The problem with a LVT is that the Comptroller will look at the apartment block and look at the parking lots, then decide "The land used by the parking lots must be less valuable, otherwise we'd have apartments there" and then nothing really changes.
Its also just not... practical to tax your way out of a problem that you subsidized your way into. When we've spent a century building car-centric cities, ratcheting up taxes on the amenities cars need to function won't make the cars go away. The cars will make you go away. Ultimately, you need to build the mass transit first and incentivize the dense car-hostile infrastructure. Only then can you start penalizing big wasteful parking lots because - by then - they will actually be wasteful rather than a necessary component of the transit infrastructure.
Cheap land should theoretically make building transit easier. The fact that we continue to pave over old rail routes rather than building out rail on old shitty roads is purely a political decision.
Build trains over intercity highways? It's basically impossible with any American politician. A transformation like that would take ten years, but no American politician thinks further than two years ahead and literally won't be in office long enough to implement it.
Build trains over intercity highways?
Consider I-10. It was originally planned to support a rail corridor adjacent to the roadways. Ultimately, the plan was scrapped to build toll lanes where the rail line was supposed to go. An even more glaring example was the Westpark Tollway, which was built over the top of an old rail line that was originally intended to be the Blue Line commuter rail from West Houston into the Galleria Area.
Not only is rail around and through intercity highways possible, it is often the original intent of city planners and civil engineers.
If you want to talk about political possibility, I would recommend attacking it from a budgetary perspective. Pitch rail as big cost savings to the city and promote it as Cost-Neutral or pair it with some kind of tax cut. Voters love that shit. And it works particularly well in a state like Texas, where revenue is driven by property values rather than tax rates anyway. You can toss peanuts to the voters, by way of minor increases in the property tax deduction, while reaping massive windfalls when rail drives up density and more than makes up the difference in cuts as a consequence.
We already have proof-of-concept in this idea by way of the Houston Main Street line, an improvement that created a development boom all through Downtown and Midtown straight out to the NRG stadium and beyond. Property taxes soared while commute times plunged.
Found my vaguely-recalled source!
https://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/0801GeorgesCritics.pdf
Doesn't mention fascism, but makes a case of Georgism (and George) being right-wing projects opposed to labor.
As an ex-Georgist, that was a great read that really sums up the problems with the ideology, which is really rare. The ideology is really obscure so a lot criticisms of it seem to be based off a meme-level understanding of the theories. I don't think that it's fair to call Georgism a "right-wing project opposed to labor" though, and I don't think that's really how Hudson characterizes it either. He calls George a "tragic figure" and argues that the LVT was a lot more radical and progressive than a lot of other proposals. But the problem was the total lack of any coherent strategy as to how to get it implemented, with George instead pursuing ideological purity and pushing away potential allies, while trying to convince capitalists to support reforms that were fundamentally opposed to their own interests. Essentially, George and his followers were more concerned with winning in high school debate club than in actually achieving their political aims, and they had this idea that convincing people was simply a matter of having a sound logical foundation. Which of course isn't true, and the political forces opposed to the idea had and have a lot stronger of a signal, and you can't really win an argument if your opponent gets to say 1000 words for every 1 that you get. The Upton Sinclair quote he cited really sums it up:
A few years ago, out here in Southern California, a fine enthusiast by the name of Luke North started what he called the “Great Adventure” movement, to carry California for the Single Tax. I did what I could to help, and in the course of the campaign discovered what I believe is the weakness of the Single Tax movement. Our opponents, the great rich bankers and land speculators of California, persuaded the poor man that we were going to put all taxes on this poor man’s lot, and to let the rich man’s stocks and bonds, his inheritance, his wife’s jewels, and all his income, escape taxation. The poor man swallowed this argument, and the “Great Adventure” did not carry California.
So, I no longer advocate the Single Tax. I advocate many taxes. I want to tax the rich man’s stocks and bonds, also his income, and his inheritances, and his wife’s jewels. In addition, I advocate a land tax, but one graduated like the income tax. If a man or a corporation owns a great deal of land, I want to tax him on the full rental value. If he owns only one little lot, I don’t want to tax him at all. Some day that measure will come before the voters of California, and then I should like to see the bankers and land speculators of the state persuade the poor man that the measure would not be to the poor man’s advantage!
Ultimately, I didn't abandon Georgism because I found some theoretical argument for why an LVT would be a bad idea. I still think it'd be a good idea, but, like there's plenty of good ideas! The state of the world under capitalism is so fucked up that the problem isn't really that nobody knows what to do to fix shit, it's that the people who want to fix shit have less political power than the people who are benefiting from shit being broken. Georgism only ever really tried to be a theoretical, academic solution, and when it was presented with the opportunity to be more than that, the nerds fumbled the ball.
The thrust of the article is that George enjoyed early support from socialists and labor early on, even though he actually vilified socialists and compared unions to monopoly capital, and alienated them with, in addition to the crapping on them, a single-minded, fundamentally capitalist focus on only having a land tax. The funny story of him getting nominated for office by a socialist/labor unity caucus only to strip out basically all of the pro-labor reforms is in there, too.
Georgism is right wing in the same sense that American libertarianism is right wing: fundamentally supportive of capital and capitalist exploitation by being opposed to virtually all regulation (and also having a good dollop of envy for the "good guys" in the capitalist ruling class), let alone actually challenging the capitalist system itself. Given the incredible focus on the land tax, Georgism is practically one policy away from ancapistan. The contradiction of George, per Michael's thesis, is that he really meant to be a progressive reformer but ended up fighting others' progressive policies more than actually building political power for his primary goal of a land tax - and now, as when he died, his supporters are basically right wing libertarians.
I don't agree with your reading of Hudson and I think Georgists are just their own weird thing and I feel like it's kinda reductionist to just say that they're bad because they're like bad group.
Do you think "they're bad because they're like bad group" is an honest summary of what I said?
Given the incredible focus on the land tax, Georgism is practically one policy away from ancapistan.
and now, as when he died, his supporters are basically right wing libertarians.
Michael Hudson craps all over Georgism as being quasi-fascist or something
Doesn’t mention fascism, but makes a case of Georgism (and George) being right-wing projects opposed to labor.
Idk man I just get the vibe that that's how you're looking at it, like, trying to tie it to something more familiar. Which is kinda fair tbh bc the ideology isn't really significant enough to deserve it's own space in a brain, but as long as we're discussing it I think it's worth examining critically without trying to figure out where to lump it in with stuff. I don't think it fits neatly into any modern political camp, and I don't think it fit neatly into any camp back in it's day, either.
Michael Hudson craps all over Georgism as being quasi-fascist or something (distinguishing Georgism from land tax ideas in general), though I don't remember the exact argument.
Gonna go park downtown and see all the parking lots
tear up parking lots, recycle the asphalt into something useful (maybe a walking path, ballast for light rail, etc), replace with apartments community gardens and parks.
That apartment building is not really affordable housing. Downtown Louisville is an urban renewed hellhole of sprawl that thousands upon thousands of people commute into daily, primarily by car. Unsurprisingly, the public transit is awful.
Unsurprisingly, the public transit is awful.
public transit barely exists in most states, especially kentucky
