Geo-economics

Land rent is an implicit surplus independent of explicit payments or titles.

It is an opportunity cost of land occupancy by others, the social cost of exclusion.

But land itself has no opportunity cost of provision.

It is based on what the highest bidders would pay for the best use of the site.

It is generated by the difference in productivity of various sites.

Most of the producer surplus is rent.

Unless he has a great amount of land, a landowner does not affect the site rent by any improvements.

A shift to site-value taxation is the ultimate supply-side policy, reducing marginal tax rates to zero and eliminating the excess burden.

Civic goods become capitalized into higher rent and land value.