alt Hacker NewsYes, it's been suggested that all scarce inputs to the economy should be taxed. And yes the idea of Georgism is to let market set the prices and tax based off of that.
It does become complicated when the scarce inputs are things like highly specialized labor. Georgism wouldn't tax that monopoly, though our current systems (progressive income taxes) do. Many people would want a system which penalizes businesses for buying up e.g. all the veterinarians in a city and charging monopoly prices.
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> Many people would want a system which penalizes businesses for buying up e.g. all the veterinarians in a city and charging monopoly prices.
As powerful as taxes are to create change, you don't need to use them to solve every problem out there.
Monopoly busting doesn't need to be solved by the tax system, right? Isn't that a separate issue?
Although, maintaining a monopoly by owning land becomes more difficult with a LVT. It theoretically becomes easier for a new vet to find a place and setup shop in the city, and then the Monopoly is busted.
Doesn’t the veterinarian own their own skills, after having spent decades in school to learn them (and perhaps being saddled with student loans to do so?)
What if they just moved? Or should we have US-style global taxes following them around even then?
Georgism is not about scarcity, it's about economic land: inputs to production which are fixed in quantity, and that you can't make more of. This is a very different characteristic than scarcity, because many scarce things can be increased, and should be if they are needed.
Taxing specialized labor goes against that spirit, because specialized labor can be created. And in fact taxing the labor would result in less of it being there, the exact opposite of the optimal result.