[geocon]

One of the nice things about LVT is that it aligns those incentives though, since what increases tax revenue the most is investment in public infrastructure and services. It's the Henry George Theorem at work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George_theorem

[clairity]

that's assuming politicians are compelled at least a little bit by the public good. unfortunately, our politico-economic systems have become more and more captured by moneyed interests, insulating politicians from those wider incentives.

but to be fair, that's not unique to georgism. we need to solve for that problem generally.

[imtringued]

When politicians want more money they often raise taxes because passing good policies is difficult and the relationship between their policy and tax revenue is not obvious. With a land value tax politicians have a very easy way of increasing tax revenue, do something productive.

The countless times a government has cut important services and investments to get a short term cash influx have always lead to misery. Greece ended its public healthcare for the sake of austerity and now they are further in debt. Operating a hospital should be something that is a revenue stream for the government (through land value taxes), not a burden to be distributed across people through taxes.

[brightly-salty]

I think it would be at least partially solved by reorganizing government to be based upon subsidiarity :) but yes, this isn’t necessarily a question which political economy can or should solve