Why Georgism Is Wrong

Anthony Galli
6 min readSep 13, 2023

I support a Land Value Tax.

After all, I’ve created one of the most popular videos on the subject, but I’m not a Georgist because unlike Henry George I don’t believe in a single 100% LVT.

Why not 1 tax?

The advantages which would be gained by substituting for the numerous taxes by which the public revenues are now raised, a single tax levied upon the value of land, will appear more and more important the more they are considered. This is the secret which would transform the little village into the great city. Henry George

Georgists support LVT because it discourages land speculation, but then why not also support taxes on other rent-seeking behaviors like dollar speculation? After all, inflation is a tax. If we removed all inflation (i.e. fixed the supply of money) then people would hoard money much like land.

Georgists support LVT because it disproportionally taxes the rich, but then why not have a progressive income tax on the top 10% of earners because otherwise they could avoid all taxation by opting out of owning American land for storing their wealth in art, commodities, stocks, patents, foreign land, etc.?

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