I worked for 5 years to promote LVT.
In real life it's far more complex to administer than a straight property tax, that's why it will never be popular. It also creates bizarre outcomes where where it rewards some land uses and punishes others and creates weird incentives about land topology and parcelization.
Who is going to assess the value of the land as distinct from improvements? Geologists? Environmentalists? Different parents will presume different values and push those values. Property taxes are assumed basically based on other similar properties on the market, in terms of size, age, and space. But 2 parcels of 2 acre right next to each other could be radically different values depending in there topology and environments. I lived on a 2 acre parcel once, and our neighbors had 1/4 acre plots, but our 2 acres was mostly swampy low lying land that was not adjacent to the part the land our house was on that was regular. It was also weirdly shaped and the 'access' to it was a narrow 10ft corridor. It was essentially... useless land attached to our parcel, we couldn't even develop it because in order to clear it you'd have to get permission form your neighbor to drive construction equipment across their driveway/lawn and destroy it. The extra 'land' in our case added 0 value to our property and in fact removed value, as houses around us were often selling for more due to the extra liability our extra land came with.
It introduces just as many problems as it those it claims to solve. It makes sense in some limited contexts, like say, urban land use across small and regular parcels, but not all land is urban land.
You forget that George was writing when society 70% agricultural and rural and working off a model of undeveloped land. in 2026 only 17% of the USA population lives outside of cities.
I used to work in fair tax policy. It exists.
Everyone hates it. That's all I ever learned from years of work on the issue. Even the people who would benefit from it, hate it.
People really really like unfair tax policies, because they imagine themselves on the unfair side of it benefiting from it. They love loopholes because it makes them feel 'smart', etc. Our politicians are aware of this. They know that fairer tax code reforms are unpopular. People very much adore the system we have of 'winners' and 'losers' and they generally want more of that because emotionally that is what they regard as 'fair'.
There is a major gap between what people say they want, and what they actually want. Everyone says they want 'fairness' but what they want... is a system they feel they can exploit to their own advantage. They want the appearance of fairness, but the don't want to pay taxes, especially taxes that come due as separate payments once a year.
I won't even go into the other problem that 'fair' taxation would be incredible intrusive.