewed as a progressive taxing system.
So, what do liberals, centrists, and other left-leaning groups think of this?
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If I understand it correctly, it’s basically the economic view that all taxes should be eliminated and replaced with a land value tax. A land value tax is basically the equivalent of the renting value of the land that you own, not taking into account any improvements (or the lack thereof). Proponents seem to think that this would be more equitable, would punish people for having empty lots that they don’t do anything with, and would make communities more densely populated (which would help reduce our contributions to climate change).
I’m a bit skeptical of this working as the only tax applied to people, and I’m not entirely sure how this is viewed as a progressive taxing system.
So, what do liberals, centrists, and other left-leaning groups think of this?
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Several states tax property but not income. It’s not the same as you said, but similar enough to maybe generate some useful data.
While I’m somewhat dubious if they’d work for a replacement for ALL taxes I generally am in favor of the idea. it seems to me like it could be in addition a good way to potentially help tax the wealthy which is notoriously difficult to do.
I wouldn’t distill Georgism down to an LVT replacing all taxes. The philosophy of Georgism starts with the idea that the value a society produces should belong to that society and not be concentrated into the hands of a few landowners. This philosophy results in the idea that an LVT should be placed at 100% on all land — it doesn’t inherently mean that all other taxes should be removed, but Georgists do usually consider other taxes to be less efficient and resulting in lower land values, so the idea is that if you remove other taxes you get more money overall by the increased land value.
Personally I like the philosophy of Georgism and it’s influenced a lot of my thought. I wouldn’t say I’m entirely bought in, but I do want to have a land value tax, and I do resent a system that funnels money into the hands of landlords
It is an interesting idea but the fact that so few places implement it when it is supposedly the greatest idea for tax reform ever naturally makes me skeptical.
Hong Kong does this, but the super confined nature of it might help that. Honestly I’m not really in favor over income taxes
I definitely think at the minimum, we should replace property taxes with a land value tax.
Simplistic toy problems are just that, simplistic toy problems. Any law or regulation creates winners and losers and, for the richest people on the planet, land ownership is a relatively small proportion of their assets.
Although this land taxing would be much less regressive than a sales tax, it would concentrate tax revenue on a group of people that are not the ones with highest wealth or income, punish those who are barely making a subsistence working the land, and create an additional barrier of entry to ownership for those who have the least resources.
Under feudalism, land was the greatest source of wealth. That’s not really true anymore. Investments and stocks are.
What you’re describing is a wealth tax on one specific type of wealth.
We should tax all wealth.
i probably have 10% of my net worth tied up in the land my house sits on.
The wealthy probably have 0.000000001% of their wealth tied up in land
This is a horribly regressive plan. So, count on republicans to do it.
Absolutely based
I’m not very familiar with it, but like Marxism it seems woefully incomplete and outdated. We know far more about economics and psychology then we did 150 years ago, and the great thinkers of that era (Marx, West, George, or anyone really) missed a lot of things. They also were biased by the economic engines of their time, which is in the height of the industrial revolution. The economies they knew revolved around production of goods. The economies of services was barely on their radar.
I think what we really need is something new. Something that decouples prosperity from growth. An economic system that encourages and rewards stability. Unfortunately, such a system is itself unstable, because money is exchangeable with power. Thus anyone that accumulates wealth also accumulates the means to bias the system in a way that grows their own wealth and power. Hence, our growth based economy. So the first step is to decouple money from power. I’m not sure if that’s even possible, to be hones.
Sounds like a load of nonsense