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Progress and Poverty was once the most popular economics book ever written. The Georgist Theory in it, and the land value tax proposed by it is still endorsed b

• nickff 4y ago
  >"... the land value tax proposed by it is still endorsed by economists today." Your comment is somewhat misleading, as it seems to suggest that all or most economists endorse Georgism, which is not true. Some vocal minority of economists are pro-Georgism, but I haven't seen any data suggesting it is the most popular taxation scheme.
  • aesh2Xa1 4y ago
    I have wondered this, too. "Is/was Georgism really so popular?" Do you have any papers/writing which specifically criticise Georgism?
    • TimPC 4y ago
      It's hard to measure precisely how popular it was historically but he campaigned for Mayor of NYC as a Georgist and finished 2nd ahead of Teddy Roosevelt who finished 3rd. So Henry George at least was well liked. The book itself was the best selling economics book of the 19th century. It inspired art demonstrations and some governments throughout the world even adopted LVT for a while. So yes, it was pretty popular.
    • SilasX 4y ago
      Paul Birch had a long essay criticizing it. Here’s where I mentioned it on HN to summarize the key points: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17605751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17605751
      • TimPC 4y ago
        Thanks for sharing this it's interesting. The first thing I've noticed is that his estimate of the tax revenue is far lower than other far more detailed estimates I've seen by economists. But by far my biggest objection to his arguments is that he ignores the way density impacts land value over time. If we build huge skyscrapers in the countryside it's reasonable that businesses will spring up around them. Various economists have modelled this and land value increases in proportion to the income of its occupants. It's one of the reasons cities need to pay developers to get affordable housing. The allocation of people into housing that was once affordable in the market sense will naturally result in rising land values and rising rents. In no time and no place in history has density made land cheap. If we choose to dot the countryside in huge towers the land on which those huge towers are built and the land of the shops immediately beside those huge towers will have a high value that tapers off quickly as you head further into the now empty countryside. You end up with a strange peaky distribution. In practice, the increasing land rents of the building and the decreased land rents of the countryside would encourage occupants to leave for greener pastures. And the developers would know this would happen before even building a huge building in the countryside because it is economically well understood. He also makes far too big a deal out of the need for a negative land market. You can keep abandonment if you just have a 95% LVT instead of a 100% LVT and you now have a market where land values are overwhelmingly positive.
      • gruez 4y ago
        I'm actually doubtful this would end up being cheaper. Sure, such a building would only pay taxes equivalent to a suburban house, but the construction/maintenance cost of a 2000m building (the tallest building in the world is only 828m) would be insane and would obliterate any tax savings.
  • kevinpet 4y ago
    Economists generally consider LVT the best theoretical tax, but with significant practical challenges. There are several links in the first section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax as well as further down under Modern economists.
• bee_rider 4y ago
  I may have to pick this up -- as someone with no economics training at all, a land value tax seems extremely appealing and intuitive to me. I'd already like to become a complete partisan in favor of this policy, but I guess it would make sense to read what the actual justification is, for it, haha.
  • scythe 4y ago
    The biggest problem with LVT is surprisingly simple: accurately assessing the value of land is very hard, and ensuring that the assessment process is fair is therefore extremely hard. LVT experiments in history tend to run into problems when people feel that their land has been valued incorrectly, leading to a vocal minority that despises the law. That results in something like this: https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins-dictatorship-small-minority/ https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins-dictatorship...
    • markdown 4y ago
      Could you tell us where these experiments were held, and how far they went? For example, were other taxes eliminated at the same time?
      • notacoward 4y ago
        See my sibling comment to yours. The most notable examples are in New Zealand, Australia, and several towns in Pennsylvania. Some of those ran into problems with execution, others were abandoned for purely ideological/selfish reasons, but overall it's not a bad record.
    • bee_rider 4y ago
      Huh. Property tax is already a thing of course, but I guess if the LVT was going to replace all taxation the stakes would be much higher. In an urban setting, it seems to me that the land value should be... reasonably uniform, unlike property, which should make assessing much easier, right? But that's just getting the number. Whether people are happy with the number is a whole 'nother problem.
• snidane 4y ago
  From Henry George wikipedia page: > Commentators disagreed on whether it was the largest funeral in New York history or the largest since the death of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times reported, "Not even Lincoln had a more glorious death." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George