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How Georgists Valued land in the 1900's


The lost art of the "Somers System" of land valuation

With the trail running cold, I phoned up my old mentor, Ted Gwartney, MAI, a renowned assessor and Georgist who played a key role in pushing for modern computer-based appraisal over the past half century. In the few places in the United States that variants of Land Value Tax overcame political barriers to see the light of day, such as J. J. Pastoriza’s short-lived experiment in Houston, some version of the the Somers system was used to drive the valuations. There are a few modern conveniences we could use—you could replace the “big map on the wall” with a laptop, projector, and Felt.com, or as I like to call it “Google docs for maps.” I’ve practiced using these tools myself with a tiny fake audience and it seems to work fine.

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