Lobbyist vs. Lobbyist: How Chicago enterprise works.

Photo credit: Adam Greenfield via flickr (cc)

Earlier this week the Tribune carried a pretty good report on Chicago’s Uber vs. cab situation. Altho many of us transit-dependent mundanes may have missed the story, it seems that people who can afford cabs can also afford smartphones (or can text using dumb phones), and many of them prefer Uber as a way to get service without having to speak with a person. You can choose a taxi at regular taxi rates (but with a minimum 20% “gratuity” that the driver splits with Uber and the credit card processor), or a classier vehicle for considerably higher cost.  I am surprised that folks pay such high rates to avoid dealing with traditional taxi companies.  A few years ago I learned that, for those who pre-book and travel more than about ten miles, limousine service is likely to be much cheaper (even for a person traveling alone) than a conventional taxi; I suspect this is still the case.

Naturally, owners of medallions (and existing dispatch services) don’t particularly like this idea, so both sides are trying to improve their service to entice more customers have hired lobbyists to “persuade” the investment banker/politician who holds the Mayoralty to throw things their way.

I guess I’m surprised too that medallion prices are holding at high levels (most recent median price $345,000, up from $260,000 about a year before, based on data compiled by Chicago Dispatcher). Whether this is really an open market, or perhaps subject to manipulation by major owners, or another symptom of financial repression, I have no knowledge.

Of course Uber’s pickup zone doesn’t encompass the entire city of Chicago, missing much of the south side, but it does extend service beyond the City boundary into some relatively affluent suburbs.

 

 

Another report ignores the citizens dividend

marginal rate chart
From C. Eugene Steuerle’s June 27, 2012 statement at http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/901508-Marginal-Tax-Rates-Work-and-the-Nations-Real-Tax-System.pdf

I’ve written before about the wild effects of graduated taxes and means-tested benefits which can dump low-income workers into effective tax brackets in excess of 100%.  That is, once the effects on eligibility for earned income tax credit, child tax credit, medicaid, SNAP (food stamps), subsidized housing, and so forth are taken into account, an extra $1000 of income can easily cost more than that amount in increased taxes plus reduced benefits.  (Worse, most low-income people don’t have professional accountants who keep track of this, and so they don’t know in advance what the effects of getting a raise, or taking some overtime, might be.)

This is hardly original with me, and most recently the Congressional Budget Office has issued a report on the subject, summarized here by Evan Soltas of  Bloomberg. What can be done to fix this?  Not much, conclude most writers including Soltas.  We need tax revenue, we need to target aid to those with the greatest need, we can’t expect the rich to pay everything (since they have the lobbyists, lawyers and accountants to limit the taxes they pay.)

None of the writers who get attention seem to consider the citizens dividend. The basic idea is that government collects all the land rent — that is, the effective rental value of private control of natural resources — and share it with all citizens, everyone getting an equal share. It’s done on a small scale in several jurisdictions, including Alaska where each state resident gets a thousand dollars or so, each year, as a share of investments funded by mineral resources.  Of course, natural resources include not only oil, gas, and ore, but also the electromagnetic spectrum, agricultural land, forests, and much of the value of land sites (except of course those which have no market value.)  Suppose this rental value, or just a substantial part of it, were collected by the federal government and distributed, equally, to every U S citizen (maybe legal permanent residents should get a share also). How much would that be?  Would it be enough to pretty much replace most means-tested programs?  Wouldn’t that solve our problem?

Of course, arguments for collecting economic rent go far beyond fixing the screwed-up incentives of means-tested programs and graduated income taxes,  (visit a Henry George School or the Henry George Institute to learn more), but let’s not forget this benefit.

And by the way, it isn’t only the poor who can face these >100% marginal rates.  I wrote before about how certain Cook County homeowners with incomes in the $75,000 – $100,000 could face such rates; I don’t know whether these limits remain in effect. More broadly, it seems that affluent Americans subject to Medicare face a similar situation: As explained here, should your “modified adjusted gross income” amount to $107,001, then your Medicare cost will be $754.80 more than if your income had been only $107,000.  The effective tax rate on that particular dollar is 75,480%.  (Of course if you have a really alert accountant keeping track of all your financial affairs, she will alert you and find a way to avoid that extra dollar. And that accountant knows that the rates quoted above are for 2011 income, at least I think they are, and different limits will be in effect for the current year.)

 

Curious land tenure arrangement at Glencoe

photo detail of a former theater building on Belmont, by Terence Faircloth via flickr (cc)

As reported yesterday by Chris Jones of the Tribune, Writers’ Theater is planning a new $30 million home on the site of the Glencoe Women’s Library Club.  Being ignorant of things theatrical, I find the interesting part of Jones’ article to be

The building would rise on the Tudor Court site of the Glencoe Woman’s Library Club, which, unusually, would continue to own the land after its building was demolished. Writers’ Theatre would be granted a 99-year lease, with a rent of $1 a year.

Construction of buildings on leased land isn’t all that uncommon, and 99 years is a typical term. But at a rent of $1/year, this obviously isn’t an investment decision.  And as (presumably) a nonprofit association, neither the Club’s members nor their heirs can expect to benefit from an increase in the selling price of land by the year 2111.  The now-unborn who will be members of the club at that time might benefit, but it’s hard to imagine current members thinking that way.

So there must be something else involved.  Perhaps the Theater will be obligated to provide some space to the club, or perhaps the land title is encumbered so that it cannot be donated. Probably if we had all the information we’d find some implications for elaborate income tax trusts of some kind that were advantageous to someone in the past. Hopefully someone will come up with more information.

Jones also notes that the location is “not far from the Metra/Union Pacific train tracks,” which implies that theatergoers could ride Metra to and from performances.  Perhaps, if they’re lucky as to where they live and when the show ends, but the Metra service is sparse and nighttime connecting bus service essentially nil in the north suburbs. Patrons who dine in any restaurant or bar before or after the show will have the opportunity, however, to pay some of the costs of providing the uncoordinated, inconvenient service.

Are subsidies driving Chicago land prices back up?

Image linked from the Crain’s article

Of course they are, but it’s convenient to see it illustrated as Crains Chicago Real Estate Daily explains.

The proposal seems to be for Pam Gleichman and Karl Norberg to sell their 4.9 acre parcel (the Tribune story says 3.67 acres) near McCormick Place, in pieces, for a total of $195 million, which works out to something over $900/square foot, a level which I don’t recall seeing so distant from the loop.  We also learn from Crains that $90 million in TIF (real estate tax) money will be sought to help pay for these developments.  And of course the entire McCormick Place complex benefits from the 1% tax which all restaurant patrons in the central portion of Chicago (as far north as Diversey and as far west as Ashland) pay, not to mention the basic urban services, such as fire protection, transit, and streets, which are funded from other taxes.  We’re all paying so Gleichman and Norberg can get their $195 million. It’s only slightly comforting to realize that their venture is in bankruptcy, and the only reason we get to see these details is because they’re part of a court filing.  But it seems that, if everything works out as they claim, they’ll get to keep a large portion of this money.

Just for fun, we can consider what would have happened under a land value tax.  If the land was taxed at something approaching its full economic rent, it would likely already be developed pretty fully because nobody could profit by holding it underused.  There would likely be no bankruptcy because nobody would have loaned money on land with a modest selling price.

Transaction taxes

photo credit: AutisticPsycho2 via Wikimedia (cc)

Proposals for a small tax on investment transactions seem to make some sense.  Ordinary investors, small or large, are likely to buy or sell a small percentage of their holdings each month or year, while high-frequency traders could turn over theirs dozens of times per day.  A tax of, say, 0.1% would hardly be noticed by investors, but could make high-frequency trading (HFT) unworkable.  If HFT helps destabilize financial markets, then taxing trades this way would raise some revenue while improving economic stability.

Though I don’t see such a tax as consistent with geoist principles, it seems a lot less damaging than many of the taxes we already face.  The problem is that it cannot be enforced.  Trades can always be done in some way “off the books,” probably legally but otherwise if necessary.  Since those who benefit from HFT also have resources to control relevant regulatory decisions, any such tax will have loopholes or other means to prevent effective enforcement.

Sure enough,

most investment banks offer significant UK traders “contracts-for-difference” which are contracts that precisely simulate equity ownership while circumventing UK taxes on transactions (“Stamp Duty”).

— J Doyne Farmer and Spyros Skouras
“An ecological perspective on the future of computer trading” (pdf)

 So what to do about HFT? If we consider what HFT deals in, which is largely securities issued by corporations, it may be appropriate to modify the privileges that government grants to corporations, in ways that would make HFT less damaging.

Dangers of China’s cities– and ours

photo credit: Beth Burdick via Flickr (cc)

China Daily’s article “Hidden Danger Hazards of Big City Living” is really an infrastructure and construction story.  Sinkholes open up and swallow people, sections of glass-walled buildings drop down and kill people, big cities flood.  Of course, pretty much the same things happen in Chicago:  The loop floods (tho the streets are spared); neighborhoods flood regularly;  windows fall from buildings killing pedestrians; sinkholes swallow cars (tho not pedestrians, probably because we have so few pedestrians). Sure, it’s not an everyday occurrence, but China’s urban population is about 250 times Chicago’s, so it’s not surprising that more accidents happen.

The article quotes officials saying that coordination among infrastructure construction and maintenance actors is poor, as is the quality of construction and building inspection. Probably true, and surely in Chicago the inspectors are trustworthy and respected, and infrastructure work is usually well-coordinated.

What really does seem to be a difference is how long infrastructure is expected to last. The China Daily article says 1200 out of 5100 total km of Beijing sewers (possibly referring only to storm sewers) is “at least 30 years old, with some of it dating back six decades. This is typical for most cities, experts say.” One infers that Chinese sewers are expected to last only 30 years.  In Chicago by contrast, 1/4 of the water pipes is said to be over 100 years old,  apparently the age at which replacement is likely to be justified. Sewers are perhaps even older.  And I think this age profile is typical of mature American cities.

 

 

Value capture is different from collecting the land rent

Photo by Sean Munson via Flickr (cc)

Henry George phrased his main proposal in various ways, from “make land common property” to the more pragmatic “abolish all taxation save that upon land values.”  Certainly a land value tax is a practical way of capturing land rent, and to the extent land value figures in existing assessments and taxation we are already capturing some of it.

But it’s important to recognize that land value, or more properly the selling price of land,  is only a close relative, not an identical twin, to land rent. One difference is that selling price is affected by estimates of what the future rent will be.  And land selling price is much more directly affected by the cost and availability of credit than is land rent.  Use of credit, in turn means an opportunity for banksters to get involved, decreasing the likelihood of real public benefit from public investment.

Which brings us to the World Bank’s 2008 report on Unlocking land values to finance urban infrastructure.  This report really could be entitled “Worldwide Catalog of Methods More Complicated and Prone to Corruption than Collection of Land Rent, Which Could Be Used to Finance Some Infrastructure But More Importantly Involve Borrowing and Lending of Large Sums Which Is, After All, What The World Bank Does.” In addition to involving large loans, the outstanding feature of all of these methods is that none provide any resources for operation or maintenance, thus they can help bring about the need for new infrastructure in the not-too-distant future.

New ideas on taxation, and why most of us usually don’t know about them

Photo of Dilbert model by Jon Stefansson via Flickr (cc)

Six weeks without a post, OMG! Not because I had nothing to say, but perhaps too much to organize into something readable. Or maybe I’ve just found it too difficult to locate suitable images to go with the posts.  Well, forget that, it’s time to get back to blogging.

And it was nearly six weeks ago that Miles Kimball blogged about some great ideas expressed by Dilbert creator Scott Adams for improving taxation of the “rich.” Adams’ piece was published in WSJ, I can’t figure out which date, I don’t know how long the public link will last and I can’t actually figure out the title of the article.  Adams’ point, if I understand it correctly, is those who pay the greatest amount of taxes would more willing to do so, if given suitable nonmonetary incentives.  He suggests maybe the top 100 taxpayers should be invited to a celebratory dinner at the White House, where they’ll be praised for their contributions to America.  (I wonder whether richest-men Warren Buffett and Bill Gates would qualify for this event.  More likely a bunch of wealthy heirs and heiresses who got poor tax advice).  Another idea is that top taxpayers should get certificates allowing them to violate certain regulations, such as parking in handicapped spaces or using carpool lanes alone. (Of course, the very wealthy wouldn’t worry much about the fines such actions would impose if unauthorized). Or, suggests Adams, maybe the top taxpayers should each get two votes (which would make no difference in election results compared to the influence the wealthy can already buy).

More important, I think, is Adams’ point that, if you can’t think of a good idea, it’s best to think of some bad ideas and offer them for criticism. It’s a technique I have used with fair success (my role being to offer the bad idea).

But the main lesson we can draw from Adams essay is that,if your idea regards public policy, then no matter how good (or bad but creative) it is, nobody powerful will pay attention to it until it’s expressed by somebody who is already influential. Thank you, Scott Adams.

 

Tracking the payrollers*

While assisting the Public Revenue Education Council at the National Council of State Legislators convention, I couldn’t help photographing some of the federal employees in “action.” Census was there, BEA was there, but I wouldn’t want to embarrass those guys because they sometimes do some useful things.  We also had

Licensed Professional and Drug Patentholder Protection Administration
Office of Travel Prevention
Department of Making Jobs and Workers Difficult to Find

Forgetting for a moment the impediment to commerce and free association, how much money are we spending on these guys?  Thanks to Gannett’s  Asbury Park Press (h/t Bob Matter), taxpayers can access a database of reasonably current salary information for most Federal employees.   For state and local employees in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Missouri, the Better Government Association has made similar information accessible.

Government employee pensions are also an issue, and Taxpayers United of America is building a database of this information.

Now, I’m not opposed to high salaries and liberal pensions. In fact, I think everyone should get them.  The problem is not that government compensation is too high, but that private compensation is too low. Some clear graphs here (based on data collected by government employees) illustrate the problem. Nongovernmental American workers’ productivity continues to increase, but for forty years little or none of this has been reflected in wages.  The best remedy involves displacing the rentiers.

*Payroller is a Chicago term for folks whose main function is to collect a government paycheck.  It appears that in some places, the word has a different meaning.

Just because they ask, doesn’t mean we have to give it to them

Governments here in Illinois (and probably everywhere else) like to “request” things, but that doesn’t mean we mundanes always need to grant these requests.  Two examples from recent experience:

detail from work of Chris Karr via flickr (cc)
detail from a photo by Chris Karr via flickr (cc)

Saving money: Illinois Secretary of State Certificate of Good Standing.  Our high-tech sophisticated Secretary of State makes it easy, relatively, to get the “certificate of good standing” that organizations may require, for example, to set up some kinds of financial accounts.  No problem, just go to Jesse White’s web site, do a search (which really works, in my experience), fill out the simple form and authorize a credit card charge of $16 ($5 transaction fee, $1 payment processor fee, and $10 expedited fee).  But suppose you aren’t in a great hurry and don’t need (or want to pay for) expediting.  Or suppose you lack a credit card but have a checking account (or can buy a money order). What to do?

Nowhere could I find the answer on Jesse’s web site.  Fortunately, cheapness wonk Adam Kerman of the Transit Riders’ Authority knew what to do:

Write a letter to request the Certificate of Good Standing. Make sure to include the corporate file number and your contact phone number. $5 fee Secretary of State Business Services 501 S. Second St., Rm. 330 Springfield, IL 62756

And that’s just what I did.  A week or so later, the certificate arrived.

Current RTA Executive Director

Saving Dignity: Regional Transportation Authority old person discount fare card. A good and privacy-minded friend of mine, having recently attained the age of 65, wanted to take advantage of the “reduced fares” available to old people (among others) on RTA-funded transit systems. First thing she found out was that it takes 3-4 weeks to get the required farecard, so she should have applied 21 days prior to her birthday.  Too late for that, but she readily found the necessary form, which turns out to serve two functions: (a) apply for reduced fares based on age or other criteria; (b) apply for free fares based on likelihood of voting Democratic documented low income.  Being successful enough not to qualify for (b), she still had to complete a form with a blank for “Social Security Number.”  What do to?

She wrote “NOT REQUIRED” in the SSN blank, and 23 days later received a reduced fare card in the mail.  Moral of this story: You can surrender somewhat less privacy than the authorities ask for, without giving up rights or privileges, at least in this case.