A land value tax (LVT) is a levy on the value of land without regard to buildings, personal property and other improvements upon it. Some economists favor LVT, arguing it does not cause economic inefficiency, and helps reduce economic inequality. A land value tax is a progressive tax, in that the tax burden falls on land owners, because land ownership is correlated with wealth and income. The land value tax has been referred to as "the perfect tax" and the economic efficiency of a land value tax has been accepted since the eighteenth century. Economists since Adam Smith and David Ricardo have advocated this tax because it does not hurt economic activity, and encourages development without subsidies.
Henry George was an American political economist and journalist. His writing was immensely popular in 19th-century America and sparked several reform movements of the Progressive Era. He inspired the economic philosophy known as Georgism, the belief that people should own the value they produce themselves, but that the economic value of land should belong equally to all members of society. George famously argued that a single tax on land values would create a more productive and just society.
Georgism, also called in modern times Geoism, and known historically as the single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that people should own the value that they produce themselves, while the economic rent derived from land—including from all natural resources, the commons, and urban locations—should belong equally to all members of society. Developed from the writings of American economist and social reformer Henry George, the Georgist paradigm seeks solutions to social and ecological problems, based on principles of land rights and public finance that attempt to integrate economic efficiency with social justice.
Geolibertarianism is a political and economic ideology that integrates libertarianism with Georgism. It favors a taxation system based on income derived from land and natural resources instead of on labor, coupled with a minimalist model of government, as in libertarianism. The term was coined by the late economist Fred Foldvary in 1981.
A single tax is a system of taxation based mainly or exclusively on one tax, typically chosen for its special properties, often being a tax on land value.
John Rogers Commons was an American institutional economist, Georgist, progressive and labor historian at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Fred Emanuel Foldvary was a lecturer in economics at San Jose State University, California, and a research fellow at The Independent Institute. He previously taught at Santa Clara University and other colleges. He was also a commentator and senior editor for the online journal The Progress Report and an associate editor of the online journal Econ Journal Watch. He served on the board of directors for the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.
Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy is an 1879 book by social theorist and economist Henry George. It is a treatise on the questions of why poverty accompanies economic and technological progress and why economies exhibit a tendency toward cyclical boom and bust. George uses history and deductive logic to argue for a radical solution focusing on the capture of economic rent from natural resource and land titles.
The Single Tax League was a Georgist Australian political party that flourished throughout the 1920s and 1930s based on support for single tax.
The Scottish Land Restoration League was a Georgist political party.
Maximilian Hirsch was a German-born businessman and economist who settled in Melbourne, Australia, where he became the recognized intellectual leader of the Australian Georgist movement and, briefly, a member of the Victorian Parliament.
Fred Harrison is a British author, economist, economic commentator, and corporate policy advisor, notable for his stances on land reform and belief that an overreliance on land, property, and mortgages weakens economic structures and makes companies vulnerable to economic collapse. Dirk Bezemer, a professor of economics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, noted that Harrison was one of the earliest to have predicted the 2007–2008 financial crisis. In 2005 Harrison commented: "The next property market tipping point is due at end of 2007 or early 2008 ... The only way prices can be brought back to affordable levels is a slump or recession.”
The IU, in full the International Union for Land Value Taxation, is an international umbrella organisation for land value tax reformers. It has members in countries around the world – activists, politicians, professionals and academics, and is affiliated with national and local organisations. The IU enjoys Special Consultative Status at the United Nations.
Land value taxation has a long history in the United States dating back from Physiocrat influence on Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. It is most famously associated with Henry George and his book Progress and Poverty (1879), which argued that because the supply of land is fixed and its location value is created by communities and public works, the economic rent of land is the most logical source of public revenue. and which had considerable impact on turn-of-the-century reform movements in America and elsewhere.
Land&Liberty is a quarterly magazine of popular political economics: its focus is the relationship between land and natural resource rights and 21st century economic policy. Published in the UK it covers international affairs and events from a global perspective.
The Henry George Foundation is an independent UK economic and social justice think tank and public education group concerned with "the development of sound relationships between the citizen, our communities and our shared natural and common resources". The Henry George Foundation describes itself as "active on three broad fronts: research, education, and advocacy". The Foundation takes its name from Henry George, the 19th Century economist and proponent of the taxation of land values.
The English League for the Taxation of Land Values was a Georgist political group. It was a historic precursor of two present-day reform bodies: the international umbrella organisation the IU and the UK think tank the Henry George Foundation. The object of the League was
the taxation for national and local purposes of the 'unimproved value of the land', ie the value of the land apart from the buildings or other improvements in or upon it. The League actively support[ed] all proposals in Parliament for separate valuation of land, and for making land values the basis of national and local taxation.
The Scottish League for the Taxation of Land Values is an independent national campaigning organisation that advocates radical reform of Scotland's system of taxation. Known as The Scottish League, the organisation advances the programme of the nineteenth-century American social reformer Henry George. The League publishes books and other material, and is a participant in the ongoing public debate over the future of Scotland’s land and tax system.
The Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, founded in 1925, is a private operating foundation dedicated to the social and economic philosophy of Henry George through publication and research. Among its activities, the Foundation publishes The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, funds the Henry George Chair in Economics at St. John's University, and supports the Henry George Lecture Series at the University of Scranton.
On November 7, 1990, an open letter to then President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev was published and signed by a rank of thirty Western sources, most of whom were academics. The contents of the letter made the argument to the Soviet head of state that while moving the economy away from a centrally planned system towards a free market mixed economy was a step forward, they warned the leader against following through with the West had done following the end of feudalism; privatising the land itself, instead opting towards a Georgist system of common ownership and the collection of public revenue through land-value taxation. Nobel prize-winners Franco Modigliani, James Tobin, Robert Solow and William Vickrey were among the letter's signees.
