And when the Single Tax was conceived, it was already abundantly clear that urban land values were far above rural land values, and rising much faster.
Few tech companies will want to locate where there isn't already broadband, good schools, cultural amenities, a range of interesting restaurants, and ready pool of the talents they need, not to mention infrastructure such was water, sewer, medical care, etc. And to the extent that they create jobs in such places, they will probably be quite welcome.
Though, wouldn't an LVT that encourage companies to push all their employees to work from home, where possible? There are certainly benefits to that, but it might mean that certain industries get taxed much more heavily than others. Is it ok if distributed work-from-home software companies pay no tax at all, because they have no offices? The workers would pay tax on their own houses and apartments, but the company wouldn't.
I guess it depends on whether you want to consider taxes to be a tool for limiting rent on scarce resources, or for balancing out wealth disparities. (aside from the main goal of raising revenue, of course) The two things are related, but not identical. The first seems like more of a proxy for what we actually want to do, which is to prevent concentration of wealth. Or is it more about the fact that collecting rent isn't an economically productive activity, so if we incentivize everyone to gain wealth by producing value, it'll make us all wealthier?
To be fair, the hurdle that LVT has to pass is not to be perfect, but just to be better than what we have, which isn't a high bar. But it is worth thinking about the possible loopholes and edge cases.
Should we also assume that switching to a single tax wouldn't exclude things like cigarette taxes and carbon taxes? These taxes are designed intentionally with particular incentives, just like the LVT, and unlike property taxes and income taxes. It would be a shame to take away the single best tool we have for fighting climate change, for example.
Anyway, no obligation to reply, a lot of these questions are just me thinking out loud.
A LVT will generally greatly decrease the concentration of wealth. The massive concentration of wealth in the Bay Area economy comes mostly from land owners extracting an inordinate amount of wages, something far greater than the 30% that is typically considered livable. Tech takes from others far less than the landowners take from laborers.
Tech is flashy and gets all the attention these days, but it's not the big story when it comes to exploitive capitalism in the Bay Area. What's really driving poverty and homelessness and evictions are the housing austerity imposed by wealthy landlords and landowners and homeowners to maximize their financial gains.
It is a form of sharecropping.
And then we must pay the dumb taxes on top of it. Sales taxes, wage taxes.
Taxing land value fully would bring the purchase price of a home down to the depreciated value of the structure plus something for the lovely mature landscaping. Instead of a downpayment on the land and building, one would, in effect, be purchasing the building from its current owner, and taking over the stream of location-based payment to the community. No down payment on that. Mortgages would be smaller, and shorter, and the sum of the mortgage payment and one's land value tax would be a lot less than the current sum of one's housing-related costs plus the dumb taxes. If one wanted to move from one city to another, selling one's home would be easier because more people could afford it, and in one's new city, one could afford a similar home, because wages in the new city would support the higher tax on the higher land value there.
Today, moving from Peoria to NYC or Silicon Valley is a whole other ballgame.
Phase this in, removing the dumb taxes, one after another, and collecting an increasing share of the annual value of the land, and our children will have better opportunities to thrive.
Those who do leave will likely be replaced by others seeking those things.
Solar energy is an infinite resource, so there is no reason to charge for it, but for scarce or finite resources, pay for what you take.