Over the last five years, from my 5th floor apartment window, I’ve watched a blue spire rise in the distance. Fifteen blocks south of me, 225 West 57th Street has just joined Billionaires’ Row in Manhattan. At 1550 feet it’s now the tallest. Apartments in these buildings have been selling for over fifty million dollars per floor. The windows grant a falcon’s eye panorama of New York, but visitors on a windy day report feeling seasick from the swaying. No matter. These apartments aren’t for living;they’re for hoarding wealth. . . . → Read More: Fighting the Wealth Hoarders with Transparency and Taxes
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 Comments are closed  Book Review  Anti-trust, Chuck Collins, History, Inequality, land taxes, Richard Vague, Tax policy In the March 1 UK Prospect, economist James Galbraith offers the Brits, and us, two proposals to repair a broken economy. The first, unsurprisingly, is a heavy tax on estates, with a high exemption. The second is a land tax. Yes! This was the preferred tax of the classical economists, the one Adam Smith called “the most equitable of all taxes.” This tax—at the extraordinary rate of 4 shillings to the pound or 20%—launched the British Empire in 1692, by funding the British fleet. A land tax is already part of the ordinary property tax. It could be applied to other publicly-created property rights, such as mineral rights, electromagnetic spectrum, corporate charters, and patents. The One Percent own the bulk of such valuable rights, directly or through corporate shares. . . . → Read More: Taxing More from the Rich Is Difficult. This Is How to Do It. Comments are closed Essay Georgist economics, History of economic thought, Inequality, James Galbraith, Mason Gaffney, Tax policy To reduce inequality, monopolies in finance and other economic sectors should be broken up or made public . . . → Read More: Interview About Monopoly with Paul Jay on The Analysis It’s tough being a chicken farmer. Three processors, Tyson, Pilgrim’s Pride, and Perdue, have divvied up the American chicken market between them. Chicken farmers must sell to the one who “owns” their geographical area. That processor dictates where they get their chicks, how they build their chicken houses, what feed and medications they give, when they deliver their fattened birds, and what prices they receive on delivery. They are banned, on pain of being cut off, from comparing prices and conditions with other chicken farmers. In short, they lead the lives of medieval serfs, but at least the serfs could complain to each other about the lord! As Zephyr Teachout reports in her chilling new book, Break ‘Em Up, chickenization isn’t just for agriculture; it’s also how giants like Walmart, McDonalds, Uber and Amazon exploit their suppliers and workers. Meanwhile, monopoly profits flow into their dark money political PACs. . . . → Read More: Review of Break ‘Em Up by Zephyr Teachout 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 Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing, by three British economists, puts land and power back into economics, by recognizing–as did the classical economists–that ownership natural resources conveys wealth and political power. It also provides an enlightening history of British postwar housing policy, which has gone from building inexpensive rental housing for the working class, to pumping up property values for the ownership class. . . . → Read More: Putting Land and Power Back into Economics Inequality has surged in the U.S. over the last forty years; many observers now blame the deregulation and tax cuts for the rich starting with the presidency of Ronald Reagan in 1980. In his new short book, Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know, James Galbraith explains how this happened through the change in U.S. industrial structure. He offers a surprising recommendation. . . . → Read More: James Galbraith Tells Us What Everyone Needs to Know About Inequality If you give a dollar to a middle class family, they will spend it in the local economy and spur growth, or they will use it to make a high return investment, such as paying for their children’s college. If you give that same dollar to a very wealthy individual, instead of circulating it in the local economy, they will place it in lower-return investments, often offshore. . . . → Read More: Congressman Bill Foster Explains Why Middle Class Tax Cuts Lead To Economic Growth A carbon tax would operate much like a diamond tax, for reasons both of demand and supply. . . . → Read More: Taxing Carbon is Like Taxing Diamonds In 1995, we encountered a group of economic advisors to Governor John Engler of Michigan, intent on cutting property taxes. We reminded them of California’s 1979 Proposition 13. After Prop. 13 rolled back and froze property taxes, sales taxes reached crushing levels, budget crises became routine, local services collapsed, and public schools fell from the best in the nation to among the worst. But Engler was determined. . . . → Read More: How a Progressive Tax System Made Detroit a Powerhouse (and Could Again) One comment - (Comments are closed) Essay, Gaffney Link Detroit, Inequality, land taxes, Mason Gaffney, Michigan, property taxes, sales taxes, Tax policy |
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