Author: taxpayer

Underground Woman: My Four Years as a New York City Subway Conductor

Why does the Chicago Public Library have five copies of H Roger Grant’s history of the demise of the Erie Lackawanna? And why are all five copies in the HWLC (main library)? I have no idea, but they really were all on the shelf when I looked. I borrowed only one, browsed around a bit, and found Marian Swerdlow’s book referenced above (1998, Temple University Press). Swerdlow was (and apparently remains) a labor activist, and was among the first women to work operating jobs for the NYCTA. Not an elegant or well-edited book, but very absorbing for anyone interested in the subject. Because Swerdlow’s transit career ended more than 20 years ago, some of the information– but probably not much– is doubtless out of date. Continue reading Underground Woman: My Four Years as a New York City Subway Conductor

Freyfogle on land rights

About a year ago U of I law prof Eric Freyfogle spoke on “two visions of private land” at APA. The session was recorded and the podcast is finally available (it may have been available for some while, but I just tonight found it.) It’s 97mb (Freyfogle doesn’t begin until about eight minutes in) and is here. (this link goes directly to the download. ) Some other APA podcasts are listed here and can be downloaded, with a bit of cut & paste, from here. (It is also possible to subscribe to these things but apparently that requires downloading the whole series, which is just slow)

update December 12: The link to Freyfogle’s talk should be correct now.  Thanks Bill Batt for the alert.

Ending "a sea of indebtedness"

Thanks again to Dan Sullivan of Saving Communities for locating Henry George’s advice on preventing excessive debt (government, corporate, individual) without constraining economic growth. George’s straightforward solution: take government out of the business of collecting debts. People could still lend and borrow money, but you can be sure lenders would be careful, relying heavily on the reliability of the borrower. As for public debts, if the government needs money for a defensive war or public improvements, let it levy taxes to collect what’s needed. The logic of this becomes clear when one reflects that in wartime everyone should sacrifice, the rich no less in proportion to their assets than the rest, and that public improvements have the effect of increasing land values and therefore generate their own financing.

The article Sullivan quotes is from The Standard, Feb 11, 1888, and apparently isn’t posted in its entirety anywhere, so I reproduce Sullivan’s extensive extract below. Continue reading Ending "a sea of indebtedness"

It might not pay to save

That’s the conclusion of a new study by by Laurence J. Kotlikoff and David S. Rapson. Problem is that as you gain more savings you become ineligible for more means-tested assistance programs. Acknowledging that the complexities of the tax code and the programs makes it impossible to perform a complete analysis, they estimate that “A 30-year-old single parent earning $15,000 a year faces an effective marginal tax on saving of 260 percent; for each additional dollar saved, the parent loses $2.60 in additional taxes and foregone government benefits.”

Although the study does not go further than to describe the problem, the next question is what to do. Although one may fiddle with the details, this problem can’t be solved as long as means-tested taxes or subsidies are an important factor in the economy affecting the poor.  But clearly a Georgist reform could alleviate it by increasing wages in general, and perhaps solve it completely if resource rents were distributed equally to everyone thru a citizen’s dividend.

The Art of Spectrum Lobbying

Subtitled ” America’s $480 Billion Spectrum Giveaway, How it Happened, and How to Prevent it from Recurring,” this recent report is from the New America Foundation, by J. H. Snider. The actual amount of the giveaway can be subject to some dispute, but it’s clearly a lot of value.

After describing the method and the limitations of the value estimates, the report outlines some specific strategies used by those who hold, or wish to obtain, licenses for use of some portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, at minimal or no cost. Continue reading The Art of Spectrum Lobbying

More on transit delays and funding

The good news is that, since October 4, not a single CTA bus has broken down while I was aboard (and yes, I have been riding buses, not every day but often).

The less good news is that this morning a minor fire (or at least smoke) aboard Purple Line Run 503 delayed inbound service 20 minutes during the AM peak.  The problem was aboard a 3200-series car, CTA’s newest.  I don’t know the specific details of the fire, perhaps it was unavoidable, but it doesn’t seem to be due to the age of the equipment.

What's wrong with "hard money"

It’s a bad idea to use gold (or gold-backed certificates) as money.  Dan Sullivan’s recent LandCafe  post cogently explains why:

Money is a place holder for wealth, not for labor. You get the fruits of someone’s labor for money, not the labor itself. If the productivity of labor goes up, the value of monetary debts should not go up with it. Rather, labor should be able to pay the debts more easily.

Legitimate wealth degrades in value, or has to yield value to those who maintain and protect that wealth. If money is to be a place holder for wealth, the money should degrade just as wealth degrades. People do not hoard actual labor-produced wealth for just this reason, but they do hoard money that increases in value in relation to wealth, and they particularly hoard gold.

I am not at all convinced that a steady, mild inflation is a bad thing. Certainly it is better than deflation, which causes great economic distress.

The only part I may not be persuaded of concerns deflation. It’s said to be bad, and I can understand intellectually why it would damage an economy if money is a more lucrative investment than wealth.  But never having seen deflation up close, perhaps I don’t fully understand it.

Vacant Land is still undertaxed

Many years ago, I wrote a memo called “Vacant Land is Undertaxed.” The title says it all, but it’s still true today.

A new Civic Federation report shows vacant land in Chicago assessed at just 4.81% of market value– it’s supposed to be assessed at 22%. On this basis, vacant land in Chicago is worth $5.3 billion, and to assess (and tax) it properly would bring in over $50 million/year. If the County Board were to revise its classification ordinance to assess vacant land at 40% of value (to go any higher would have other repercussions), another $40 million or more would be recovered.

In the suburbs, the underassessment is less severe, but vacant land there is estimated to be worth over $4.6 billion, so some additional revenue could be realized.

And or course, no matter how high the taxes on vacant land are raised, nobody’s going to move it away or decide not to use it because of the tax on it.

A letter to this effect was sent to the Tribune this afternoon. I am sure they will instantly recognize it as a perceptive and cogent statement, and will publish it under a prominent headline. Uh, right?

UPDATE Nov 6: The Tribune did publish the letter,  though not formatted quite as I wished.  Two days later they also included on their web page (but not in print) my suggestion (about halfway down here)  for transit funding from land value.

Compilation of Consumer Taxes

Our friends at the Civic Federation have published a memo on Selected Consumer Taxes in the City of Chicago. Showing a total of 29 different taxes, it shows that the sales tax on general merchandise purchases in Chicago is now 9%:

  • 5% State (of which 0.25% is passed on to RTA)
  • 0.75% RTA
  • 1.00% Cook County
  • 2.25% Chicago

In restaurants we pay an additional 1.25%, of which 1% goes to McCormick Place and the remainder to the City.

Something I didn’t know about is that taxi medallions are reportedly taxed $78/month by the City.   Anyone know when this started?  If raised to  something like $350 or $400/month, it wouldn’t affect the earnings of cabbies, except those who own medallions, and might bring in $25 million for the City.