Category: Georgist/geoist

Georgist political cartoons?

I haven’t used political cartoons in any Henry George School publication or promotion, because I didn’t want to get involved in any licensing issues.  Certainly cartoonists are entitled to compensation for their products, but I figured what with all the production taxes and other overhead we wouldn’t be able to afford it.

But today I located PoliticalCartoons.com, where we apparently can license a cartoon for our web site or printed use at prices in the range of $10 to $20.  This is affordable even to us.  Now the only problem, and it turns out to be a challenge, is to find a Georgist cartoon.

Land in the virtual world

The Law of Rent predates Henry George, but it was George who first pointed out that with the growth of cities particular lands gain value just because of the surrounding community.

As it turns out, things work pretty much the same way in the “Second Life” virtual world as in the physical one:

Land owners often pay people to hang around their parcel. This increases traffic at their business and consequently increases their rank in Second Life’s search engine.

From Recursive Instruments.

Is this why gov't can't "solve" the "affordable housing shortage?"

All ecosystems, including financial ones, start out simple and become more complex. For governments working in affordable housing this is exasperating; no sooner is one initiative added to the repertoire than another market niche appears, another funding gap arises, another stakeholder group presses a valid claim. Government is constantly hoping or the universal programme that can simply be created and then funded increasingly hereafter, but this is impossible because ecosystemic complexity continuously increases.

So says David Smith, “founder of the American Affordable Housing Institute and a leading expert on international housing markets,” in a paper for the [apparently unrelated] Smith Institute.

The AAHI no longer exists (though there is a sort of successor here.)  So I’m not sure where to ask the question: Have you considered the elimination of taxes on housing, and all other useful products of labor, as a way to address the problem?  Why wouldn’t that provide a permanent solution?