(Third time's the charm)
For an explanation, here's a snippet of a description explaining why taxing the unearned income of finite assets like land can achieve both efficiency and equity without needing to tax and punish the work of laborers or investments into truly productive capital:
>One way is to realize that wealth not only consists of producible capital, but also of non-producible (or “fixed’’) factors. Fixed factors generate rents—that is, payments in excess of what is needed to sustain production. Taxing these rents can enhance efficiency and, potentially, reduce inequality
>...
>In the first way, one prominent example of a rent-generating fixed factor is land.((Monopolies also generate rents, since they can overcharge consumers due to their lack of competition. This practice increases inequality and reduces productivity in the long term. A detailed discussion on the relationship between monopolies and inequality can be found on this blog in an interview with Angus Deaton.)) The owner of a piece of land in a major city can charge a much higher rental rate than the owner of a piece of land somewhere in the countryside, simply because urban land is scarce. Its value is derived from the totality of benefits of being in a city. In economics, it is common knowledge that taxing land is not distortionary, i.e., there is no efficiency loss from it. The reason is that, as an approximation, scarce urban land is fixed: Land owners cannot pass on a land tax through higher prices. The supply of urban land is inelastic—that is, a price increase will not affect its supply—while its demand is not.
>Feldstein (1977), however, discovered that a tax on land rents can indeed be distortionary, by inducing a shift in the portfolio of investors when they hold more than one asset. Edenhofer et al. (2015) show that such a “portfolio effect” can be welfare-enhancing if there is too little capital in an economy relative to aggregate consumption, both by increasing growth and reducing inequality between generations.
There are also other sources of economic rent from finite assets which we can tax or otherwise reform (especially artificially finite things (e.g. patent rights to a specific innovation) since we can undo the human-made laws which made them so in the first place). The rents that accumulate to resources and privileges with a fully fixed supply are a hidden devil for our economy to deal with, and whatever revenue we do collect can be used to untax the goods and services people make. We can have more growth with greater equality, we just need to set the incentives straight on rewarding producing for others and recompensing taking the finite from others.
This is from Andrew Whitehead's article where he interviewed Micheal Foot about The Land Song.
You can find the full article that explores the history of the song:
https://www.andrewwhitehead.net/the-land-song.html
You listen to The Land Song here:
This meme is not meant to represent any official party coalitions or agreements. I made this meme for those unaware there are two parties in the UK who both support LVT to different degrees, which I will explain.
The UK Greens party wants to, "Tax the Landlords - move towards a Land Value Tax levied on Owners, not Tenants. No Exceptions." as part of its "Abolish landlords" 10 step plan.
https://www.greencoordinate.co.uk/motions/abolish-landlords/
Norfolk said they would "look to replace business rates with a Commercial Landowner Levy taxing land value rather than buildings".
https://www.southnorfolklibdems.org.uk/fileadmin/groups/93/Documents/County_2026/Norfolk_Liberal_Democrat_Manifesto_2026.pdf
And in 2018 the Liberal Democrats said they want to, "commit to replacing business rates with a land value tax" because, "business rates are unfit for purpose in a modern economy, and that a land value tax would be the ideal alternative".
https://www.libdems.org.uk/conference/motions/autumn-2018/f26
The design of these policies arent perfect. But believe even partial steps will still result in partial results. And I also believe more conversations around how property taxes can be replaced by land tax is another step in the right direction.
I am not from the UK and dont know how their politics work. If there is something I missed or misunderstood, LMK.