Taxes or rental charges for water use are bearable and legal and would spur water economy, but the following fallacies impede acceptance of these ideas: (1) water rights are real property, (ii) a charge on water would be passed on to consumers, (iii) the cost of water is just its development cost, (iv) markets . . . → Read More: The Taxable Surplus in Water Values
 Comments are closed  Publication  Incidence, Land Economics - Water, Natural Resources, Public finance, Water This paper introduces the concept of “time-indivisibility,” and suggests that it may interfere with optimal allocation of durable resources, and especially permanent resources. Space on the earth’s stirface is taken as a representative permanent resource. The limitations of leasing and lending as time-dividers are briefly sketched. A simple technique is advanced for analyzing on an . . . → Read More: The Unwieldy Time-Dimension of Space The many wasteful policies and procedures in federal water resources programs have been much analyzed by economists and other scholars. Agency benefit-cost practices have been found wanting. Benefit estimates have been biased upward and cost estimates downward. Environmental effects of projects, often adverse, are not weighted enough. I generally endorse the thrust of these . . . → Read More: The Water Giveaway: A Critique of Federal Water Policy Comments are closed Publication Land Economics - Water, Land economics -- Environment, Law, Leasing policy, Natural Resources, Politics, Water “Though custom has dulled us to it, it is a strange and unnatural thing that men who wish to labor, in order to satisfy their wants, cannot find the opportunity.” “There can be no real scarcity of work . . . until human wants are all satisfied.” Today, nearly a century after Henry George . . . → Read More: Toward Full Employment with Limited Land and Capital Comments are closed Publication Economic Science, Full Employment, inflation, Land Economics - Macroeconomics, Macroeconomic stability, Macroeconomics, Unemployment Professor Harry G. Brown often complained of a “conspiracy of silence” against the land tax idea. Certainly it has received more silence than its due, yet it would be hard to find a topic on which so many economists have rendered opinions and taken positions over the last two hundred years. I group these . . . → Read More: Two Centuries of Economic Thought on Taxation of Land Rents One comment - (Comments are closed) Publication Economic History, Economic Science, Georgist history, Literature Review This essay raises thought-provoking questions, contains many challenging details, and steps on some toes. It will arouse disagreement and maybe controversy. Everyone will do well to attend closely to the compelling problems it discusses of harnessing urban land—a resource that “holds economic forces of titanic power for welfare or destruction.” “Urban Expansion — Will . . . → Read More: Urban Expansion – Will it Ever Stop? THIS is a reply to Dean Frank Trelease’s comment on a case study of western water law as applied to the Keweah River, California. That case study finds diseconomies in water allocation, and lays much of the blame to water law. Dean Trelease Ends this “very disturbing,” which reaction I, in turn, find a . . . → Read More: Water Law and Economics Transfers of Water: A Reply Comments are closed Publication Diseconomies, Economic Science, Land Economics - Water, Law, Prior Appropriation, Water Important as the physical environment is, the intellectual, social and psychological are more so. The greater gain of improving the physical world is improving the man who does it, the greater gain of achieving harmony of man and nature is achieving, through nature, harmony of man and man. In this case, the means may . . . → Read More: Welfare Economics and Environmental Quality Comments are closed Publication Economic Science, Inequality, Land economics -- Environment, Politics, welfare economics CAN PROPERTY TAX REFORM help the propertyless, the working men and women who-labor-for-wage incomes—the majority of Americans? Property is owned by people of property—the rich. Ownership of this rich tax base is concentrated in a few hands, much more so than income. The top 10 per cent of income receivers in the United States . . . → Read More: What is Property Tax Reform? Comments are closed Publication Inequality, progressive, Property taxation, Public finance, Tax policy, tax reform, Urban Economics, welfare economics To consume most goods and services is to eat them up, burn them, wear them out, see them break or rust out or crack or tumble down. But how about land, does anyone think of that? Land as space is not used up. To consume it is to preempt its service flow . . . → Read More: What Is “Consumption”? |