You reference “an exhaustive study published last year by Susan Pace Hamill of the University of Alabama Law School” and go on to say, although the analysis may be open to question, her facts are solid. What I find interesting is that you didn’t reference the title – “The Vast Injustice Perpetuated by State and Local Tax Policy” http://www.law.ua.edu/susanhamill/Vast_Injustice.pdf

Although it would weaken your critique, inclusion of the title would provide your readers a more nuanced understanding of Hamill’s position and her potential bias. As with any analysis, the information excluded is often as telling as the information included.

Thanks – -

PJ

When we tax incomes, we drive people away.

When we tax sales, we discourage purchases.

When we tax buildings and other improvements to land, we get fewer buildings, older buildings, poor maintenance, an avoidance of new technologies.

But when we tax land value, we see:
1. High value land gets put to its highest and best use.
2. Fringe land gets to continue as farmland or wild land for longer, rather than undergoing premature development.
3. More buildings downtown, serving more needs, creating venues for entrepreneurs, who create jobs, and compete for our patronage as customers and services as workers, driving prices down and wages up.

None of these things seems undesirable to me.

“Never tax anything
That would be of value to your State,
That could and would run away, or
That could and would come to you.”

Seems to me that taxing land value and natural resources is the smart way to fund our common spending, and that it is just to tax all that value equally. That is, share the cost of providing services in proportion to the value of the land each of us calls our own. A tiny lot downtown might be worth a lot more than many acres of farmland, because of taxpayer-provided infrastructure and services which reach one and don’t have much effect on the other.

You said “in all those above-named states except Florida, a typical person is likely to earn less than in Vermont. In all the others, the per-capita income is lower.”

per capita income does not describe a “typical person”
it is simply total income divided by total population; therefore, it ignores the distribution and cannot tell us anything about a “typical person”

here are a few measures that would better illustrate the point
VT’s median household income is higher than all the states you cited
VT’s median family income is higher than all the states you cited
VT’s median hourly wage is higher than all the states you cited

BTW – You said, “A case can be made, both economically and morally, for greater inequality.”
I can’t imagine how.