Killer arguments against LVT, not (57)

Sobers, responding to an earlier post:

... if [Land Value Tax] were implemented it would still be mainfestly unfair to swap the entire basis of taxation for income to capital (as most peoples main capital asset is their house) (1), when anyone over the age of 50 will have spent 25+ years paying income tax (2), and just at the point they have paid off their mortgages, the LVT crowd come along and say 'Sorry, we're taxing land values now, so you're going to have to pay LVT for the rest of your life on your house...(3)

1) It is incorrect to conflate the selling prices of land, 99% of which is [the location value x planning permission] with capital assets generally.

Proper capital assets - like the value of your skills and effort; your qualifications and experience; the goodwill that a business builds up; physical assets such as buildings, machines, cars, white goods etc - are created by identifiable individuals or groups of individuals, and they exist because of the free exchange of goods and services. Taxes on output and incomes reduce the incentives to creating or exploiting such assets, deprive people of their just rewards, increase the cost to the parties taking part in these exchanges etc.

Location values are there because they are there. The selling price of any plot of land (as opposed to the buildings on it) has to do with the collective efforts of society as a whole; whether that's the handy corner shop; the friendly neighbourhood; the fact that we didn't lose World War II; or any one of a zillion other things.

2) OK. Let's take somebody who is now 50 and has just paid off the mortgage. Over the last 25 years they will have paid income tax and mortgage repayments. That's all in the past, what is done is done.

But let's imagine that that over the last 25 years they had been paying Land Value Tax instead of income tax, National Insurance and VAT etc; and mortgage repayments on the bricks and mortar value alone, would they be much better or worse off? I submit that most would now be better off in net cash terms. And indeed others have had an easy ride under income tax and would now be worse off (assuming no dynamic changes). But again, what is done is done. That is all in the past.

So the question is: do today's 50 year olds want today's 25 year olds (who are struggling to 'get on the property ladder', start a family etc) to be better off or worse off in 25 years' time? Don't most 50 year olds have 25 year old children? Don't they want to have grandchildren while they're still young enough to enjoy them?

3) As to this 'the rest of your life' stuff, a 50 year old will probably be working for another ten or twenty years, so for the next ten or twenty years, the vast majority of 50 years olds would - under Land Value Tax - be better off in cash terms for the next ten or twenty years.

For retired people, including hopefully one day me and Her Indoors, we can invent all manner of exemptions, transitional provisions or relieving provisions, like simply doubling or trebling the basic state pension. I fail to see any overriding argument why old age pensions should be solely funded by taxes on the incomes of working age people (remembering that these are partly borne by pensioners in the prices they have to pay) rather than out of Land Value Tax.

Finally, Land Value Tax is not a tax on 'the house' or even 'your garden', it is a payment for 'the benefit you get from the state protecting your right to exclusive possession to a certain bit of land'.

Let's be honest about this, as awful as successive governments in the UK or any other country might have been, the existence of 'the state' is of enormous overall benefit precisely because it protects exclusive possession of land, without pretty much nothing would function. So why don't we pay the state its dues (how the state ought to spend that money is another debate) and get rid of taxes on the private and free exchange of goods and services and the income derived from the capital assets thus created?