Assets we didn't realize we have

So Mayor Daley and the Olympic advocates needed to find some public money to back the Olympic bid, but didn’t want to use “tax money” since a lot of taxpaying folks would get upset.  So they discovered air rights.  They say that air rights over the truck staging area south of McCormick Place can be sold for $100 million.  Presto! Found money for the Olympics.  And, by the way, if Chicago doesn’t get the Olympics, they’ll sell the rights anyway. (Tribune Sun-Times  )  The site belongs to McPier, not the City, but that can be remedied.

This may be “found money,” but I think the issue is “why was it lost?”  What other land is McPier sitting on, not using fully, while taking money from every restaurant meal in the central part of Chicago?  With RTA and the State crying for funds, can’t we put some of this into use now?

Georgist tax– another Cook casualty

 What could be more Georgist than a tax on sulfur dioxide emissions?  Well, maybe something else, but at least it would be a move in a Georgist direction.

Such a tax was introduced at the Cook County Board, to raise a little badly-needed revenue while providing incentives to reduce emissions.  It actually passed, with votes from the machine commissioners (Butler, Daley, etc.), as well as Mike Quigley, but opposed by “reformers”  Claypool and Peraica.  It passed, 10-6 but was vetoed Monday by Pres. Stroger.

Mixing poor syntax with bad economics, Stroger wrote:

“I oppose this Ordinance on the grounds that said emissions should not attempt to be controlled through a Cook County tax but rather, said emissions should be regulated by the County, State, and Federal Government in order to fully protect our environment and the health of our citizens. “

Probably there’s more politics here than meets my naive eye.

Thanks to Bill Wendt for the report, DJWInfo for the vote tally, and Mike Pitula of LVEJO for pushing (whether he knows it or not) a good Georgist reform.

Increasing value of taxi medallions

Today’s Tribune asserts that Chicago taxi medallions — a requirement if you want to operate a taxicab in the City– now cost $77,000 each (“Chicago hails two driven cabbies” Tribune, 2/8/07) . That’s up from “over $40,000” in 2004 (“City says cab agent misused $100,000, Tribune, 4/25/04) and $28,000 in 1991 (“Metro Briefings”, Sun-Times, 7/17/91),

Of course, fares were raised 11.7% in 2005 (“Cab riders turned off by rooftop ‘not for hire’ light: Survey finds most favor old off-on signal”, Sun-Times, 12/9/05; “Increased taxi fares quietly take effect,” Tribune, 5/12/05), 16% in 2000 (“FOR TAXI DRIVERS, FARE HIKE IS NOT WITHOUT A PRICE,”Tribune 12/1/00), about 15% in 1997 (“Taxi fares get a boost”, Sun-Times, 1/14/97), and about 9% in 1994 (“City Cab Fares Go Up Today, Sun-Times, 1/18/94).

Let’s do a little math here. Looks like since 1991, fares are up 48%, and the price of a medallion is up 175%. So medallion owners seem to be taking an increased share of revenue produced by the cabbies. For reference, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says consumer prices rose 48% between 1991 and 2006.

Meanwhile, in New York, medallions are going for over half a million dollars and there has been an effort to set up a working medallion exchange, where medallions can be traded on margin.

More proof of the benefits of taxing land

Why do Danes report “unrivalled satisfaction with life?”  Well, of course there was a research project to find out.  But it seems the scientists didn’t examine the tax system, so of course they didn’t realize that Denmark has something of a land tax (though not nearly so much as formerly), which most other countries lack.  Too bad, since it is so obvious. (Thanks to boingboing, who got it from the NY Times.)

Librarian help needed

So here at the Henry George School, we have piles of books in no particular order. Let’s record them in a spreadsheet, attach call numbers from the Library of Congress, and shelve them in sequence. They’ll be arranged more or less by subject, we’ll know what we have and where it is.

Ah, that assumes that every book is in the Library of Congress or, at least, has a unique Library of Congress call number. Not so! For instance,

Harry Gunnison Brown’s Fiscal Policy, Taxation, and Free Enterprise. We have the [undated] Robert Schalkenbach Foundation edition. The Library of Congress has no book by this title. But there are copies of the 1946 Lucas Brothers edition at five libraries:

Iowa State University uses the call number HJ2305 B813f

University of Kansas uses HC106 .B76, as does Northern Michigan University

At U of Missouri Columbia it’s HJ257.2 .B7 1946

and Reed College say’s it’s HB236.U5 .B8

OK, so maybe Library Science is no more of a science than, say, Economics, but can’t you guys agree on a call number for a published book. What should us amateurs do? Do we have to look at every Worldcat library and count the votes? What if it’s a tie?

   

America's top mayor uses the land tax

Harrisburg (PA) Mayor Steve Reed came in third in the world-wide “Outstanding Mayor” poll, but was the highest-scoring American.  Under Reed, Harrisburg adopted an increased land tax (the term in Pennsylvania is “split-rate tax”) which he credits as important in the revitalization of the City.

He enthusiastically took the opportunity of Pennsylvania local property tax reforms to apply a split rate valuation.This has been attacked by extreme conservatives and Reed has been high profile in answering them. He says “ in our central business district, for example, our two-tiered tax rate policy has specifically encouraged vertical development as opposed to low rise or horizontal development that seems to permeate suburban communities and which utilizes much more land than is necessary.” He says “ nine out of ten property owners gain from the system if compared directly with the single rate system in use in most municipalities in the state.”

Worldwide winner John So of Melbourne, Australia, also benefited from the land tax.

Chicago Mayor Richard M Daley was not one of the fifty finalists in the contest.

Enron as a musical comedy

A musical comedy based on the Enron collapse apparently is rather successful in Houston.  The author says he sought historical accuracy, spending as much as 100 hours on one song. (The music apparently isn’t original, but the words are).   “between the singing and dancing, characters often explain how arcane off-book partnerships, deregulation and energy trading came into play at Enron.” One could probably use a similar approach to provide a Georgist perspective on economic issues, but one would need to be a talented writer able to get some press coverage.

Thanks to Chicago Tribune, who doubtless will hide the story after several days so here are some other links.