Ideally, IMO. Simply owning land is not a meaningful contribution to society. Rent from land ownership therefore disincentivizes meaningful contributions to society by creating reliable sources of income to those that don't contribute, disproportionately among the rich (who otherwise have the best means to contribute) because they disproportionately own land from which they can extract rent.
> If they sell it won't that just mean they have to pay 800k in taxes on their 1m house and then have to find another house for $1m?
Well, if land value was taxed on sale, grandma could just sit on the property until she died and not be affected by the policy at all. This is IMO not ideal because much of land value will then be lost until the next generation comes along. LVT should instead be collected on a regular basis.
Ideally, with single-tax LVT, land value is completely consumed by taxes. Any money grandma makes on the sale will be from the value of her own development and the excess value over land value the buyer expects.
That said, I believe that there are important criticisms that can be raised against Georgism. I believe that it would have to be accompanied by strict zoning laws to avoid displacing people and exploiting natural resources. I'm less concerned about grandma's little house than I am about a tax that makes things like fracking or deforestation to extract what makes the land valuable inevitable.
Ideally, IMO. Simply owning land is not a meaningful contribution to society. Rent from land ownership therefore disincentivizes meaningful contributions to society by creating reliable sources of income to those that don't contribute, disproportionately among the rich (who otherwise have the best means to contribute) because they disproportionately own land from which they can extract rent.
> If they sell it won't that just mean they have to pay 800k in taxes on their 1m house and then have to find another house for $1m?
Well, if land value was taxed on sale, grandma could just sit on the property until she died and not be affected by the policy at all. This is IMO not ideal because much of land value will then be lost until the next generation comes along. LVT should instead be collected on a regular basis.
Ideally, with single-tax LVT, land value is completely consumed by taxes. Any money grandma makes on the sale will be from the value of her own development and the excess value over land value the buyer expects.
That said, I believe that there are important criticisms that can be raised against Georgism. I believe that it would have to be accompanied by strict zoning laws to avoid displacing people and exploiting natural resources. I'm less concerned about grandma's little house than I am about a tax that makes things like fracking or deforestation to extract what makes the land valuable inevitable.