Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity, by Charles Marohn Jr.

Post WW II single family subdivisions have proved a fiscal disaster. At first, they generated substantial tax revenues, making cities eager to encourage and subsidize more of them by extending utilities. But because all the utilities and houses in a subdivision were built at the same time, they all aged at the same rate. After 25 years or so of fiscal surplus, costs began to rise steeply for repairing infrastructure. When city maintenance lagged, those residents who could afford it moved to newer subdivisions further out, leaving shabby houses on crumbling streets inhabited by ever poorer and often minority residents. This happened first in Detroit, where huge areas now lie abandoned. It is now happening in inner suburbs around the nation. Yet as inner suburbs crumble, towns pursue the same old financial fix: subsidizing brand-new subdivisions on raw land. . . . → Read More: Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity, by Charles Marohn Jr.

How Colonies Can Liberate Themselves by Taxing Real Estate

A colony is an area of land belonging mostly to outsiders, who extract more than they put in, hold good property underused, and control local politics. Greece, Haiti and Puerto Rico are colonies. Given the political will, and absent military intervention, colonies can liberate themselves by taxing the land. . . . → Read More: How Colonies Can Liberate Themselves by Taxing Real Estate

How to Fix the Great Real Estate After-Bubble

The Washington Post April 21 headlines an article “Wall Street betting billions on single-family homes in distressed markets.” The article continues, “Drawn by the prospect of double-figure profit margins on rents and the resale of homes whose prices plummeted in the crash, hedge funds, Wall Street investors and other institutions are crowding out individual home . . . → Read More: How to Fix the Great Real Estate After-Bubble

Can Cyberspace Liberate Us from Earthly Space?

The internet, it has long seemed, frees us from the bounds of location. We can work from home. We can shop in London or Tokyo. On Skype, we can chat with friends in Sydney, Australia as if they were next door. Meanwhile, Mozy.com backs up our computers to a bank of servers in Texas.

As . . . → Read More: Can Cyberspace Liberate Us from Earthly Space?

Why Georgists Corrected Predicted the Crisis, and Why Conventional Economists Couldn’t

Land bubbles of varying severity and universality recur roughly every eighteen to twenty years. Like Henry George, modern Georgists attribute recessions and depressions to these bubbles. A huge real estate bubble of the 1920’s preceded the Depression of the 1930’s. That bubble actually began to burst in 1926, three years before the stock market crash . . . → Read More: Why Georgists Corrected Predicted the Crisis, and Why Conventional Economists Couldn’t

The Great Real Estate Bubble of the Roaring Twenties

Economists conventionally attribute the Great Depression to blunders by the then-new Federal Reserve Bank. According to this story, promoted by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School, after the stock market crash of 1929, the Fed kept interest rates too high, strangling the economy. This story made most economists confident that it couldn’t happen again.

But . . . → Read More: The Great Real Estate Bubble of the Roaring Twenties