With so many cities grappling with rising rents, insufficient supply of new housing and widening inequality, many are starting to consider the ways in which these challenges could be mitigated by shifting the tax base onto land values. In a previous blog post, we explained… Read More »How does a land value tax shift work in practice?
Passing on the LVT option, North Carolina moves forward with slashing its flat income tax rate anyway. On September 20th, North Carolina House and Senate leaders put forth a long-anticipated two- year budget agreement. The agreement does not include the Land Value Tax that Resource… Read More »North Carolina moves forward with slashing its flat income tax rate
States can grant regulatory authority to local governments to amend zoning and tax laws to increase housing affordability and not put a hole in city budgets In this paper we explore three approaches to solving the growing housing affordable housing crisis. First, I summarize some… Read More »A Pathway to Opening the Urban Land Market to Affordable Housing
Tyler Cowen writes: “The land tax, an idea that dates to Henry George and the classical economists of the late 19th century, is having another one of its moments.” In fact, the idea is older, dating back to Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill,… Read More »Land Taxes Break the Power of NIMBY Interest Groups, a Rebuttal to Tyler Cowen
After Amsterdam, Rotterdam is the largest Dutch municipality in terms of population. Since the 1970s, this municipality has given out almost all of its new land under ground lease conditions. One of the goals of the ground lease system was to allow the entire community to benefit from the increase in land value, instead of just the individual land owner.
In 2003, however, this objective was explicitly dismissed in Rotterdam. From then on, the increase in value of the land would no longer be collected by the community, but by the user of the land. So the council of mayor and aldermen judged, and probably not entirely coincidentally the first council since World War II without the social-democratic party PvdA. The idea was that individuals should be able to build up their own capital through land ownership and would thus develop a more intensive bond with their living environment. From that year on, private ownership of land became the new standard in Rotterdam and leasehold the exception.
In Amsterdam, too, a council without the social democrats took office in 2014, after the PvdA had been represented in the municipal council for more than a century. More than 125 years ago, Amsterdam had been the first Dutch municipality in which it was decided to issue all land under ground lease conditions. The municipality nowadays still owns about 80 percent of the land. And since its introduction in 1896, the original goal of allowing the increase in the value of land to benefit the community had never been changed.
The Persistence of Poverty Amid Advancing Wealth “What happens when government abandons its proper role? At the top, we get fraud. Corruption. Gross incompetence. For the rest of us? We get unemployment, inequality, poverty, and inadequate healthcare, retirement, and welfare.” L. Randall Wray, Making Money… Read More »The Great Enigma of Our Times: MMT and GCE
The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. Don Huberts After the COVID-19 dip, global oil use has rebounded to 100 million barrels per day and is projected to rise to 104 million bpd by 2026 with no peak in sight. Coal… Read More »Leveling the Energy Playing Field
Seventeen years after the publication of Henry George’s Progress and Poverty, the city of Amsterdam decided not to sell any more of its land. Instead they installed a system of municipal ground lease, to ensure the community would benefit from the increased value of the land. The system has been hotly debated ever since, including by Georgists.
Fall is here once again. This change of seasons typically evokes thoughts of colorful leaves; nights by the fire, hot cocoa in hand; and the impending holiday season. This fall, however, larger, more distressing trends are overshadowing these fanciful notions in many people’s minds.
Inflation has us paying more – much more – for everything from the food we feed our families, to the gas we put in our cars, to the insurance policies we purchase to safeguard our assets. And when it comes to our homes (often cited as most Americans’ largest asset) more and more buyers find themselves priced out of a housing market that is increasingly dominated by corporate investors with all cash offers, looking to turn a dual profit as landlords and owners of physical assets that can be borrowed against with ease.
In the Netherlands, the government is trying to combat the housing crisis with more subsidies for first time house buyers. But this will only make prices go up even more. There is a better solution, which would make housing cheaper for everyone: a land value tax. But as long as homeowners are in the majority, no politician dares to burn its fingers on this idea.
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