|
By Mason Gaffney, on February 19th, 2010
On Jan 21 2010 our High Court shocked Americans by ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission that a corporation may contribute unlimited funds advertising its views for and against political candidates of its choice – in practice, the choice of its CEO or Directors. . . . → Read More: Corporations, Democracy, and the US Supreme Court
By Mason Gaffney, on December 1st, 2009
At a time when most everyone has an opinion about the state of the U.S. economy and the quality of decision-making in Washington, D.C., the voice of esteemed economics professor and former TIME magazine journalist Mason Gaffney is an important one. Currently teaching at the University of California, Gaffney has been publishing vital
contributions to economics since his PhD dissertation in 1956. . . . → Read More: Interview on After the Crash, 2009
By Mason Gaffney, on June 1st, 2009
Vampire #1 is public debt.
Vampire #2 is land value.
Vampire #3 is housing and land values conjoined.
Vampire #4 is the corporation.
Land and Liberty, Summer 2009
. . . → Read More: The Four Vampires of Capital
By Mason Gaffney, on March 7th, 2009
A tax based on land value is in many ways ideal, but many economists dismiss it by assuming it could not raise enough revenue. Standard sources of data omit much of the potential tax base, and undervalue what they do measure. The purpose of this paper is to present more comprehensive and accurate measures of land . . . → Read More: The Hidden Taxable Capacity of Land: Enough and to Spare
By Mason Gaffney, on February 1st, 2009
Why we have more buildings than we use.
Many stores have closed in the last year; they stand empty behind signs reading “Available”, “For lease”, or “First month free”. So have many industries, their gates padlocked, their girders rusting. The capital in them is wasted, poured down a rat-hole. Multi-million dollar freighters are mothballed at Subic Bay, with no cargos . . . → Read More: Empty Spaces: How Our Tax Policies Caused the Present Seizure by Unbalancing Hard and Soft Capital
By Mason Gaffney, on December 1st, 2008
Working capital is the bloodstream of economic life. It is physical capital, the fast turning inventories of goods in process and finished goods that supply materials to the worker, and feed and clothe her family. Short term commercial loans and trade credit buy it, but the capital is “real”—a fact often forgotten in the paper and virtual worlds of . . . → Read More: How to Thaw Credit, Now and Forever
By Mason Gaffney, on September 22nd, 2008
QUESTION: We hear that the feds HAD to bail out Fannie and Freddie because of the terrible consequences of letting them fail. How much of that is real and how much is bunk? I’d have thought that if the companies go bankrupt, their stock sells for pennies on the dollar and the . . . → Read More: Is the Bailout Justified?
By Mason Gaffney, on August 17th, 2008
This crash is The Big One; it has signs of becoming a Category 5. How do we know? We’ve “been there and done that” so many times before, roughly every 18 years over the last 800 or more. Major wars and, rarely, plagues have broken the rhythm, along with the little ice age, reformation and counter-reformation, political revolutions and . . . → Read More: THE GREAT CRASH OF 2008
By Mason Gaffney, on February 1st, 2008
“Stimulus” is the buzzword du jour of domestic policy, but its old metaphors ring with sad satiety: kick-start the motor, jump the battery, prime the pump, shot-in-the-arm, wake-up call, jolt, multiplier, ripple effect, … . Fact is, “we’ve been there and done that” several times for generations back. We have been doing it again for seven years now – that . . . → Read More: Stimulus: the False and the True
By Mason Gaffney, on January 31st, 2008
Most economists today live in a two-factor world: There is just labor and capital. Land, so central to classical political economy, has been swallowed into capital and “disappeared.” This paper surveys some of the better historical treatments of land and capital, their interrelations, and how they support modern Georgists and Greens who want land to reappear. . . . → Read More: Keeping Land in Capital Theory: Ricardo, Faustmann, Wicksell, and George
|
Recent Posts
-
A Real-Assets Model of Economic Crises: Will China Crash in 2015
-
Whose Water? Ours! How to End California’s Water Crisis
-
The Hidden Taxable Capacity of Land: Enough and to Spare
-
Going My Way?
-
Travelogue, St. Catharines to Albany, June 2012
-
Reverberations between Immoderate Land-Price Cycles and Banking Cycles
-
Sleeping with the Enemy: Economists who Side with Polluters
-
How Religious Awakenings Presage Radical Reforms
-
Al Rodda, RIP
-
Review of Donald Stabile, The Living Wage
-
Corporations, Democracy, and the US Supreme Court
-
Interview on After the Crash, 2009
-
The Four Vampires of Capital
-
The Hidden Taxable Capacity of Land: Enough and to Spare
-
Empty Spaces: How Our Tax Policies Caused the Present Seizure by Unbalancing Hard and Soft Capital
-
How to Thaw Credit, Now and Forever
-
Is the Bailout Justified?
-
THE GREAT CRASH OF 2008
-
Stimulus: the False and the True
-
Keeping Land in Capital Theory: Ricardo, Faustmann, Wicksell, and George
-
The Shrinking Dollar
-
Neo-classical Economics as a Stratagem Against Henry George
-
A Severance Tax on California Oil?
-
Repopulating New Orleans
-
New Life in Old Cities
|
Is the Bailout Justified?
QUESTION: We hear that the feds HAD to bail out Fannie and Freddie because of the terrible consequences of letting them fail. How much of that is real and how much is bunk? I’d have thought that if the companies go bankrupt, their stock sells for pennies on the dollar and the . . . → Read More: Is the Bailout Justified?