When I studied real estate appraisal at UC Berkeley many years ago, we   
learned that an appraiser should first value the location. How? By taking   
sales of nearby vacant or run-down properties and extrapolating. It's   
rather like making a contour map of terrain using selected readings on   
altitude. Then the appraiser values the whole property from comparables,   
assigning the residual value after the land to the structures. I went out   
and made a land value map of downtown San Francisco. It wasn't difficult.  
  
Land values are just the capitalized present values of expected rents.  
  
Many cities in Pennsylvania, such as Harrisburg, tax land at higher rates   
than buildings. Large areas of Australia and New Zealand rely on pure land   
taxes.  
  
George got a lot of things wrong--capital theory especially--but not the   
argument for taxes on the value of land. And not just land, but other   
rent-generating titles, such as spectrum, taxi medallions, drilling rights,   
pollution rights, fishing rights and many more. All these titles have   
markets independent of necessary equipment.  
  
Mark Blaug, who originally joined Robert Heilbroner in disparaging George,   
more recently changed his mind. (See my article, "Mark Blaug: Edging Toward   
Full Appreciation" in Critics of Henry George, Robert Andelson ed,   
Blackwell, on my website at   
http://www.mcleveland.org/publications/Mark_Blaug.CV.pdf.)  
  
The Austrians and the Georgists should be friends. At Grinnell, Mason   
Gaffney will give a paper on "Keeping Land in Capital Theory: Faustmann,   
Wicksell and George." Meanwhile, see the paper on his website on "An   
Austro-Georgist Synthesis"   
http://www.masongaffney.org/workpapers/Causes_of_downturn--Austro-
Georgist_synthesis_1982.pdf
  
Polly Cleveland