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 . . . → Read More: Empty Spaces: How Our Tax Policies Caused the Present Seizure by Unbalancing Hard and Soft Capital
|
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 . . . → Read More: How to Thaw Credit, Now and Forever  Comments are closed  Essay, Publication  Capital theory, Land Economics - Macroeconomics, Land economics -- urban, Macroeconomics, urban development How did San Francisco do what a top economist says New Orleans cannot?
Our latest Nobelist in economics, Thomas Schelling, offered the following advice in the wake of Hurricane Katrina: “There is no market solution to New Orleans. It is essentially a problem of coordinating expectations… . . . → Read More: Repopulating New Orleans Comments are closed Essay, Publication Land economics -- Environment, urban development, urban infrastructure, urban renewal Some cities have grown in notable spurts. Some of these cities were new; others have revived after decaying. Cities’ cells, like ours, metabolize and can refresh themselves constantly. Cities need not die like us. They can continue this cycle of renewal forever, when people remodel buildings and clear and renew sites. This can happen . . . → Read More: New Life in Old Cities Comments are closed Publication Land economics -- urban, land value tax, Property taxation, Tax policy, urban development, Urban Economics, urban renewal This paper deals with an anomaly one meets when seeking to teach and apply the ideas promoted by Henry George. How does one forward the interests of labor by untaxing capital? George left some unanswered questions, and later writers and activists have not met them. Mason Gaffney, 2004, in Lindy . . . → Read More: The Danger of Favoring Capital over Labor Comments are closed Essay, Publication Tax policy, Tax Shift, Unemployment, urban development, Urban Economics The question I am assigned is whether the taxable capacity of land without buildings is up to the job of financing cities, counties, and schools. Will the revenue be enough? The answer is “yes.” 1993. In Patricia Salkin (ed.), Land Value Taxation, Papers from a Conference sponsored by The Government Law Center of Albany . . . → Read More: The Taxable Capacity of Land GEORGIST POLICY HAS been shown as a means to revive dying cities, and in the process to reconcile equity and efficiency, to reconcile supply side economics with taxation, and to reconcile capital formation with taxation of the rich. It can be seen as a means of harmonizing collectivism and individualism, in the most constructive . . . → Read More: How to Revitalize a Failing City Comments are closed Publication Economic Science, Land economics -- urban, Tax policy, urban development, Urban Economics, urban expansion, urban renewal The object of human organization is synergy, combining parts into a whole greater than their sum. Large organizations seek synergy in hierarchy and financial controls. Cities achieve it by bringing independent actors into mutual access so they can cooperate via free contracts and association in the marketplace, in government and society. This paper purports . . . → Read More: The Synergistic City: Its Potentials, Hindrances and Fulfillment Comments are closed Publication Economic History, Land economics -- urban, Land Rent, Property taxation, Tax policy, urban development, Urban Economics This paper purports to solve a particular kind of problem that characterizes urban expansion and evolution: when replace a collection of individual apparatuses (CIA) with a mass system. Examples include replacing individual septic tanks by sewers, well to public water supply, private cars by mass transit, trash burners by public pickup, coal or fuel . . . → Read More: When to Build What Comments are closed Publication Land economics -- urban, Property taxation, urban development, urban infrastructure A reply to comment by Henry Goldstein and Procter Thomson on my “Tax-induced Slow Turnover of Capital,” published in Western Economic J. WEJ editors returned it for shortening. Meantime Anthony Chisholm replied on my behalf, using some of this material. I have incorporated it into to be polished and published. . . . → Read More: Time, Taxes, Turnover and Intensity |