1. We should tax things that we want less of.
2. Therefore, we need to tax land values and pollution.

(a) We fail to do this. We tax work and purchases, so we have less work, i.e. unemployment, and fewer sales/exchanges than we might have.

(b) As a result of under-taxing land values, we have high land prices, big mortgages and high levels of private debt.

(c) We also wonder why we can’t get on top of carbon pollution to manage climate change.

Therefore, we might ask ourselves who benefits from our misbegotten tax regimes.

These people, among a multitude of others, would agree.