I don't see how Georgism solves anything. You need a government to enforce taxation - said government is profiting off unimproved land. Said governments colonize and take others land with force.
Governments that tax unimproved land can reduce taxes on income and spending.
Point being that society loses nothing by increasing taxes on unimproved land except an opportunity for parasitic wealth extraction whereas by taxing spending you lose valuable and productive economic activity.
For the greatest political impact the money from a land value tax should initially be given to poverty stricken pensioners.
Let's say you taxed unimproved land at 1000%. What's the result? No one will hold it. OK, great you say. The government won't develop it. It'll sit there, owned by the government, unimproved.
Great. What has been accomplished exactly? Georgism is not the solution. Relaxing zoning laws and bureaucracy is. Private money already wants to develop their unimproved land if it's economical to do so. If it's not, taxing them more won't accomplish anything other than result in the land going back to the government, who will do nothing (historically) with it.
I dont believe anybody has ever suggested taxing it above 100%.
100% is the level whereby 100% of the profit a landlord makes will be due to the quality of the improvements and 0% will be due to land speculation.
A landlord owning a shitty building in a hot location will lose money. Hopefully a lot. That is by design. They sell up, somebody demolishes it and builds something better and denser and therefore makes a profit.
>Private money already wants to develop their unimproved land
All the private money in the world isnt enough to convince land owners in San Francisco to demolish their low density housing and build high density housing to accomodate all the people who want to live there.
Tax them on the land and not only will they stop NIMBYing private money at every opportunity theyll sell up gladly to property developers to avoid paying their eye watering LVT bill.
It has everything to do with tax - specifically prop 13 which DEtaxed land and led to California's ridiculously inefficient land use.
Those property owners with $3 million houses will do everything in their power to prop their value up. That means inhibiting high density development. That means pretending a laundromat is "historic".
With a 100% LVT their houses arent worth $3 million theyre worth exactly as much as an equivalent house in Omaha.
There is no point in NIMBYing to inhibit housing with stupid shit like pretending a laundromat is a historic building. Inhibiting development wont drive up property prices. Change those laws and others will be abused.
But those people with $3 million houses will do ANYTHING to prevent an LVT.
The government is always the biggest obstacle to improving land. People try very hard to improve their land and the government puts up tons of red tape. We need less government involvement, not more, and certainly not more in the form of a harebrained utopian scheme like Georgism.
The government is the people. The government puts up restrictions to building because that's what people want. NIMBYism is hyperlocal politics backfiring by incentivizing people to prop up their land value at the expense of everyone who wants to move there. LVT incentivizes landholders to densify, so they will stop lobbying the government to ban building.
Point being that society loses nothing by increasing taxes on unimproved land except an opportunity for parasitic wealth extraction whereas by taxing spending you lose valuable and productive economic activity.
For the greatest political impact the money from a land value tax should initially be given to poverty stricken pensioners.