Re:Georgism
by crazygringo on Monday May 18, 2020 @12:27AM
(#23218342)
I personally think the land value tax has a lot going for it, in contrast to a property tax. Social benefits are great.
But that has nothing to do with land value tax being the distortion-minimizing solution for optimal taxation -- which it isn't -- and is what I was originally responding to.
So then I'm not sure you're even disagreeing with me.
That said your opinion is clearly not gathered by expert reading, because I've done that reading and it comes to a different conclusion.
If you're interested in optimal taxation, I'd skip reading Wikipedia page and just go read the 2008 Mankiw literature review on "optimal taxation in theory and practice" instead. It doesn't touch land value taxation (which is a niche topic) but is very accessible and a good read.
Second, when metropolitan LVT is studied, the theoretical social benefits are large bordering on the absurd. Here's a study by the NY fed:
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/econo...
It massively reduces income and wealth inequality (lots of inequality is tied up in urban real estate ownership).