[antimagic]

Rental demand is fairly inelastic though - everyone needs a roof over their head. The main force keeping prices down is competition, not the fact that landlords are being kind. If land taxes are increased, then all landlords will raise their prices, and the market will bear it - the other choice is to end up living in the street.

The advantage of the LVT is that in theory the market could bear the price increase because there will be a corresponding drop in the salary tax that most renters are paying. The idea is that the government effectively takes a large slice of the profit from rent, instead of it all going to landlords. The problem of course is that this creates a disincentive for landlords to invest in property, reducing supply, and now we go back to high prices because of market forces.

There is no simple solution to the high price of land, except by increasing supply or reducing demand. In other words, building more housing (which requires us to encourage landlords, not discourage them), or reduce the population. Just think, in a world with half the population of today, we would drastically reduce the percentage of salary devoted to housing. Not bad really.

[branchless]

This all agrees with what I said. You are preaching to the converted :-)