The “land values are property values” section struck me as a weird strawman of LVT. A huge part of the point Georgists are making is that the value of a given property depends in most urban cases FAR MORE on what is built next to it, than what is built on it. And thus by making property taxes go up when you build things on a property, you disincentivize building, whereas by making them the same regardless of what is built, you incentivize building. Whether you accept any of the other arguments, this is straightforward math afaict. Thus when you say “Build more 1. houses”, if you intend to achieve that by market means and not coercion, then you probably want to get your incentives aligned.
There are a bunch of buildings currently sitting empty in Berkeley, CA and my understanding of why is that if they were to rent them at market rates (which have declined) then the sale price would go down, but currently the sale price is still going up. So “build more houses”...
The “land values are property values” section struck me as a weird strawman of LVT. A huge part of the point Georgists are making is that the value of a given property depends in most urban cases FAR MORE on what is built next to it, than what is built on it. And thus by making property taxes go up when you build things on a property, you disincentivize building, whereas by making them the same regardless of what is built, you incentivize building. Whether you accept any of the other arguments, this is straightforward math afaict. Thus when you say “Build more 1. houses”, if you intend to achieve that by market means and not coercion, then you probably want to get your incentives aligned.
There are a bunch of buildings currently sitting empty in Berkeley, CA and my understanding of why is that if they were to rent them at market rates (which have declined) then the sale price would go down, but currently the sale price is still going up. So “build more houses”...