[336f5]

Sure sounds like it:

"Or they could heed the advice of Henry George, an American follower of Ricardo who in the 1880s made the case for a land-value tax. It has many theoretical virtues. Most taxes dampen, distort or displace economic activity by changing incentives on the margins. But a land tax cannot reduce the supply of land, and it would stimulate economic activity by penalising those whose land is unproductive. And your tax base is always right there—a city lot cannot be whisked off to Luxembourg.

The mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, hopes that taxing vacant lots by value will help deal with urban blight in the Bronx and elsewhere. But there are practical problems with a land tax—perhaps the largest of which is that by its very nature it hits the well-connected rich hardest. Even fiscally purist Estonia, which adopted a land tax in 1993, has complicated it with multiple bands, including an exemption for homeowners."

As criticism goes, that is so weaksauce it's a 0 on the Scoville scale.

[pc2g4d]

It strikes me that a land-value tax is the opposite of what is needed. To me, cities' great failing is that they so completely destroy the natural environment that they become inhumane and unlivable. This is largely because undeveloped land is seen as an economic inefficiency rather than as an asset. Having green spaces, undeveloped fields, and the like mixed in with the rest softens the harshness of urban life and helps the city seem like somewhere for humans rather than simply cars and concrete to live.

This is the idea of "nature deficit disorder", the idea that exposure to natural environments helps be be more happy/creative/healthy/etc. Governments should subsidize undeveloped land ownership rather than taxing it out of existence.