> This has nothing to do with LVT. It's how LVT operates. You don't pay more if you build a taller building, but you pay a certain amount for the land on a con

> This has nothing to do with LVT. It's how LVT operates. You don't pay more if you build a taller building, but you pay a certain amount for the land on a continuous basis, providing an incentive to increase density beyond what would otherwise be rational, i.e. continue building until there are a significant number of empty units > In highly desirable places like the center of a big city like NYC, land values are huge and thus an LVT would be very high as well. Under the existing zoning regime it would be high. If people were allowed to keep building then it would just end up full of skyscrapers -- not just Manhattan but also the other boroughs -- until the cost of land fell to the cost of construction. > Unfortunately VAT is highly regressive, so while a modest VAT has a place in a broad based tax regime, it's a very bad idea as the sole tax. This is what corporate PR tells you when they don't want a tax they would actually have to pay. VAT uses a flat rate, but you can achieve a progressive effective rate curve simply by combining it with a UBI. > An LVT is unlikely to make cities unattractive for people and businesses, so desirable places would remain desirable despite being saddled with a high LVT. But how does the LVT remain high unless you artificially constrain construction? There is nowhere that replacing every building within 100 miles with a skyscraper wouldn't result in oversupply, so land is never the limiting factor and its price would be capped by the cost of building tall buildings. You would also have a notable problem in places like NYC: Suppose it costs more to build a tall building, so the land value is e.g. five times higher than it is in a suburban area. But the buildings also have 20 times more units, so you'd have 25% as much government revenue per resident because there are 20 times more of them per unit land.