Does Georgism work? Five years later

In 2021, Lars Doucet reviewed Henry George’s *Progress and Poverty*, summarizing the economist’s claim that rising land rents—unearned gains from location rather than productivity—drive widening poverty even as overall progress continues. George’s remedy, the land value tax (LVT), would capture the annual rental value of land while exempting buildings, effectively a split‑rate property tax that taxes land at full value and labor and capital at zero. Doucet’s five‑year reflection notes that what was once a theoretical discussion has become a legislative movement: in 2026, Virginia and Kentucky enacted laws enabling municipalities to adopt split‑rate taxes, and a growing number of U.S. states introduced LVT‑related bills, tracked publicly by his Center for Land Economics.

The surge in political momentum reflects both practical experimentation and broader economic shifts. In Washington State, Doucet’s organization is partnering with the Sightline Institute on a forthcoming LVT bill, while New York Governor Kathy Hochul has expanded city authority to use land‑value capture for funding new transit projects such as the Inter‑Borough Expressway subway extension, a proposal being shaped with the Niskanen Center, Center for Public Enterprise, and Institute for Progress. Internationally, the idea has gained traction: the United Kingdom’s new prime minister Andy Burnham and South Korea’s president Lee Jae Myung have publicly endorsed LVT, and Germany’s Baden‑Württemberg state implemented a modest LVT in early 2025 that survived judicial review. Though the German rate is low and the ambitions of the UK and Korean administrations remain uncertain, these developments signal that LVT is moving from academic debate to concrete policy consideration worldwide.

Analysts now link the rising relevance of Georgist ideas to the accelerating impact of artificial intelligence on land markets. As AI‑generated wealth creates new “AI millionaires” who drive up land prices in tech hubs like San Francisco and Seoul, scholars such as Adam Ozimek argue that land will become a primary beneficiary of AI‑driven economic change, reinforcing the case for LVT. Norwegian effective altruist Aksel Sterri similarly calls for a Georgist framework to understand the AI era, echoing Doucet’s own Norwegian heritage and earlier work on Norway’s long‑standing natural‑resource Georgism. While Doucet admits his earlier belief that public opinion must shift before implementation was misplaced, he now sees the “boring scut work” of policy design and local adoption as the realistic path forward, suggesting that the coming years will test whether these legislative pilots can translate Georgist theory into measurable reductions in inequality and rent‑driven poverty.

⚡ Effects Interpreter