It's not like you or I get to decide what goes in the window.
I move to a cheap, small town. I embed myself in the community and help build it up over decades. And then, at the peak popularity, in part due to my presence, I am forced out, because someone who has never been here says that they would like to live here.
You don't see a problem with this?
Why would you be forced out? Yes, taxes on the underlying land would increase because it is more valuable, but you would be able to move into a new property in the same community, as housing would increase in density. Now if you don't want to live in a denser community, that's fine, but you don't really have a right to prevent the densification.
This is exactly what is happening in parts of Utah. Planners accounted for natural growth and a standard rate of in-migration, but there has been a flood of people from out of state forcing out the locals who made these places what they are by living in them for decades.
My statement is not one of apathy, but a prediction of worse comparative outcomes with mechanistic backing.
1. Don't assume
2. If you are poor, which do you think is easier? A higher initial capital expenditure? Or a higher upkeep cost?
Another factor: it'll encourage apartment construction, which will increase housing supply, which should help poor people.
Higher upkeep cost is the easier one. Many poor people have a steady an income, but no saved wealth. That's why there are many people able to pay 1800/mo for rent for years, and never able to buy their own home.
And this would make LVT the better option for a poor person, since it would turn "buying" a home into "renting" the land from the state, along with buying the building, which is obviously possible (as seen by the existence of poor renters).
I see you've not been poor.
Where are these places where the buying prices of land is cheap, but the land tax would be high? The buying prices is simply the year rent divided by some discount rate, so typically, the buying price would 20x the yearly rent/tax. That’s a large amount to have to save up (assuming a mortgage is out, like you say).
The trick is to find a system that, despite attempts to game it, has an incentive structure that isn't already explicitly tilted in favor of the rich. Geoism is one such system.
This is more about NIMBY attitudes and zoning laws, which are separate issues.
> their pension won't cover the tax burden of the house they spent their lifetime saving for
An LVT won't tax the house, only the value of the land. If the plot itself is hyper-valuable, that's not a bad place to be, financially speaking. Beyond that, "won't someone think of the poor landowners?" doesn't strike me as a very compelling argument in this day and age.
NIMBY issues and zoning laws are very much not separate issues when one of the chief selling points of LVT is building denser. It's a selling point the public aren't buying because they mostly don't want the value-maximising development next door, and being taxed as if they could develop it whilst still living in a zoned area so they can't is obviously worse. Sure, an LVT can be designed with deductions and exemptions for land use restrictions (and would have to be), but that's conceding away one of its key purported advantages.
> An LVT won't tax the house, only the value of the land. If the plot itself is hyper-valuable, that's not a bad place to be, financially speaking. Beyond that, "won't someone think of the poor landowners?" doesn't strike me as a very compelling argument in this day and age.
"Let's ignore the poor landowners" is a much worse place to be if you're trying to win over the large portion of the electorate which owns some land, which in most cases is probably the second most valuable thing they own after the house they live in (which is separate from the land for tax valuation purposes, but not in the reality that if they can't afford the land it sits on, they're under pressure to sell their home) and not closely coupled to their current income. The general principle of Georgist efficiency is that people on low incomes relative to the value of the land their house are forced to sell and this should drive down land prices for everyone, but the prospect of devaluation or forced sale of very expensive stuff they've already paid for is even less appealing to voters than being taxed on next year's unspent income. (Also, the entities which own the majority of the land turn out to be both less profitable and more relevant to the cost of basic goods like food than the businesses liberated from tax)
Regardless of whether you think these are not insurmountable problems for LVT or not, the thought of being caricatured as the guy who wants the tax system to force people to develop their homes into nice efficient apartment towers or sell in a great hurry to someone with deeper pockets is a much bigger concern for politicians than the thought people with different economic philosophies might actually agree with them for a change.
Sadly, this very fact provokes enough superficial resistance to keep it out of the Overton window. Whenever it comes up, shouters on either side have plenty of ammo to blast it, saying things to the effect of "how could you propose giving the other side what they want!?!"