I wouldn’t say your article was misleading, just oddly framed, for me. To me it is obvious that taxes introduce distortions (with rare exceptions like carbon taxes that are addressing negative externalities). So “an LVT (can) discourage searching for new uses of land” is a true fact but not yet an “argument against”—to become an argument it needs to be supplemented with ”… and this distortion is more damaging than existing taxes for the same revenue”.
That said, in the last six months the tariff discussions have been eye-opening. The quality of debate has been very low, and basic facts like “tariffs are taxes”, “tariffs raise revenue”, “tariffs increase prices”, and “tariffs reduce trade” apparently need to be explained at length. This aligns with your description of parts of pro-LVT Twitter, so I understand better where you are coming from than when I wrote my comment above.
I wouldn’t say your article was misleading, just oddly framed, for me. To me it is obvious that taxes introduce distortions (with rare exceptions like carbon taxes that are addressing negative externalities). So “an LVT (can) discourage searching for new uses of land” is a true fact but not yet an “argument against”—to become an argument it needs to be supplemented with ”… and this distortion is more damaging than existing taxes for the same revenue”.
That said, in the last six months the tariff discussions have been eye-opening. The quality of debate has been very low, and basic facts like “tariffs are taxes”, “tariffs raise revenue”, “tariffs increase prices”, and “tariffs reduce trade” apparently need to be explained at length. This aligns with your description of parts of pro-LVT Twitter, so I understand better where you are coming from than when I wrote my comment above.