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.

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?

 

Another sweet deal for farmland owners…

…and somehow the Tribune can’t see it. Today’s edition carries Jason George’s article Cashing in on the Hunt, noting that a lot of farmland is valuable for hunting. OK, it’s tough to make a living as a farmer, so farmers are getting from $25 to $50 per acre (in Pike County) for allowing hunters to use their land. So far, so good, this probably isn’t the best farmland anyhow. (George doesn’t clearly explain whether the same land can be farmed during the summer, then used for hunting in the late fall, but I believe that it can.)

A local farmer, who’s also a real estate agent, says that the revenue “really helps pay those real estate taxes.” It would make you think that real estate taxes are more than the hunting revenue. Not so. Correlating 2003 data from the Illinois Department of Revenue and the 2002 U S Census of Agriculture, Pike County farms pay less than $12/acre in real estate taxes, an effective rate of about 2/3 of 1% on value ($1840/acre). I bet Chicago-area homeowners, who pay two to three times this percentage of value (see this report), would love to have such a deal.

The Tribune, who in the past have done a good job of explaining how farmland owners profit from political favors, missed a chance to point it out.

Unfortunately, it is the custom of the Tribune to hide most of their articles behind a paid-subscriber screen after a week or so. I can’t find any other publications who carried this article, but it contains the phrase “whirring wings of pheasants” which might be useful in a future search.

Update on December 6: The Tribune link (above) still works!

What state spends the most public money on K-12 "education?"

According to the Census Bureau’s 2003-4 data, it’s Illinois. $2334 per capita, compared to a national average of $1623. Average salary of secondary school teachers, $61,800, is also the highest, but elementary school teachers struggle along on just $50,900. This is from table A-21 of the Bureau’s newly-released State and Metropolitan Area Data Book (very big pdf).

I’m expecting to spend way too much time browsing around this document, maybe I’ll have some other interesting things to post.