How does agriculture work under an LVT regime?
I tried asking ChatGPT but under the calculation is made, growing food wouldn't make any sense.
Basically the problem with agriculture under an LVT regime is the following:
- Farmers need a massive amount of land to grow food relative to what other uses of land. More land = more tax
- Food is a low margin economic activity that operates in near-perfect competition
- Society and the government face huge incentives to make food as cheap as possible. Additionally, domestic food production is critical to national security.
Even comparing average unimproved land values in e.g., New York vs Oklahoma, the tax burden for a farm is prohibitively expensive and would result in tons of farms shuttering until the price of food rose to sufficiently cover the tax.
Consider also that land values would change if the government implemented LVT - land in currently cheap places would be bought up as businesses that can seek to minimize tax liability, leading to higher unimproved land values.
Posted Dec 1, 2025, 4:09 AM UTC
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