Harberger Tax : r/georgism
What do you all think of the Harberger tax as a way to efficiently allocate land? Owners of a piece of land determine the value of their land and pay taxes accordingly. But, they have to sell the land at whatever price they originally set if a buyer wants to pay that price. I like this idea because the land is likely to be allocated to whoever is willing to pay the most for it, and in principle to its most productive use. Under a full LVT the sale price of land would be zero. A Harberger tax cannot work, for land. You could have a "harberger style" tax where you choose how much monthly LVT you pay, and if someone is willing to pay more, they get the property. That's equivalent to a first-price auction. An even better version is a second-price (Vickrey) auction, in which the highest bidder wins but pays the price of the second-highest bid. That incentivizes honest bidding and makes intuitive sense in terms of the payment being for excluding others. The complications come into play for v
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