R.S. makes a good point about how Georgism would most likely require a homogenous society to function; I had not considered this factor before. I remember hearing about the Georgist land system on Scott Alexander's ACX blog some time ago and finding it intriguing; I'm guessing that some portion of the ACX community would not want to discuss why this system would probably fail in America.
"We can't get anything useful done because the US government has been the battlefield in a race war for 50 years" is a pretty common observation. I subscribe to a newsletter about LVT and I suspect it would be a useful proposal in the abstract but they keep backing people like Zohran Mamdani and Andy Burnham. So what can you do?
My nonagenarian uncle pays MUCH lower property taxes than I do even though his house is worth multiples of my condo. Okay I get that most old people are on a fixed income but he’s got a great pension and plenty of money. I hesitate to aggressively tax them or implement something like means testing but I get the resentment. My daughter and her husband pay like $3000 for a dumpy 2br apartment. Boomers and older also don’t want lots more housing as a rule so in some sense they pulled the ladder up behind them and made it harder for younger folks. Like this guy who is so annoying. https://thevoicesf.org/the-nimby-tyrant-of-telegraph-hill/
California is considering a bill to designate Jews as a separate racial/ethic category. It's already passed the initial committee. The bill, backed by a "large number of Jewish groups" (though not all), would provide race-based protections to those Jews who experience racism due to being ethnic-looking, as well as Israel-related protections. The article gives some examples. Do you foresee this as becoming a thing, both in California and the US? Would there be a separation of Jews from whites? How do you see this bill, where it's going, and the racial status of Jews?
R.S. makes a good point about how Georgism would most likely require a homogenous society to function; I had not considered this factor before. I remember hearing about the Georgist land system on Scott Alexander's ACX blog some time ago and finding it intriguing; I'm guessing that some portion of the ACX community would not want to discuss why this system would probably fail in America.
"We can't get anything useful done because the US government has been the battlefield in a race war for 50 years" is a pretty common observation. I subscribe to a newsletter about LVT and I suspect it would be a useful proposal in the abstract but they keep backing people like Zohran Mamdani and Andy Burnham. So what can you do?
My nonagenarian uncle pays MUCH lower property taxes than I do even though his house is worth multiples of my condo. Okay I get that most old people are on a fixed income but he’s got a great pension and plenty of money. I hesitate to aggressively tax them or implement something like means testing but I get the resentment. My daughter and her husband pay like $3000 for a dumpy 2br apartment. Boomers and older also don’t want lots more housing as a rule so in some sense they pulled the ladder up behind them and made it harder for younger folks. Like this guy who is so annoying. https://thevoicesf.org/the-nimby-tyrant-of-telegraph-hill/
Robert, are you following this story in California?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/us/california-jewish-ethnic-identity.html
California is considering a bill to designate Jews as a separate racial/ethic category. It's already passed the initial committee. The bill, backed by a "large number of Jewish groups" (though not all), would provide race-based protections to those Jews who experience racism due to being ethnic-looking, as well as Israel-related protections. The article gives some examples. Do you foresee this as becoming a thing, both in California and the US? Would there be a separation of Jews from whites? How do you see this bill, where it's going, and the racial status of Jews?