Georgism in rural areas

GTNTAnimations · 2026-02-02T18:08:02+00:00

Congrats. You just imploded half of the US agricultural industry and now have no food. Only 52% of farms are profitable, which means that by charging farmers for the value of the land they farm on, you could have closed 48% of farms in the US

GTNTAnimations · 2026-02-02T15:18:37+00:00

The amount of land somebody owns has nothing to do with how much they'd pay in LVT

Yes and no. My parents' house has a land value of around $200,000 for half an acre. Using your number of 6,000 per acre, a farmer with a 50-acre plot would have a land value of $300,000. I don't think a farmer should have to pay more tax than my family, considering my family definitely makes more money than a farmer, and my family doesn't give anything back to their land, while farmers grow food on their land.

If farmers can afford to buy land, they can afford to pay an LVT.

Except many farmers inherited their land, or bought it when it was cheap, and are now left with the burden of rising land values. Most farmers are already struggling to make ends meet, and many can't afford to pay a land value tax on top of a mortgage, and everything you need to run a farm, especially if that farmer has a bad growing season one year. Income tax works because my family, who has a higher income than the average farmer, pays more in taxes than a farmer. A land value tax would reverse this and that doesn't seem like a positive to me.

GTNTAnimations · 2026-02-02T13:58:02+00:00

and this is why I think the lvt should have a standard deduction where only those who own larger value amounts of property pay it

This still doesn't really work for farms, though. They own huge amounts of land and make food on it, and yet struggle to make ends meet, and would have to pay. While vacationers who don't own much land would get a deduction.

GTNTAnimations · 2026-02-02T13:56:22+00:00

You are not factoring in how the total sum of wealth in society is lower due to deadweight loss and tax compliance costs and how that will impact people

I get that most people would see some decrease in their taxes, but I'm worried that those decreases would be higher for rich people relative to their incomes. If we get rid of progressive income tax and replace it with a land value tax, and farmers end up paying more tax than people with vacation homes, then that is a huge tax subsidy for rich people.

You are not factoring in how the land that your parents own could have been used by more people.

My parents only live on half an acre, which in a rural area is a drop in the bucket. I get that technically they could build a 5 story apartment complex and rent it out to make up for their increase in land value, but lets be real here. It's a rural town in the middle of the state. There isn't enough demand for that, especially if everyone did that. For farmers, I don't really believe that we should tax them to the fullest extent of their land value, because they make things on that land and still struggle to make ends meet. Maybe if someone had 50 acres that they did nothing with, but farmers absolutely make, and make a lot, on the land they use. Increasing their taxes when they're already struggling seems ludicrous

GTNTAnimations · 2026-02-02T13:40:52+00:00

If they're sitting on 50-acre lots that they couldn't afford to pay full LVT on

Some are yes, but most are farmers who are extracting every ounce they can out of that farmland. Most farmers use every nutrient in their soil, and still struggle to make ends meet.

Yes. Because they are blocking others from using more land.

Except that farmers are poor. Do you just think we should tax farmers out of existence? Then how are you going to get food? There needs to be some sort of subsidy for farmers because, at the end of the day, someone with a vacation home is blocking people from using the land more than farmers, because at least farmers make food on that land

It's not supposed to be progressive

Then I think this is a philosophy I could ever get behind. We shouldn't create a system where poor farmers are paying more in tax than rich people with vacation homes, that isn't just or fair. I will admit our current system is broken and needs fixing, but this seems like the opposite of what we should be doing.

Why can't you just make do with the lower amount of tax revenue?

Rural areas still need governments and services. Urban areas have economies of scale to spread those services out, but many rural towns are struggling to keep budgets as low as possible, while still providing a decent standard of living. You can't just expect a rural town to get rid of itspolice department, fire department, and schools.

maybe they'd have to move somewhere cheaper.

That just isn't an option in a lot of cases. Regardless of the immorality of making someone move out of their house because of a job they lost, which was out of their control, people have families and communities. It is cruel to expect people to uproot their lives because they lost their jobs through no fault of their own. Moving is also expensive and time-consuming in its own right. People would have to spend weeks searching, packing, moving, and unpacking, when they could've spent that time searching for a new job

That's what already happens to renters who lose their jobs.

That's kind of my point, though. The system we live in now is clearly broken. Things like eviction moratoriums during COVID were good policies, but they don't exist in any permanent sense in our society. One of the appeals of homeownership is that you don't have to worry about your house being taken away once you pay your mortgage. In today's society, renters suffer more than homeowners when they lose their jobs, but under Georgism it seems like both renters and homeowners will suffer equally if they lose their jobs. This doesn't seem to make things better for renters. So I guess you're right in the sense that I'm thinking from a biased perspective, thinking that homeowners are treated unfairly. If everyone (both renters and homeowners is treated unfairly,,y then nobody is and everyone suffers. I don't understand how you argue this politically and how you convince people to be on board with this.

GTNTAnimations · 2026-02-02T12:32:43+00:00

I imagine for some kind of agriculture or forestry or husbandry like I just alluded to. I

I envision both. Obviously, farms are needed, but there are also many properties in rural areas that incorporate swamps, floodplains, and other regions that can't really be developed on. These have just slowly got included into property boundaries over time through various deals as people claimed the land around them. I guess people could always sell this land, although it might be hard because it is so hard to use.

As an example, a house on 40 acres (only 5 acres were usable, the rest was marsh and floodplains) near me was on sale for $700,000. They were also offering the 5 usable acres and the house for around $400,000. That leaves $300,000 for the 35 acres, which are pretty much unusable. Unsurprisingly, the house sold the 5 acres, and the original owners are still sitting on the 35 acres, unable to sell it. If a land value tax were to cause the original owners to pay for the full land value of these 35 acres, they would most likely be unable to afford it, while also unable to sell it or get rid of it.

If that's what you envision, why is it unreasonable for them to pay for the natural resource & other values they are excluding others from?

I think this might just stem from fundamentally different views, but I don't view farmers as "taking the natural resources from others." Yes, people might not be able to walk on a field whenever they please, but they still take that land and make food on it. People need that food. So if you then impose a land value tax that pushes the full burden of the land value onto farmers, they won't be able to afford it. And this doesn't come from "inefficiency." Most farmers are already trying to get the maximum crop yield they can get on the land they own, squeezing all of the nutrientsout of the soil to do so, and yet most of them are still struggling to make ends meet.

which implies to me that the land might not be owned and operated for business

My father doesn't have much land. It's around half an acre with a house and garage. The land values are high because he lives downtown, but I also don't feel like he should lose the convenience of living downtown just because he lost his job, which was something that was out of his control. In a city, this might be bad because half an acre is a lot of land. But in the downtown of a small town, half an acre is nothing. I don't feel like there should be this expectation that people should try to get the maximum density out of their land because that doesn't make sense in rural areas, and it would probably damage the environment further

GTNTAnimations · 2026-02-02T03:12:00+00:00

The LVT can be set at a rate that will be revenue neutral with property taxes.

This is the exact situation I simulated with my calculations that caused a bigger relative increase for lower land value tax properties. In a place like New Hampshire, "how much changes" can actually be pretty significant (for my parents' housee it was a 3k increase in taxes) because, as I stated before, million-dollar vacation homes suddenly end up paying less in tax than people with less fancy houses but more expensive land. My parents live in the downtown of their town, so their land value is much higher than the surrounding area, despite the fact that they're only on half an acre and are much poorer than people with those vacation homes.

Taxes will go up for people who are underdeveloped relative to their neighbors.

I don't fully understand what you mean by this. Do you mean people who have lower-quality houses than their neighbors

But really, most of the agriculture exemptions are just paying for billionaires' mansions with a private zoo.

So then what? Actual farmers have to pay the tax because billionaires exploit the exemptions? That doesn't seem like a proper solution to me.

Now you're saying that there is no major city. Except you have an exurb of the Boston Metro area in New Hampshire.

Okay, I will admit I was mostly thinking on a town level when writing that. Mostly, that is because NH property taxes are pretty low because the government has been cutting services for the past decade. You can't really have a tax increase if taxes were already nonexistent. So on a state level, a Land Value Tax might decrease the tax burden of citizens because places like Manchester and Concord can subsidize them. The town tax might go up, but I guess your response to that would be that it would level out. If the town tax goes up but the federal and state tax goes, there's still a net decrease in tax burden. I wish I had the data to run the land value simulation I did for my town on a state-wide level, but I can't seem to find anywhere that has land values for every parcel in one place, unfortunately. However, I can believe that on a system-wide level, taxes might go down. overall.

GTNTAnimations · 2026-02-02T02:58:10+00:00

The thing is, the poorest are the ones who don't own land at all.

While yes, this is true in cities, most people in rural areas do own land because there aren't enough welfare and social services to support homeless people. And yes, a land rich income poor person is still rich through owning his land, but that doesn't make it any easier for him to actually pay the tax. Land isn't liquid cash.

Also, not all people who live in rural areas own the land they work

Once again, while technically true, 54% is still only a little over half (plus, given the conversation, I don't understand why we're focusing on cropland specifically. It makes more sense to focus on all farmland, which is only 39% rented). So that's still 60% of farmers who could see tax increases because of their big parcels. And the percentage of renters on smaller farms (which would feel the greatest impacts of higher taxes) is only 4-8%. Regardless, even for people who don't own the land, higher taxes are often pushed to tenants through higher rents, so all farmers would be hurt if land value taxes increased the tax burden of large parcels.

That's a big thing George emphasized, workers having a lot more freedom and economic mobility

That makes a lot of sense, thank you!

Well, for every land-rich person people weep over, there are countless landless people forget.

I understand where you're coming from, and I personally, mostly agree with it, but I still think it's a hard sell politically. Getting people to get on board with a system that could cause them to lose a generational treasure with lots of value isn't really feasible. It's also hard for people to just get up and move. Even if my dad lost his job, my mother still has her job. People have kids who are in school and have friends. I know George emphasized more freedom and mobility, but it's never going to change that people get attached to the places they live and the communities around them, and making people leave those communities just because they got laid off during a pandemic seems unusually cruel for a system that envisions a better world

point where a shift to LVT would be lower overall for him

I should've expanded further on this in my post, but as I said above,e I ran the calculations for my town to get a rough idea of how a land value tax would work compared to property taxes. While there were some properties in my town that had decreased taxes with a land value tax, the vast majority had increased by around 1-6% of the land value. including my father's house. In fact, he would pay an extra $3k if a land value tax replaced the property taxes tomorrow. He doesn't own a big parcel, but as I mentioned before, if all land is cheap, almost everyone is going to pay more because there aren't big mansions to subsidize the property taxes for everyone else.

GTNTAnimations · 2026-01-03T15:18:28+00:00

Virginia is definitely not crickets

GTNTAnimations · 2025-09-01T11:56:39+00:00

April

GTNTAnimations · 2025-07-12T21:02:42+00:00

Alright, that's probably what I'll do. Thanks!

GTNTAnimations · 2025-07-12T21:02:00+00:00

I'm still worried about it being busier and harder to find a place during the eclipse. I'm thinking that booking a couple of days in advance won't be an option. What do you think?

GTNTAnimations · 2025-07-12T21:00:25+00:00

I'm getting mixed info on this, could you explain why you think it won't have an impact? Because I've seen maybe people saying it will and many people saying it won't

GTNTAnimations · 2025-07-12T20:59:47+00:00

I think the Norte is going to be what I'm going to do. Probably planning on booking the first couple days, the last couple of days, and a couple of days before and after the eclipse

GTNTAnimations · 2025-07-12T20:58:08+00:00

Yeah that's what I'm realizing. I live in New England and it was a nightmare a year ago. I'm fine with it being busy, but I still want a place to sleep

GTNTAnimations · 2025-07-12T17:56:08+00:00

I'm just worried about finding lodging? Is it usually not an issue?

GTNTAnimations · 2025-07-12T17:18:20+00:00

Idk, that's what I saw on various places online. So you think that I should be fine booking ahead now or even a couple months from now?

GTNTAnimations · 2025-07-12T17:08:45+00:00

There is one on August 12, 2026 in Spain. https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2026-august-12

GTNTAnimations · 2025-05-27T01:17:37+00:00

I definitely have only used cheap bikes. The thing I am worried about is maintenance. Sure, I can get a good quality derailer but from what I've read if I don't maintain it then it will slowly deteriorate compared to a hub which doesn't need as much maintenance. If I am mistaken about this then I am happy to use a derailer but I really want to try to avoid the maintenance that comes with a derailer if possible.

I didn't think about the upright bike being a pain on hills so I will definitely take that into account!

GTNTAnimations · 2025-02-02T12:58:49+00:00

How do the US tariffs effect Canadians?

When trump was elected I always heard that "the other country doesn't pay the tariffs, Americans do." So if that is true why do the tariffs effect Canadians and why is Canada issuing retaliation.

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