Borrowing and taxation are completely different concepts. Unless I am the only idiot who hasn't asked for their tax back with interest. Possible.
>People who sit on hugely appreciated land ain't 'poor'.
They aren't poor in that they have at least one valuable asset. The kind of asset that helps people stay afloat when they have issues with income or domestic violence. Regressive taxes are regressive because they simply do not look at income. Someone can be retired, living on nearly no income, and have a single valuable asset. It is not the role of government to significantly disrupt peoples lives because they have 1 good thing going. IIRC home ownership is the single best indicator of mental health.
My memory (going on 10 years I have been having this conversation with Georgists) is that George was largely enraged with Private US railways. From memory they would be automatically granted the land immediately adjacent the track they laid. Sometimes they would develop this land, sometimes they would sell it, but largely they banked it. Because that land was adjacent to, the railway, it was quite valuable, but often underused.
The problem with Georgists, is that the context their ideas were formed under is no longer relevant. The people who will be punished by these ideas are not the railways, but people who are just holding on to their property, people who bought cheaply (ie made an intelligent forward thinking decision for their future) and find themselves surrounded by new services that raise their properties value. Thats what gets me, is that property value is not something you can consent to or plan for. Its arbitrary subjective market valuation, and asking people to lose their homes (homes are houses that humans have a relationship with) because of a subjective market valuation is bad. Its bad when variable mortgages do it, and its bad when georgists roll up and propose the same.