[ethanbond]

Georgists absolutely do not believe that public infrastructure exclusively drives value. Rather that the value of the land is set ~exclusively by the things that happen not on that land, both public and private. So your example of Disney is a very good pro-Georgist example. Why should someone who happened to own a random piece of land and did nothing with it for 4 generations get a multi-million dollar windfall because Disney accomplished something nearby?

Re the valuation of land separately from the improvements, these are already separated on the vast majority of appraisals. Granted the need to get this right goes up if all taxation was derivative of this, but let’s not act like this is some impossible problem that no municipality would take a stab at. The vast majority already do.

[anamax]

> Rather that the value of the land is set ~exclusively by the things that happen not on that land

You do know that that is not true, that the value of land often depends ON things that happen on that land, right? (It's not hard to come up with examples.)

But, I do appreciate an example of something that I didn't mention, namely the propensity of Georgists to make claims that they find self-evident and profound but are actually are false.

> Why should someone who happened to own a random piece of land and did nothing with it for 4 generations get a multi-million dollar windfall because Disney accomplished something nearby?

The taxes aren't going to Disney....

> Re the valuation of land separately from the improvements, these are already separated on the vast majority of appraisals.

And that separation is mostly a fiction, as anyone who owns real estate knows.

[ethanbond]

The unimproved value of the land (I.e. the basis of taxation in a Georgist scheme) is definitionally exclusive of things that happen on the land. There are improvements that, especially over time, become inseparable from the land (e.g. irrigation, grading, etc.), at which point of full integration are just considered an intrinsic part of the land. This too sounds a little weird until you realize that again, this already happens today! Improvements to land that are not identifiable, e.g. the grading that the owner 200 years ago did, is already baked into what we perceive, today, to be the unimproved land (again, as already designated on your appraisal).

I am very curious to hear your examples of improvements/activities on land that become part of the unimproved value of land at a fast enough rate to matter?

Of course some portion of the taxes go to Disney. Who do you think pays for the air travel system that brings people to Orlando or LA? Who pays for the freeway system that brings in the food?

Re your last argument, the word “mostly” is doing an obscene amount of legwork. Obviously the unimproved land has a market price $X and then the land + structures on it have a different price $Y. So no, obviously the separation is not a fiction, but any particular dollar value is certainly a bit subjective and fuzzy, just like all appraisals are. For what it’s worth, appraising unimproved land is much less subjective than appraising the land + improvements, which we use as a tax basis today.

[anamax]

> The unimproved value of the land (I.e. the basis of taxation in a Georgist scheme) is definitionally exclusive of things that happen on the land.

Ah yes, "let's define away the problem."

> Of course some portion of the taxes go to Disney. Who do you think pays for the air travel system that brings people to Orlando or LA? Who pays for the freeway system that brings in the food?

The typical argument is that Disney doesn't pay enough for those things. No one thinks that such things are "money going to Disney", which just goes to show the absurdities that you have to accept when trying to paper-over the problems with Georgism.

> I am very curious to hear your examples of improvements/activities on land that become part of the unimproved value of land at a fast enough rate to matter?

Who said that "improvements/activities" are the only way for the unimproved value to change rapidly? The land around Disneyland is a counter-example.

As to your suggestion that there aren't examples that fit your absurd restriction, I'll point you to the super-fund sites where SV fabs used to be.

As I hinted earlier, having a cute equation is no substitute for critical thinking.

> Obviously the unimproved land has a market price $X and then the land + structures on it have a different price $Y.

The question is not whether they have prices, it's whether they can be determined.

It's reasonably easy to determine the market price for their sum. How, exactly, do you separate them?

BTW, you're probably assuming that improvements necessarily have non-negative value. That's actually wrong.

[ethanbond]

It’s getting hard to label all these straw men!

1) I don’t know what “typical argument” that Disney pays too little you’re referring to. I find it completely believable that Disney pays too much, but haven’t run the numbers to figure that out. More important than how much they pay is why they pay it, as the latter controls the nature of their incentives.

2) Of course it’s not true that “no one” thinks public services that benefit private entities should be considered tax dollars doled back out to those entities. You’re talking to at least one such person right now, and I strongly suspect there are others.

3) No, I do not believe that all improvements have positive value, which is why I said no such thing and is also why your superfund example is not that tricky. If an improvement incurs negative value and cannot be easily separated from the land (such as pollution), then it becomes, effectively for all purposes (not just taxation) a feature of the land itself. In this case that would, as is reasonable, yield a reduced land value and thus a reduced tax basis. In cases where the negative improvement is easy to remove, the reduction would be less or nonexistent — as would be reflected automatically in the market price for that plot.

4) Yes we agree that determining the exact $ value separation between land and improvements is nontrivial.