Worsening housing and rent problems in California, Canada, major metropolitan areas, Japan, China, and other places that are facing housing shortages could ignite support for Georgism.
Do Japan and China have housing shortages? I thought Japan was the canonical “zoning done right” example. And doesn’t China have some sort of over-supply sitatution due to government subsidies?
That depends on what you consider to be a “housing shortage”. The cost of rent is a major reason why birth rates remain low in China, Japan, and other countries. One of the reasons why capsule hotels are popular in Japan is because rent is so expensive.
Afaik rent in japan is low on a global stage, and is only high relative to japanese wages?
OTOH, japanese rent shouldn’t be high relative to japanese wages (unless there are a whole lot of foreigners doing remote work or something) so I guess you could still say that the rent is too high.
While I’ve not actually seen this argument, I suspect one answer to the decline in popularity of Georgism might be found in the Coase Therom. Government taxing all land rends is merely a transfer of ownership and results in the known transfer aspect of the assignment of property rights in Coase’s example. But the allocative impact of that assignment is supposed to be zero, resources still get allocated to the highest valued use. As such, I would wonder if market prices (i.e., rental prices for a place to live) would actually change or that somehow more of the assumed withheld land actually comes to market.
Do Japan and China have housing shortages? I thought Japan was the canonical “zoning done right” example. And doesn’t China have some sort of over-supply sitatution due to government subsidies?
That depends on what you consider to be a “housing shortage”. The cost of rent is a major reason why birth rates remain low in China, Japan, and other countries. One of the reasons why capsule hotels are popular in Japan is because rent is so expensive.
Afaik rent in japan is low on a global stage, and is only high relative to japanese wages?
OTOH, japanese rent shouldn’t be high relative to japanese wages (unless there are a whole lot of foreigners doing remote work or something) so I guess you could still say that the rent is too high.
While I’ve not actually seen this argument, I suspect one answer to the decline in popularity of Georgism might be found in the Coase Therom. Government taxing all land rends is merely a transfer of ownership and results in the known transfer aspect of the assignment of property rights in Coase’s example. But the allocative impact of that assignment is supposed to be zero, resources still get allocated to the highest valued use. As such, I would wonder if market prices (i.e., rental prices for a place to live) would actually change or that somehow more of the assumed withheld land actually comes to market.