Political Memes

It also had a second rule set, whereby a land value tax (LVT) — one of the most central proposed policies of Georgism — is implemented and the winning condition is when everybody attains a certain level of wealth. A game of mutual prosperity, rather than crabs in a bucket with winner-takes-all.

And although LVT is the most central proposed policy of Georgism, Georgists also advocate for carbon taxes (and other taxes on negative externalities), severance taxes on finite natural resources like oil or minerals, intellectual property (IP) reform, and eliminating barriers to entry. (It should be noted that Georgists want to replace bad/inefficient taxes like sales, income, and property taxes with LVT, externality (aka Pigouvian), and severance taxes.)

As for why LVT? In short, it's just a really good tax. Progressive, widely regarded by economists as "the perfect tax", incentivizes efficient use of land, discourages speculation and rent-seeking, economically efficient, and hard to evade. Plus, critically regarding landlords, land value taxes can't be passed on to tenants, both in economic theory and in observed practice.

In fact, it's so well-regarded a tax that it's been referred to as the "perfect tax", and is supported by economists of all ideological stripes, from free-market libertarians like Milton Friedman — who famously described it as the "least bad tax" — to social democrats and Keynesians like Joseph Stiglitz. It's simply a really good policy that I don't think is talked about nearly enough.

Even a quite milquetoast land value tax, such as in the Australian Capital Territory, has been shown to reduce speculation and improve affordability:

It reveals that much of the anticipated future tax obligations appear to have been already capitalised into lower land prices. Additionally, the tax transition may have also deterred speculative buyers from the housing market, adding even further to the recent pattern of low and stable property prices in the Territory. Because of the price effect of the land tax, a typical new home buyer in the Territory will save between $1,000 and $2,200 per year on mortgage repayments.

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It's so ironic that Elizabeth Magie's "The Landlord's Game" was stolen by Parker Brothers and is now one of the most blatantly capitalist products in the world.