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Someone getting forced out of their home in exchange for a few million dollars isn't exactly the most tragic story out there, and increasing tax revenue to pay for better amenities is hardly a bad thing by my reckoning. The aforementioned rich people are a bit less richer, because now they're paying those rates.

Most plans to implement LVT at scale that I've seen include provisions to increase the rate slowly over years and decades, and allow deferred payments for the elderly upon sale or from their estate because yeah, a lot of people made plans to retire based on the present tax regime. Younger people saving for retirement can plan on putting retirement savings into productive assets rather than land speculation. I'm also not entirely clear on why a pension that pays for everything except housing is fine, but providing housing for the elderly is a problematic level of state intervention.

I wonder if a scheme where you could "lock in your rates" would work. Instead of just waiting for reassessment or whatever and having no way to know how it will increase in the future or hoping it stays the same for a long time, maybe you could agree to a X% yearly increase and pick how many years. So you lock in 2% increase for the next 20 years. This could be especially nice for the elderly and allow a compromise for tax revenue. Each property owner gets to decide whether to hedge or not. (This would just be for non commercial properties only.) This is just a hair brain idea off the cuff, just thinking out loud.

Perhaps land ownership could be renewed on different time bases, where the longer deeds have higher taxes? For example, you could own a property for 1 year at a lower rate or 10 years at a slightly higher rate, and 20 years at an even higher rate.

This would allow you to pay a premium for a more stable tax rate. Perhaps you could accomplish this in the private sector through some type of "property tax insurance"?

This is a more reasonable version of California's Prop 13.

A fairer system would be to allow unaffordable property taxes to be deferred indefinitely, while accruing fair interest, with the property as the collateral. "Unaffordable" would be means tested. When the owner dies or sells the property, the remaining property tax is paid from the sale of the property. This creates the possibility of properties being underwater, however, so there would have to be provisions to call in the property if the ratio gets too bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13

For me, the difference is choice. An elderly person voluntarily accepting a multi-million dollar buyout is a wildly positive story (as would any other voluntary conclusion).

It’s the involuntary “beat it, Grandma!” that people find objectionable.

>Someone getting forced out of their home in exchange for a few million dollars isn't exactly the most tragic story out there

Separating someone from the place they had all their kids because they cant afford the tax is pretty bad. Especially when the property hasn't gotten any better. People shouldnt be at the mercy of subjective, third party evaluations of their wealth. This is why progressive taxation waits until gains are realised.

>Most plans to implement LVT at scale that I've seen include provisions to increase the rate slowly over years and decades

Never seen this, I always see Georgists lamenting home owners whose land has increased in value as evil and deserving.

>providing housing for the elderly is a problematic level of state intervention.

Providing housing for the elderly is fine. But if they are already self sufficient, forcing them into alternate housing is disgusting.

Your assessment is deeply flawed. A land value tax does not make home ownership expensive. It makes land consumption expensive. If you live in a condo unit in a 40-story tower, you pay almost zero land value tax because you use very little land.

But if someone wants a sprawling estate, they should expect to pay more — especially in areas where that land could otherwise support hundreds of homes, jobs, or services. That’s the point. Land in high-demand areas is a scarce public resource. Using it efficiently — through dense development — lets more people benefit from the opportunity, infrastructure, and services that come with central locations.

Land value tax encourages exactly that. It doesn’t punish ownership — it rewards efficient use.

It disincentivizes ownership of anything but the most high value land use. Unless there are a lot of regulations (like today) limiting use of land in particular areas, the highest value use version of housing might not be great to live in (if housing were even to be the highest value use in a lot of places).

For example, the current condo in a 40-story tower might well be far less valuable than some tiny serviced flats.

Efficient use might be a very unpleasant target to go for.

> It disincentivizes ownership of anything but the most high value land use.

So basically what we have today already, but at least a little bit fairer (but still pretty unfair, like what we have already today).

Not sure I understand how it is basically like today?

It disincentivizes land ownership for everything but the highest-value use?

How is that the case now, though? What taxation regime are you thinking of?

I'm thinking of capitalism, where businesses compete to make the most profits.

A home owner is not a business

> A land value tax does not make home ownership expensive. It makes land consumption expensive.

Distinction without a difference, a home includes the costs of the land it sits on, at least until you find a way to teleport a home to cheaper land without a cost.

>But if someone wants a sprawling estate, they should expect to pay more

LVT isnt about taxing sprawling estates more than other homes. Its about charging tax based on proportional value of the land being occupied. Land value is largely informed by factors that home owners cannot control.

>It doesn’t punish ownership — it rewards efficient use.

It does both, and it very obviously does both.

It is a meaningful distinction because you can move to a home that uses little land.

> The absolute ideal method of retirement is home ownership.

I'm sorry, but I have to intervene, because this is a stunningly strong claim.

> Its cheap ... for the home owner

Homes are unaffordable for most people today, to the point where renting can be more cost effective than buying. Housing consumes a lot of income which acts like a hidden tax - a drain on the economy.

> it requires the least services provided by the state until things seriously deteriorate

1) Things deteriorate when people can't afford housing. Labor and services become more expensive. 2) Not requiring the state to be involved is an ideological advantage, not a practical one.

> But she also owed quite a decade of rates to the council and wasn't sure what she would have left over

This is an anecdote and as such has limited value, but it's made even less useful by you not knowing the exact sums and percentages. It doesn't justify your sweeping claim in the slightest.

You also seem to be talking about property tax, not LVT.

> Land value as a mechanism to forcibly move on the elderly and hand their inner city character homes over to richer people who don't increase housing density is completely ass backwards.

There's not much wrong with moving for retirement. We don't like to do it, and residential property owners should to some extent (for a number of years) be exempt from land value tax, but the alternative (hoarding valuable land) is much worse.

> You get stuck in a cycle of paying taxes -> improving services -> improved services increase land value -> increased land value increases taxes.

Services don't improve just with tax, but with the influx of capital and development to the area, available jobs, etc. You're using an incomplete model to reason about it.

Some of the other benefits of LVT worth mentioning are that it 1) incentivises owners to use the land productively (density!), 2) discourages land speculation, 3) reduces urban sprawl.

> There's not much wrong with moving for retirement. We don't like to do it, and residential property owners should to some extent (for a number of years) be exempt from land value tax, but the alternative (hoarding valuable land) is much worse.

Totally agree. People need to live where jobs are! That's the main determinant of where you live!

When you're retired, you don't need to commute any more so forcing others to have to live further away and commute past you is a large burden being placed on productivity. We want to tax unproductive behavior so this is an entirely reasonable thing to me. All things being equal, retired people should be incentivized to move when they retire!

>People need to live where jobs are! That's the main determinant of where you live!

Retired people need to live where shopping, health resources, and their offspring (if any) are.

> Retired people need to live where shopping, health resources, and their offspring are.

Their offspring can't afford to live near them, and can't afford the time to visit with such long commutes.

Maybe if retired people moved, instead of staying where their job was 30 years ago, their kids could visit, and they could even afford more healthcare.

People also like stability and it's bad to make people's lives unstable without a really really good reason. Kicking elderly people out of their homes to save a few minutes commute for each other person doesn't seem like a good exchange. I'm sure you can come up with utility numbers that make it look good, but it still seems bad.

> People also like stability

People liking something isn't how we should determine our incentive structure. People like gambling and smoking, but that doesn't mean they're good!

If something is a drain on productivity, we want less of it. In fact, this very argument is why LVT is so awesome! You can tax land without reducing its supply meaning it has zero deadweight loss! This is why economists love LVT, and why many call it the "least bad tax".

If all you want is productivity, raise food prices until the poor die of starvation.

> Homes are unaffordable for most people today, to the point where renting can be more cost effective than buying.

Around 65% of housing is owner-occupied in the US. That doesn’t entirely preclude it from being “unaffordable for most people” but it is evidence against that claim.

The U.S. Census Bureau's American Housing Survey (AHS) collects data on when owner-occupiers moved into their homes [1].

Out of 86 million owner-occupied homes, almost 80% (68.3 million) were moved into before 2019, before the affordability crisis. The number of owner-occupied houses that were moved into between 2022-2023 has declined by half from 2020-2021. Meanwhile, rentals raised by 50% in the same time frame.

This is evidence to the claim that house ownership is getting less affordable, and it's more solid than just looking at ownership percentage, because it shows a trend. However, even the ownership percentage number looks really poor in comparison with U.S.' greatest rivals, China, who have a 96% home ownership rate.

[1] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs/data/interactive...

>I'm sorry, but I have to intervene, because this is a stunningly strong claim.

You might be different, but I have never met a retiree who wanted to rent. Its leisure time. Have a shed, build shit, store your caravan, host the grandkids.

>Housing consumes a lot of income which acts like a hidden tax - a drain on the economy.

Yeah that sucks, lets not increase the burden of home ownership with a larger, overt tax.

> Things deteriorate when people can't afford housing.

Yes, like the elderly being unable to afford housing with land value based taxes.

>You also seem to be talking about property tax, not LVT.

Property taxes determined by land value. It doesnt gain special properties as an acronym, and it doesnt decrease when it becomes the primary source of state or federal income.

> but the alternative (hoarding valuable land) is much worse.

Hoarding land is largely caused by valuable land grants from the government to property developers. It doesnt require some great big alternative taxation system.

>Services don't improve just with tax, but with the influx of capital and development to the area, available jobs, etc. You're using an incomplete model to reason about it.

Yes, land value increases via lots of terrible reasons to increase taxation thats very true.

>incentivises owners to use the land productively (density!)

Zoning laws are the big issue here, you are already incentivised to do this.

>discourages land speculation

Government land release and zoning reform discourage speculation.

You remain unconvinced, but I feel not for the right reasons.

For now, just consider that all of these benefits of house ownership will be unavailable to the current and future generations, because they won’t own, won’t have grandchildren (no space to raise kids), won’t have the means to retire and won’t have a shed to tinker in. Partly because of housing costs.

Right but you make the (exceedingly common in my experience) mistake of reading my dislike for Georgism as opposition to reducing housing costs.

In my own jurisdiction, housing costs are dictated up to 70% by zoning and regulation. Mostly, the failure of successive governments to release enough land to meet demand. But also, zoning preventing higher density construction.

I dont feel the need to implement taxation reform to resolve clear supply and regulation issues. If a bunch of wealthy people were sitting in 1960s character homes, on land thats zoned for much higher density and just chilling that would be one thing. But when I know they are largely just fighting rezoning efforts so their neighbors dont build higher density, and lobbying against land release to ensure their property remains exclusive and expensive, those are the behaviors I want to deal with, and the reforms on that front are very obvious.

Home ownership rates in socialist and former countries are higher than in the West.

Only if you count "home ownership" as just owning your apartment (many Eastern-bloc countries sold cheaply their state-owned apartments to their residents after 1989). At least in the US, "home ownership" largely implies owning a single-family house with a yard. That's the (perhaps unsustainable) "American Dream".

> Only if you count "home ownership" as just owning your apartment

Why in the world wouldn’t it?

> At least in the US, "home ownership" largely implies owning a single-family house with a yard. That's the (perhaps unsustainable) "American Dream".

scoffs At least in my canton, "home ownership" largely implies a three-story house in the hillside overlooking the Alps with the nearest 200K+ city within 15m travel distance. I'm sorry to say that what you present is more comparable to being unhoused.