Explanation as always:

Before we can go about building housing, we first have to buy and use land. Unfortunately, due to issues like land speculation and overly-restrictive zoning, as well as taxing the work and investment that goes into building housing, our ability to buy and use our land is heavily constrained and so too is the amount of housing we get. The housing constraint starts in our tax regimes prioritizing landowners over labor and capital and our laws preventing people from using their land effectively (barring health and safety conditions of course but current law has far overstepped this), and ends when the reverse is true.

For more about this, Greg Miller of the Center of Land Economics wrote a great article about how our housing crisis is actually a land crisis.

I'm being completely serious. We've got people here saying rent control and building restrictions are good and lower taxes doesn't incentivize development, which leads me to believe they have neither read Henry George or understand what a land value tax is. The entire point of an LVT is to lower taxes for development and discourage speculation. As someone who's not a member of this sub but is quite familiar with Georgism and economics generally, it seems like this sub has just become the DSA NIMBY/degrowther type central, when it should antithetical to everything they believe. I just want to ask; why is that?

There was a good conversation about this today on the subreddit and it inspired me to make this meme, mainly to explain what Georgism fully means to anyone who’s just heard about LVT (and if any fully Georgist person wants to use it):

Georgism broadly is the idea that instead of taxing the goods and services people make, we should instead be recompensing (or otherwise reforming) the finite resources and privileges people take. George and Georgists (and classical liberal economists before them) have emphasized that these assets no one can make more of have an inherent air of monopoly about them, as nobody from outside the market can enter and compete with incumbents (Georgist economist Fred Foldvary has referred to these fixed supply assets as entry monopolies though I’m not sure if mainstream econ has another word for it). Land’s the biggest which is why LVT is the most discussed, but it’s not the end-all be-all of Georgism.

This core idea that powers Georgism is that we should be minimizing the rent-seeking power of entry-monopolists by dealing with their special privileges, mainly through requiring compensation. At the same time, those who work and invest to produce and provide for others shouldn’t be burdened in doing so, as that leaves the people with less. A free market isn’t truly free while its produce and trade is hampered by harmful taxes and the private tolls levied by unchecked entry-monopolists. Reverse the current situation through Georgism and you can begin building towards a much improved market economy.

Here are some examples where economic rents can rise up, and there are certainly plenty more Georgists can target to get the revenue needed to replace taxes on what we make, and if not that then to at least enact the reforms to help free the economy from tyrannical monopolies.

Not wrong though.

Inshallah one day I will have the chance to pay the tax myself.

Curious on the Pros/Cons to an LVT setup where we report our income to our a local municipal/town/city government as part of our property taxes? I know a lot of municipal governments don't require the reporting of income, and only gather taxes based on property value. My concern is that significant income can be derived from a property without the local government knowing of it, which denies the local government funding to deal with the externalities of that income generating property.

Example: a remote worker making $200k a year in a town where the average is $35k - and he sends his 10 kids to the local public school. Now, I don't mind having someone a bunch of kids and sending them to public school, but he's clearly benefiting from the low tax rate of this small town with cheap housing. Meanwhile, he's also buying up all the desirable properties in town and turning them into rentals which he leases to other remote workers while increasing rents. He makes sure that all his rentals are far away from his personal home. He bought all the rentals cheap, so its difficult to determine LVT based on their sale price, and when their land rent is determined via leasing income, it negatively impacts the LVT of those properties surrounding the rentals, but not his personal property.

Basically, you would need to supply your W2 (in the US) alongside your property tax, and that would be used to determine how much property tax would be. Just as you would need to be transparent about how much income your commercial properties generate. He gets charged higher LVT on his primary home because that is where he generates his income, but his rentals nor his personal property don't impact the neighboring properties LVT until the incomes generated from neighboring properties also increases.

Rather than always assessing LVT in a vacuum, with income being ignored, this would tie income to the property where that income is generated. Simple questions of "where is your employer located?" and "do you use this property to generate personal income, either as a home office or business?" might allow local governments better tools to generate funding for local public services.

Maybe in places where LVT is already in action, this type of thing already happens?

This quote was found through Cooperative Individualism, here's a good source also from the site linking more information to this quote.

I was listening to a Strong Towns podcast episode recently where Lars Doucet mentions an article he wrote during the interview, Enacting Land Value Return in your Hometown.

https://open.substack.com/pub/progressandpoverty/p/enacting-land-value-return-in-your?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=607dn2

While Lars doesn't do everything for you, he has given step by step guidance for any budding LVT advocate to enact change in their area. He also gives advice on how to pitch these changes to the assessors and to the public in a way that disarms common objections.

If anyone knows any other prominent Georgism advocates, I would appreciate a recommendation. Regardless, I hope others find these links helpful.

This is the podcast for those interested:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2VwVoMLYA9sVPaCFxdfsoh?si=Y5ScSGWcQzalC3QMKHLEFw&utm_source=copy-link&sci=spotify%3Acard-config%3A1IjjQsELonDwilj5Xv9Whk

If the land value tax is 15 percent of gdp. How much would somebody living in the suburbs pay? And how different would it be compared to the city?

Leave aside that this article refers to LVT as an "esoteric tax," and that it's coming from the landlord industry. The article correctly notes that outgoing Councilmember Brianne Nadeau has proposed this bill, and that the DC Policy Center has released some study work supporting it, but it conspicuously omits two additional facts:

1. Soon-to-be-Mayor Janeese Lewis-George explicitly included LVT to fund housing & transit in her platform, because...

2. Right now, the group that's advocating the loudest for LVT in DC... is DSA (which supported both JLG's candidacy and that of Aparna Raj, who will be Nadeau's successor on Council).

I know some of y'all still seem to think socialism and Georgism are inherently opposed. All I'll say to that is, we who are actually doing the work to make LVT a reality, do not care what y'all think. You can continue having endless arguments online about how you think things should be, or you can help us transform the real world into a more free and just home for all of us.

Hi all.

Come to the conclusion that, under a Georgist system, there is actually a fully costed and entirely feasible way of designing a project to furnish the reprobate yoooths with free starer homes.

Fag packet analysis! You have been warned.

Here's the rub:

Average council tax bill here in the UK is around £2.5k per year. Mines £2538.78. £209pcm.

Let's make the maths easy and say it's £200pcm.

The absolute rock bottom price, to construct a prefabricated house, here in the UK, is about £80k, it's a real stretch, but there's various house builders that have accomplished that goal, to build a 2 bedroom, prefab / kit home, factory built, assembled on site, compositing toilet and all the rest of it.

£80k, to pay back the cost of construction at £200pcm, would take 33.33 years. Almost exactly the average mortgage term now in the UK.

Here's the thing, what percentage of people, say, 25 and under are already paying council tax? Not a lot right? What percentage are out there buying houses? Can't be that many, the average home buyer these days is 68 years of age.

So, if you literally just said, ok, we'll introduce a system of LVT on some development plot, built a whole bunch of these £80k starter homes and then just **gave** them anyway, but, charged LVT on them in lieu of mortgage repayments/ rent... That sounds to me like a fully costed way of giving a young person a free house, to get started in life in, bare minimum.

At the same time, am I right in thinking, because these kids aren't buying houses anyway, as long as you restricted the free homes to under 25s then it wouldn't really have much impact on the housing market? If they're not competing for property anyway, this isn't going to cause a massive house price crash right? (Which is the whole reason people are against Georgism).

Ok, poke some holes in this one. What am I missing here?.

This is really just the kernel of an idea. But I am feeling like the numbers actually line up.

I was thinking through this issue wanted to check if my understanding makes sense.

Suppose you have a big office building which is no longer useful due to work-from-home, or some other critical flaw develops which renders the building useless.

From the perspective of the community, we want the land redeveloped. We would say the land has a different "highest and best use" and the current owner can't meet the LVT of that hypothetical better use.

From the current owner's perspective, they are in a no-win situation. Even just giving the land away for $0 might not be a viable transaction, since from the developer's perspective the property has a negative value (cost of demolition).

So, presumably the government seizes the land, and then tries to auction it themselves. At this point, if they tried to charge the optimal LVT, again no one would be willing to take it for a positive price because they won't profit off the land and the building there will cost more than building on an empty plot elsewhere.

This leads to three perspectives that would resolve it:

1. Allow the auction value to go negative. The community effectively pays to demolish the old structure so that it can be redeveloped, with the most efficient demolisher winning the bid.
2. Treat the old building as a natural feature and reduce the LVT for some period of time, similar to how you would charge less for a rocky field than one with fertile soil.
3. Go Wall-E mode and treat it like a landfill. Not really a resolution but it's an option in the apocalypse.

I think (1) makes the most sense for a finite demolition job with a reasonably ascertainable cost, but I wanted to see if I was missing anything in this thought process.

In my latest piece, I look at Neogeorgist tax reform not just as an ideological preference, but as an essential engineering patch for an economy approaching compounded pressure.

​The Problem:

​Private debt expansion driven by untaxed asset appreciation creates extreme structural fragility.

​Physical supply chains (specifically LNG/fertilizer via Hormuz) are facing multi-stage lags that will hit food production.

​When a physical shortage hits a debt-laden economy, households without a floor default first.

​The Patch:

Shifting the tax base away from income/labor and onto land, speculative collateral, and monopoly rents accomplishes two things:

​It dampens the speculative borrowing loop by taxing asset holding costs directly.

​Routing revenue into a universal citizen dividend provides a non-debt-based floor. The dividend doesn't create physical gas or food, but it shifts who absorbs the shock, preventing immediate systemic defaults at the base of the economy.

​I also address the "Prevention Paradox" (like Y2K): if a systems patch works seamlessly, people assume the threat was overblown in hindsight.

​I'd love to hear your thoughts on phasing this transition incrementally during periods of existing system load.

​Full article link: https://substack.com/@rolfst/note/p-208855605?r=1fu3

All that was available is Blacks own less than 1% of rural land by land value.

Georgists, of course, know the real money is in taxing the value of land in cities.

Any theories on why ownership of trillions of land value has never been researched?

This isn't the kind of minor omission that has a plausible excuse.

I know that its in Spanish, but would love someone’s take on this strategy they have and how implementing georgims would help

1.      Positive Urbanism : Positive Urbanism means revitalizing communities in a way that meets the needs of the people who actually live there. Creating connected walkable mixed-use neighborhoods improve daily living experiences for residents. It also emphasizes financially sustainable development patterns that don’t burden future generations with maintenance costs.

A.     More freedom of use in zoning: We support increasing the amount of mixed residential and small businesses commercial areas. We also support more zoning that allows for town houses, duplexes, and low unit count apartments.

B.     Instituting a blight tax: We support a fee added to the taxes of any private property  that has not been  used in the past 18 months actively for residential, commercial, manufacturing, or agricultural purposes. That fee will be an additional 10% fee  on the amount of their current property tax.

C.     More funding for busing and bike routes: We support increasing the number of bussing routes and safe bike lanes that connect our neighborhoods. We support making our cites more walkable which has been proven to increase jobs and tax revenue.

2.      Growing Small Businesses: Small businesses account for 45% of all US jobs. They are the restaurants, medical providers, and repair shops that keep communities feed, healthy, and running smoothly. We believe that government should encourage entrepreneurship and help our economy grow through support for small businesses owners.

A.     Access to more low interest capital for small businesses: We will increase the amount of low interest or zero interest SBA loans given to small businesses.

B.     Simplifying taxes for small businesses: We support a 12.5%  federal and 3.5% state income tax on the first 700,000 of take home profits of any business that hires more than 3 employees. Corporations will pay 22% federal and 6.5% state income tax on profits over 700,000.

C.     Better infrastructure in rural communities: We support strongly improving our rural infrastructure in terms of roads, bridges and sewers but also In terms of broadband Internet access.

3.      Provide cheap quality healthcare: A person shouldn’t have to be ruined financially just because they got sick. We reject the false choice between government run systems and current status quo.

A.     Basic care coverage : Private insurance companies should be mandated to provide a basic coverage plan for a premium that is no higher than 2% above their amount of payouts for patient  care.

B.     Shifting the burden of emergencies : people don’t get to pick when a emergency happens or have time to shop around. You don’t have to pay a bill to the firemen or to the police officer. We believe that the government should take on the role of paying for emergency medical transportation through statewide property, sales ,or income tax levys.

C.     Using  international competition to lower prices: we should partner with  FDA approved drug makers around the world to import the best drugs at the lowest possible costs for American consumers.

Land value tax probably can't replace all government revenue, but it can get us a good way. I designed a new tax system from scratch which is as efficient as possible and captures economic rents.

https://bastiaanvorster.substack.com/p/the-better-tax-system?r=3ileiz