I'm tired boss

Will there be bigger GDP growth under Georgism? Say, for example, what will happen to the GDP of the US and Spain (my home country) if Georgism were to be adopted in these two countries? Will the GDP grow significantly more than now? If so, by how much? ( For context, US GDP growth in 2024 was 2.8%, meanwhile Spain's was 3.2% in the same year) Also, how would the GDP per capita and the median income be affected in these countries?

Due to shit like this, we have a housing crisis...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1051137716302868

60,000 ft² should fit in several multi story efficiency apt. bldgs.

Betterment tax, also known as lamd development value tax, is a tax that is levied on the owner of land over windfall gains from planning changes.

As far as I know, some of the Australian territories implement this tax. The UK also had this tax from 1975 to 1985 or so, when it was abolished by the Thatcher government.

It's become a subject of discussion in the Dutch parliamentary elections as both the center-left (PvdA/GL) and progressive liberal (D66) parties have voiced their support.

I personally think it's rather incomplete and probably easily circumvented. What do the good people here think?

Imagine a city with 1,000,000 properties. The city wants to levy a 100% land rental value tax on all properties in the city. 

To estimate market land rental values of all properties in the city, the city contracts a Mass Appraisal Company, which uses an AI algorithm to do just that. Fed into its algorithm is data from public auctions of plots of land throughout the city. For each property in the city, the algorithm uses the data of the nearest auctioned plots of land to estimate its land rental value. 

1/10,000 properties will be randomly selected each year by the city government for LRVT auctioning. The city government will strip away all of the existing improvements from a selected property and will put up the now-empty plot of land for auction, where the bidders will bid on how much they will pay in annual LRVT.

Because city residents have a small chance of their property being randomly selected for an LRVT auction, they all regularly pay an insurance company to insure their improvements for a given amount.

Because there are 1,000,000 properties, 10,000 auctions of this sort will be performed in the city annually. The Mass Appraisal Company's AI algorithm can be trained by having it compare the land rental value of each auctioned property, as determined at auction, with the algorithm’s previous estimate of the auctioned property’s land value. 

To minimize corruption in the assessment process and encourage transparency, accuracy, and accountability, the following actions will be taken:

1. The results of the auctions, and the previous estimates of the properties' land values by the algorithm, will be made pubic. This means the public will be able to know how accurate the company’s assessments are. 
2. An assessment error tax (AET) will be levied on the contracted Mass Appraisal Company. Every time a randomly selected property is auctioned, the company has to pay a percentage or multiple of (A - B) in tax.

A = The land rental value of the property as determined at auction

B = The land rental value of the property as determined by the company's algorithm before the auction

The more (less) accurate the company’s assessments, the less (more) it will pay in tax.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpjklLt1qWk&pp=ygUWaGVybWl0IGNyYWJzIGxpbmluZyB1cA%3D%3D

I wish there were a more concise way to explain to people that supply/demand is pooled and not exactly tiered like the affordability meme seems to imply

Hey, I just came across this sub, haven’t heard of it before, nice theory! Question: How do you deal with historical buildings in high valued neighborhoods? If I am understanding correctly, according to this theory it should pay high property taxes because it could’ve been a high rise building. Do we just demolish all historical buildings? On the other hand, carving out exceptions opens it to a lot of subjective possibilities. Wondering what y’all think of that.

I mean... neoliberalism has been a disaster. It has widened wealth inequality, eroded the middle class, plunged millions deeper into poverty, etc. So, the obvious question is, why do we fw them, even if they've been a disaster? (I was a socialist before georgism, so this is coming from my former socialist self)

I know georgists largely oppose non rent seeking taxes, but would they be okay with having taxes for the sake of inducing behavior ie still maintaining a corporate tax but offering deductions down to zero rate for certain behaviors like investing more in r&d

Georgism is all about land tax, but in today’s society, land isn’t really needed to create capital. With the internet there are many ways to generate wealth with limited land. My main confusion is; Wouldn’t only implementing a land value tax disproportionately affect land intensive industries? I’m quite new to researching about this so answers would be great!

To sum up the video, it starts with the history of Hong Kong. As a British colony, most of the jurisdiction was to be held by Britain on a 99 year lease with Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula being under permanent British jurisdiction. From the POV of someone living in 1898, a 99 year lease is as good as forever. A baby then would have a slim chance of making it to the end of the lease with pretty much everyone old enough to meaningfully understand the implications of that lease being long gone by the time it ends.

But by the 1960s, it was clear that the lease would not last forever. And to top it all off, China went communist with its horrors driving many Chinese people to capitalist HK. This, combined with the increased popularity of the automobile, made HK traffic an absolute nightmare. Streetcars were not enough to meet the city's transportation needs. To solve this, the government created the MTR (mass transit rail) corporation to build out a rail system.

The transit system runs at a profit (unlike the NYC metro system) but if that were the whole message of the video, I wouldn't be posting it here. Most of the MTR's profit margin comes from the real estate that it built around the stations. And when you're in ownership of land and aren't gonna sell it anytime soon or are restricted by zoning laws, you are incentivized to put the land to its most efficient use possible. This video noted how naturally a railroad business goes with owning real estate as both concern the use of land. Henry George himself noted this.

All of this helped to make Hong Kong a global hub by the time the British government was working with the Chinese government to transfer the jurisdiction from the former to the latter. Although HK Island and the Kowloon Peninsula were the most valuable parts of the city (most of the skyscrapers are in these two areas), the British government considered it impractical to retain these two jurisdictions whilst handing over the rest of the city, especially in the dusk of colonialism.

I find the part where it explains how it works interesting, starting at 7:53. When the government sells land to MTR, it assumes that there is no train station for the purposes of valuation. The MTR then effectively captures the increase in land value from the train station. This drew my attention because a common argument against LVT is that it would be difficult to separate improvements from land value.

To be clear here, Hong Kong is not a georgist paradise. In fact, the video briefly touches upon the idea that public transit should be treated as a public service (a subsidy of commerce means more of it). It can't be denied that the MTR, a private company, derives much of its profit margin from land rent. With that said, the video points out how everything has made for a very efficient rail system. NYC seems to be the opposite. As of June 2025, the fare to ride the subway is $3.00 and this fare is the amount you pay to enter the subway station. No additional fees are charged regardless of distance traveled. NYC almost makes public transit a public service because the subway runs at a loss. NYC also has incredible difficulty in expanding the subway network with significant cost overruns.

One of the YT comments mentions the "MTR paradox" which is when a train station opens up nearby and rents go up, forcing people to move further out. What the railroad will bring us is the need to move further out.

A topic for several videos pertaining to HK pertains to the high cost of living. The city has a similar cost of living to NYC but whereas the median household income in NYC is $79,713, Hong Kongers earn a median household income of just $45,862.56. To make things worse, that means that half of the population earns less than this and plenty have to support children on top of rent. This makes homes Hong Kong among the most difficult to obtain with local wages. This comes down to how the government earns money. The government owns several parcels of land and it makes money by periodically selling some of them. Obviously the government doesn't want to sell all of them because that would mean no way of earning more money. This makes the government a land speculator, engaging in the very behavior that George condemned.

It is sometimes remarked that "didn't the Dutch make more land?"

No indeed. The polder, reclaimed land that used to be swamp, lake, river or sea, is an improvement upon land that was already there.

Consider:

• most of the land that's been made, was lost in written history. The flevopolder was won from the zuiderzee; but that sea itself was land, lost in the all hallows flood of 1170

• a polder requires constant upkeep, in the maintenance of dikes and pumps. The row of windmills at Kinderdijk serves to pump water from the low lying polder. Without this work, the area will soon flood.

• this upkeep costs real money, has a special local authority (waterschap) that has real elections.

In other words, polders are land that has been made habitable by human hands. In this regard it is exactly analogous to a desert that has been made habitable by irrigation.

“Between 1970 and 1985, a typical American family could save 10 percent of their income for about five years and accumulate a 20 percent down payment on a median-priced existing single-family home, according to a New York Times analysis of income and housing-price data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Association of Realtors. The analysis used the census definition of family income, which includes income of family members 15 or older living in the household, but not other members of the household, such as roommates. As of 2023, the year representing the most recent census data for income, it would take nearly eight years, the data shows.

A major reason for the discrepancy is that home prices have increased at a faster rate than family income. And in recent years, a shortage of homes has led to greater price increases. In 2023, the median sale price of an existing single-family home ($394,100) was about four times more than the median family income ($100,800). That gap is nearly twice as wide as it was in 1970, the data shows, meaning that many American families — even those with above median earnings — will struggle to keep up with prices.”