[ZeroGravitas]

So your example of poor people that it affects punitively is a rich person who owns millions in assets?

I guess that answers your question that it doesn't affect poor people. It's almost directly analogous to saying that the estate tax affects poor people who win the lottery. Both have received massive benefits unrelated to their efforts and are no longer poor, so talking about them as if they were seems like sophistry.

[ThrowawayR2]

On one side, you would have elderly people who would be forced out of homes they've lived their entire lives in and raised their families in. On the other side, there would your pragmatic but rather cold-hearted analysis. Which side do you think public opinion is going to come down on?

A home is more than a structure that one happens to reside in and its value has other dimensions than what the market might be willing to pay in dollars for it.

[ZeroGravitas]

Most land value tax proposals have exemptions for a person's personal home. But even if they didn't, we have financial instruments that can release the value stored in an asset like a home. If the owner looks at the situation and decides to sell and move somewhere cheap and have lots of money to spend then great, if they decide to unlock the value in their land via a mortgage because living exactly there is worth more to them then what they pay in taxes then that's also great. In both situation they are richer, and they have the opportunity to decide how to spend these riches they have accidentally acquired. Either way, they're not poor people.

Poor people would be affected by the lack of affordable housing in areas close to work though.