Land Tax can’t replace all other USA taxes unless it’s at ~14%, and will likely throw many out of their homes.
Lax tax proponents often overlook that eg the USA would need ~14% land tax to bring in its current ~$3.18T total tax revenue (2015) per year, on ~$23T land value (* 2015). They say the above calculation is off by 2x (* 2x). Even if so, that’s 7% per year or $70 per year per $1M home land value. It’s higher than current rents for the same.
Ie, Henry George’s Georgism isn’t viable to replace all current tax revenue without massive assumptions about societal restructuring.
Then proponents say it’s only to replace local taxes. Fair enough, states can try it, though land owners would oppose it since their properties would initially plummet in value, due to the tax liabilities.
A more reasonable idea is to change property tax to land tax without raising the rate, and take it from there. This may have some benefits, but has drawbacks that more extreme proponents may overlook. As for redistributing generational wealth: those often already dissipate over time.
High land tax would concentrate land in currently most productive hands, and send many more grandparents out of their homes, along with anyone no longer earning that extra $80k per year per $1M land value tax. People can reverse mortgage but they’re already often doing that just to pay their bills. Stick them with another $80K per year and it may take away their home.
Those in the left & the right should consider: it’s neither the people’s socialism to take people’s homes, *and give it to the most capital efficient hands*, nor is it natural law for society to confiscate property. It’s rather a brutal mix of ultra capitalism with redistribution of shared national resources, but to the most efficient hands. It puts efficiency above the dream of human dignity, to “make it”, and then have some security & rest in one’s frail golden years. Instead, it squeezes every last penny of wealth out of people, to rug the ground under their feet.
While many don’t even own homes, taking away people’s homes and giving it to the most capital efficient hands won’t fix that. We should rather focus on helping people build wealth. With that said, perhaps there would be less opposition if it were a progressive rate that started with Bill Gates, the largest landowner in America. If Bill is can all but force feed people vakseen lettuce, he can pay more land tax.
To improve economic outcome distribution, we can rather start with fixing the monopoly government school system in inner-cities long held by Democrat politicians, who promised and failed to deliver improvement for 50+ years). Their teachers’ union mob boss policies yielded dismal educational outcomes with kids that can’t read or do math at basic levels, but who otherwise blossom given vouchers and charter school competition, even in the same school buildings. Those are the data.
(* 2015 land value USA)
(* 2x) https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/does-georgism-work-part-3-can-unimproved