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As an advocate for the Single Tax this is a great article explaining a land valuation method I had never heard of before. This would work locally, maybe even u

As an advocate for the Single Tax this is a great article explaining a land valuation method I had never heard of before. This would work locally, maybe even up to the county level but how would we reach a consensus at the State and Federal levels? Here is a link to a Federal study of land value: https://www.bea.gov/system/files/papers/WP2015-3.pdf https://www.bea.gov/system/files/papers/WP2015-3.pdf There is roughly 1.4B acres of private property that is worth $21,200B or $14,763/acre on average. At a 100% LVT of this average would generate ~20 Trillion in tax revenue. Giving the Feds 8, States seem to spend a total of around 3 or let’s say 4 to put towards debt payments, and then another 5 for local governments. Leaving 3 trillion to redistribute as a people’s dividend which with something like 150 million tax returns submitted each year would be something like $20k per household/tax payer. This would 100% cover all costs of the government with a Single Tax. No more sales taxes, capital gains, corporate taxes, etc. And as someone who lives on less than an acre paying a fraction of $14,000 for taxes would be such a massive tax cut for me and most people I know. Tragically this would cause most land in the US to have zero or negative market value, leading to massive distortions and trillions of dollars of wealth destruction. In addition farms would have onerous tax burdens also destroying them. Leading to them either needing to be nationalized or require significant (90+%) tax breaks. So completely unrealistic and highly disruptive so will never be adopted. But with this Somner method maybe we could get closer to adopting the Single Tax.

andrepd 1y ago
Land is just one (the most historically significant) of the factors that should be charged a Single Tax. Others are perhaps even more important in a modern economy: natural resources (minerals, water), and crucially externalities in general (pollution, other abstract societal harms).
- beeflet 1y ago
  it's not really a "single tax" then is it? I agree but some things like pollution are hard to quantify.
- kemotep 1y ago
  The Single Tax is just that. And extracting (or not extracting) natural resources off the land would either count towards or against the unimproved land value depending on how we value it in that specific context. The second tax you bring up is pigouvian sales taxes and those should absolutely be implemented. They are the second least bad kind of tax. But of course the Two Tax Movement is not what Georgism is referred to as.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  Yeah. It's not 1900 anymore; value doesn't primarily come from land. So in today's economy, for example, maybe we should tax patents, copyrights, and domain names. These days, those things are more important than land.
adverbly 1y ago
> Tragically this would cause most land in the US to have zero or negative market value, leading to massive distortions and trillions of dollars of wealth destruction Would it though? Nothing is actually destroyed. The land is still there so it's basically just a redistribution. Why not issue some bonds to existing land owners or something as compensation? That's what Britain did when they made slavery illegal? It might delay the benefits to the state by a few decades, but well worth it to fix incentives I would think...
- kemotep 1y ago
  If we said an acre of land in New York City is only worth $14,000 and an acre of land in middle of nowhere North Dakota was equally worth $14,000 that it wouldn’t have some kind of distortionary effect?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
sokoloff 1y ago
Did you just look up the total value of land and assume that that same total amount of value could be assessed as a land-value-tax each year? I can’t read your post any other way, but it is so spectacularly unreasonable that I can’t imagine that’s a thing you think is remotely feasible.
- kemotep 1y ago
  You’re reading too much into the half-assed back of the napkin math I used. The simple dumb end I posit is compared to the Somer method in the linked post. The Somer method is night and day. The point is that the numbers add up to fully fund all levels of government with more than enough left over to service debt and payout a dividend. Even a stupidly self-destructive implementation would on paper fund the entire system. But we shouldn’t do it that way, no one would accept it, and it would have second order effects I talk about in the original comment.
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    For clarity and avoidance of doubt: you believe there’s a way to raise over $20T each and every single year from land value taxes alone?
    - kemotep 1y ago
      No. All levels of governments in the United States spend somewhere around 14 trillion though so we need to look into raising some kind of tax to cover that or make significant cuts or probably more likely both. In my opinion a Land Value Tax is the simplest way to raise the most money in the least bad manner and using back of the napkin math, even if it is an order of magnitude off, seems to have the possibility of raising a significant amount of that money while on the surface not being onerous to the average person. Certainly the reality is that the vast majority of private land use is for agricultural purposes and would need to have special considerations with regards to a Land tax to avoid destroying that industry.

andrepd 1y ago

Land is just one (the most historically significant) of the factors that should be charged a Single Tax. Others are perhaps even more important in a modern economy: natural resources (minerals, water), and crucially externalities in general (pollution, other abstract societal harms).

beeflet 1y ago
it's not really a "single tax" then is it? I agree but some things like pollution are hard to quantify.
kemotep 1y ago
The Single Tax is just that. And extracting (or not extracting) natural resources off the land would either count towards or against the unimproved land value depending on how we value it in that specific context. The second tax you bring up is pigouvian sales taxes and those should absolutely be implemented. They are the second least bad kind of tax. But of course the Two Tax Movement is not what Georgism is referred to as.
AnimalMuppet 1y ago
Yeah. It's not 1900 anymore; value doesn't primarily come from land. So in today's economy, for example, maybe we should tax patents, copyrights, and domain names. These days, those things are more important than land.

adverbly 1y ago

> Tragically this would cause most land in the US to have zero or negative market value, leading to massive distortions and trillions of dollars of wealth destruction Would it though? Nothing is actually destroyed. The land is still there so it's basically just a redistribution. Why not issue some bonds to existing land owners or something as compensation? That's what Britain did when they made slavery illegal? It might delay the benefits to the state by a few decades, but well worth it to fix incentives I would think...

kemotep 1y ago
If we said an acre of land in New York City is only worth $14,000 and an acre of land in middle of nowhere North Dakota was equally worth $14,000 that it wouldn’t have some kind of distortionary effect?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

sokoloff 1y ago

Did you just look up the total value of land and assume that that same total amount of value could be assessed as a land-value-tax each year? I can’t read your post any other way, but it is so spectacularly unreasonable that I can’t imagine that’s a thing you think is remotely feasible.

kemotep 1y ago
You’re reading too much into the half-assed back of the napkin math I used. The simple dumb end I posit is compared to the Somer method in the linked post. The Somer method is night and day. The point is that the numbers add up to fully fund all levels of government with more than enough left over to service debt and payout a dividend. Even a stupidly self-destructive implementation would on paper fund the entire system. But we shouldn’t do it that way, no one would accept it, and it would have second order effects I talk about in the original comment.
- sokoloff 1y ago
  For clarity and avoidance of doubt: you believe there’s a way to raise over $20T each and every single year from land value taxes alone?
  - kemotep 1y ago
    No. All levels of governments in the United States spend somewhere around 14 trillion though so we need to look into raising some kind of tax to cover that or make significant cuts or probably more likely both. In my opinion a Land Value Tax is the simplest way to raise the most money in the least bad manner and using back of the napkin math, even if it is an order of magnitude off, seems to have the possibility of raising a significant amount of that money while on the surface not being onerous to the average person. Certainly the reality is that the vast majority of private land use is for agricultural purposes and would need to have special considerations with regards to a Land tax to avoid destroying that industry.