Category: Georgist/geoist

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

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.

How transit can fund itself

It’s simply a matter of retrieving some of the benefits that transit creates.  I have (finally!) put together estimates of land value and transit funding desires, to show how a land value tax for transit might work.   It looks as if a typical homeowner, for $290/year, could get all her transit paid for– not just the subsidy, but the fares, too.  Other options are cheaper.  Details here.

Chicago area land value exceeds $1 trillion

Finally received Lincoln Institute’s new book Land Policies and Their Outcomes. David Barker (apparently of the University of Chicago) estimated land values for four metro areas by looking at vacant land sales. Assuming that each such sale represents the per-acre value of land in its immediate area, he finds that for the Chicago 8-county MSA total land value is $2.188 trillion. From this he deducts streets and concludes that the rest of the land is worth $1.872 trillion. Of course, not all of this could be subject to a land value tax, for instance public facilities and favored nonprofits are exempt. Still, it seems that the taxable value would exceed $1 trillion. And this doesn’t count all the other privileges which could be taxed without reducing productivity.

The paper does include a much lower estimate reached by an alternative method, but that method assumes land to be worth only the difference between the parcel price and the depreciated cost of building whatever is on it. And excludes vacant land. And has some other limitations.

How the sinking rich brought prosperity

According to economic historian Gregory Clark, the industrial revolution occurred because people developed “the middle-class values of nonviolence, literacy, long working hours and a willingness to save…” And this happened because the poor lived in such wretched conditions that the rich out-reproduced them.  Not enough of the working class children survived to do the work, so  many children of the rich, carrying these “middle-class” values, ended up in the working class.  They carried the values with them: “Thrift, prudence, negotiation and hard work were becoming values for communities that previously had been spendthrift, impulsive, violent and leisure loving.” This made the industrial revolution possible.

That’s my summary of Nicholas Wade’s review in yesterday’s New York Times of Clark’s forthcoming “A Farewell to Alms” (to be published by Princeton University Press).  Apparently it’s based on a huge amount of detailed research.

It seems to contradict Georgist theory in a couple of ways.  First, Clark assumes that to some extent values are genetic, whereas George emphasized that people are pretty much identical everywhere, with social institutions explaining the main differences.  Second, it implies that the formula for prosperity is to let the children of the poor die, and make the rich kids work.  Well, maybe making the rich kids work wouldn’t be so bad.

Thanks to NewsTrust for bringing this to my attention.

Monetary seminar Sept 26 in Chicago

American Monetary Institute’s Steve Zarlenga offers a seminar (free!) immediately prior to their annual conference.    I think Zarlenga’s fundamental ideas are sound and this should be a good way to understand key monetary issues in three hours.   More detail about the conference (not free) is here. More about monetary history and principles in his book. 

Off at the Georgist Conference

No blogging to speak of this week; I’m attending the annual conference of the Council of Georgist Organizations at Scranton.  

I’m not going to try blogging the conference, titled “Two Views of Social Justice: A Catholic/Georgist Dialogue.”   Probably the most striking thing I’ve learned today: Theologian Brian Benestad said that Catholic doctrine neither requires nor prohibits the single tax.  If the laity thinks the single tax is a good thing, let them put it into effect.  However, he said the single tax cannot solve all the problems of poverty and human misery, because those are caused by Original Sin, and the single tax cannot overcome Original Sin.

Can’t reply to that one.

Nic Rosen is doing some updates.