> How have all the economists missed this obvious point? They haven't. That's why taxing land value at a higher rate than property values doesn't have support

> How have all the economists missed this obvious point? They haven't. That's why taxing land value at a higher rate than property values doesn't have support from mainstream economists. > Murder also hurts property values. Fortunately, we have the ability to create laws to punish destructive behavior. Murder is a lot easier to identify and prosecute than blighting. We already have laws against blighting. They don't seem to work. Increasing the incentive to blight is unlikely to make blighting less attractive. > Why would a landlord destroy the value of their own property, harming their own ability to draw rent? You're missing the point. They wouldn't destroy the value of their property; they'd extract value from the land (and neighboring land) to build up the value of their property. Land-value taxes encourage consolidating wealth in improvements to private property that have zero impact on anybody other than the property owner (or tenant). That's the exact opposite of the desired outcome, because it clearly works against the public benefit. There are plenty of areas where this already happens, because there's enough of an incentive for property owners to do this even without skewing the tax code specifically to reward them for this behavior.