Schools of Thought
Georgism
Also Known As Geoism
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Georgism is an economic doctrine holding that people should own the full value of what they themselves produce through labor and capital, while the economic rent from land, and by extension all natural resources, the commons and urban locations, belongs equally to all members of society rather than to whoever happens to hold title to it. Henry George developed the doctrine in full in his 1879 book Progress and Poverty, which sold millions of copies and made George one of the most famous economic writers of his era. Its central policy proposal is the land value tax: a levy on the unimproved value of land alone, not on the buildings or improvements upon it, ideally replacing income, sales and trade taxes entirely, since a tax on land value cannot be passed on to tenants or avoided by moving the land, and does not discourage anyone from building on or improving it the way an ordinary property tax can. George's own justification was that land's value rises from surrounding community development and population growth, not from any effort by its owner, so its rental value is a communally created windfall rather than a private return to labor or investment.
Facts
Start YearDated to the publication of Henry George's Progress and Poverty, the doctrine's founding and defining text. Core TenetA tax on the unimproved value of land alone, replacing taxes on labor, capital and trade, captures for the community a value that landowners did not create, without the economic distortions an ordinary tax on income or improvements causes. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Friedman, despite his broader opposition to most taxation, endorsed the land value tax specifically as economically efficient, calling it the least distortionary tax available.
Sources
1. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationGeorgism, lead sectionQuote, Georgism, lead section
an economic ideology holding that persons (including corporations) should own the value that they produce themselves
1. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Milton Friedman, Georgism, SupportQuote, Associated With: Milton Friedman, Georgism, Support
Milton Friedman specifically called it the least bad tax
Open Questions (1 open question)
Can the unimproved value of land be assessed separately from the buildings and improvements upon it accurately enough, in practice, for a land value tax to work as Georgism's theory intends?
Georgism's theoretical case for taxing land value alone rather than improvements is not itself disputed among economists who accept it (see the Friedman and Stiglitz endorsements recorded on the mint), but assessors in practice must separate a parcel's bare land value from the value its buildings add, a split that is straightforward for vacant land and genuinely difficult for a developed urban parcel where land and structure value are entangled in the observed sale price. Jurisdictions that have tried split-rate or pure land value taxation, Pennsylvania cities among the most studied cases, report persistent assessment disputes and administrative cost as practical obstacles distinct from the underlying economic theory.
What would resolve this A mass-appraisal methodology proven to separate land value from improvement value at the accuracy and low cost a nationwide or citywide land value tax would require, tested against jurisdictions that have actually implemented split-rate taxation over a long enough run to compare outcomes.
Public finance and real estate / land valuation economicsWikipedia
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.