There is some opposite momentum toward the land value tax, which is a good thing, but these are less visible and likely weaker than a tax revolt by landowners.
Eventually, if the current trend continue for property taxes, we will see a disruption in government funding for basic service, and the contraction of the economy through increased taxation of economic activity to compensate for lost revenue from property taxes. It will be a disaster.
This is the endgame of the expansion of land ownership in the post WW2 era. Exemption from property taxes worsen this crisis.
You're breaking my heart here. A land value tax is embraced by anti-tax advocates like Milton Friedman as the "least bad tax" as well as by actual Marxists. However, it does seem like in the current moment a land-owner tax revolt is the likeliest end game.
And if there is a big push towards eliminating property tax, those states will rush towards California-like real estate disasters.
I just wish that all the people who had a hard time purchasing a home or paying rent would act on their own self-interest in reducing the share of our economy that flows to the rentierism of the land owner. Rentierism is bad in all economies, yet we have enabled an overclass to exploit young people and the poor. We live in an asset economy, where there's a big class divide between those who must work to survive, and those who own real estate (especially if it's their own home) and those who own financial assets like stocks. Making capitalism work better requires more class mobility and less inequality than we currently have.
The biggest challenges of Georgism are that it is basically communism for land (George straight up admits this in one of his books) and creates some issues with efficiently allocating land resources, especially bad with the fact that it can wipe out land speculators which perform an important role in doing time-allocation of land. But it's probably worth the tradeoff if you can eliminate the other taxes.
Interesting, I have always thought the opposite. My undertsanding/reasoning: It's extremely difficult to find land for good purposes because speculators maintain land banks, preventing better uses of it. The speculator causes a ton of market friction, and the tendency for people to hold onto land because of limited supply are a fundamental hindrance to so much economic activity.
If there's a high carrying cost to land, a lot more of it will be on the market and available for people to use when they need it. Especially as land values rise, which is the most important time to reallocate land. Rising land values are exactly the time that the land speculator holds tightest, because they want to sell at the peak, not on the way up.
Maybe the government can be fixed, or even "must" be fixed for the sake of the poors that we always pretend we're thinking about (no doubt some are, but most are just using them as a prop for political persuasion), but in the meanwhile contingency plans must be made.
Government provides crucial services that increases land value, offsetting any losses in tax revenue through public utility. Perhaps the same thing can happen with historical buildings.
However, let us note that cities are for living in. It is not a museum.
Ultimately, only the public can determine the balance of concerns to be struck.
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