To make America more egalitarian, tax the value of land - FT.com.

Sir, Joseph Stiglitz is concerned that America has become less egalitarian, and no longer the land of opportunity (June 26). He mentions reducing rent-seeking as a solution, but he does not mention the paradigmatic form of rent-seeking: collecting the ground rents of land. If an increasing share of gross national product is going to the top 1 per cent, it is at least in part because they are the people who own most of the valuable land, and the rents of land are absorbing a larger share of production. No one is making more land to keep the price down by competition.

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