Open
Space
Jeff Smith and Kris Nelson: Giving Life to
the Property Tax Shift (PTS)
John Muir is right. "Tug on any
one
thing and find it connected to everything else in the universe." Tug on
the property tax and find it connected to urban slums, farmland loss,
political favoritism, and unearned equity with disrupted neighborhood
tenure. Echoing Thoreau, the more familiar reforms have failed to
address this many-headed hydra at its root. To think that the root
could be chopped by a mere shift in the property tax base -- from
buildings to land -- must seem like the epitome of unfounded faith. Yet
the evidence shows that state and local tax activists do have a
powerful, if subtle, tool at their disposal. The "stick" spurring
efficient use of land is a higher tax rate upon land, up to even the
site's full annual value. The "carrot" rewarding efficient use of land
is a lower or zero tax rate upon improvements. ...
Without coercion or remote planning, the PTS
improves our settlement
patterns. Regulations and zoning, some assume, might be vitiated or
obviated, become obsolete. Instead, the PTS makes it easier for
regulations and zoning to do their job. Since the land tax lowers land
price, buying land for parks and reserves is more easily afforded. The
loss in revenue from removing the newly public lands from the tax rolls
would be offset somewhat by the corresponding rise in value of sites
near the protected open space. Creating green spaces raises the density
of already developed land, and thus its value. Furthermore, land dues
reduce the profit from land development, making it a less attractive
investment, and land use decisions of less economic consequence. After
a while, people with deep pockets would turn to investments that,
post-shift, would be untaxed. Reserving land for recreational or
natural uses becomes less contentious; people could more easily
determine an optimum proportion of green space to developed space.
Redirecting land rent from owner to government
might merely pass the
motive to exploit from owner to state, possibly the next implacable
force against conservation. However, while an individual must use their
own land most intensely to maximize profit, a government must optimize
land use to maximize its land tax base. That is, land value thruout the
jurisdiction is lower when there is border-to-border development;
overall values are higher when some space is kept open. From the
government's point of view, there's more rent to be collected when
highest and best use includes nonuse. ...
A big problem needs a big solution which in turn
needs a
matching shift of our prevailing paradigm. Geonomics -- advocating that
we share the social value of sites and natural resources and untax
earnings -- does just that. Read the whole article
Mason Gaffney: Economics in
Support of Environmentalism
On what basis shall
habitat-savers identify with median Americans?
We share a problem: we are all victims of private property rights
carried to extremes. Abraham Lincoln, the original Radical
Republican, once spoke to the effect that whenever landless people
cannot find work and shelter, then the rights of private property
have been carried too far and must be curbed. We have seen what
Gifford Pinchot said.
"... natural resources
must be developed and preserved
for the benefit of the many and not merely for the profit of a few. ...
the people shall get their fair share of the benefit which comes from
the development of the country WHICH BELONGS TO US ALL."
Belongs to us all? Was Pinchot a
Communist? Not likely: he was a
Republican, an active political one, twice Governor of
Pennsylvania.
We have too little time together
to develop that fully, but here
are some ideas. First,
environmentalists might rethink what we mean
by "open space." To Pinchot, "open" meant the space had public
access. Today it often means the reverse: golf courses, duck clubs,
sacred Indian lands, private beaches, cemeteries, farmlands, vacant
speculative holdings, unpoliced parks taken over by gangs, protected
and posted habitat, water from which swimmers are excluded for power
boats, rights-of-way closed to hikers, University experimental plots,
and so on. In this sense, there is more open land in downtown
Manhattan than in many of our rural and sylvan areas. Many a water
reservoir is open to beavers, ducks and geese, who routinely powder
their noses there, but not to humans who seldom do, and can be
trained not to. ...
Sprawl is not
a quest for open space
A common belief is that the search of open space is the main
force
behind sprawl. You may test that by observing high density,
cookie-cutter subdivisions scattered throughout the land. Within each
such development, you are living at urban densities. It is when you
get onto the freeway to commute, or shop, or take the kids to school
or the dentist, or worship, that you experience open space. You
experience it as a negative resource, an obstacle between where you
are and where you want to go. ... read
the whole article
Henry George: The Savannah (excerpt
from Progress & Poverty, Book IV: Chapter 2: The Effect of Increase
of Population upon the Distribution of Wealth; also found in Significant
Paragraphs from Progress & Poverty, Chapter 3: Land Rent Grows as Community
Develops)
Here, let us imagine, is an unbounded savannah, stretching off in
unbroken sameness of grass and flower, tree and rill, till the traveler tires
of the monotony. Along comes the wagon of the first immigrant. Where to settle
he cannot tell — every acre seems as good as every other acre. As to
wood, as to water, as to fertility, as to situation, there is absolutely
no choice, and he is perplexed by the embarrassment of richness. Tired out
with the search for one place that is better than another, he stops — somewhere,
anywhere — and starts to make himself a home. The soil is virgin and
rich, game is abundant, the streams flash with the finest trout. Nature is
at her very best. He has what, were he in a populous district, would make
him rich; but he is very poor. To say nothing of the mental craving, which
would lead him to welcome the sorriest stranger, he labors under all the
material disadvantages of solitude. He can get no temporary assistance for
any work that requires a greater union of strength than that afforded by
his own family, or by such help as he can permanently keep. Though he has
cattle, he cannot often have fresh meat, for to get a beefsteak he must kill
a bullock. He must be his own blacksmith, wagonmaker, carpenter, and cobbler — in
short, a "jack of all trades and master of none." He cannot have his children
schooled, for, to do so, he must himself pay and maintain a teacher. Such
things as he cannot produce himself, he must buy in quantities and keep on
hand, or else go without, for he cannot be constantly leaving his work and
making a long journey to the verge of civilization; and when forced to do
so, the getting of a vial of medicine or the replacement of a broken auger
may cost him the labor of himself and horses for days. Under such circumstances,
though nature is prolific, the man is poor. It is an easy matter for him
to get enough to eat; but beyond this, his labor will suffice to satisfy
only the simplest wants in the rudest way.
Soon there comes another immigrant. Although every quarter section* of the
boundless plain is as good as every other quarter section, he is not beset
by any embarrassment as to where to settle. Though the land is the same,
there is one place that is clearly better for him than any other place, and
that is where there is already a settler and he may have a neighbor. He settles
by the side of the first comer, whose condition is at once greatly improved,
and to whom many things are now possible that were before impossible, for
two men may help each other to do things that one man could never do.
*The public prairie lands of
the United States were surveyed into sections of one mile square, and a
quarter section (160 acres) was the usual government allotment to a settler
under the Homestead Act.
Another immigrant comes, and, guided by the same attraction, settles where
there are already two. Another, and another, until around our first comer there
are a score of neighbors. Labor has now an effectiveness which, in the solitary
state, it could not approach. If heavy work is to be done, the settlers have
a logrolling, and together accomplish in a day what singly would require years.
When one kills a bullock, the others take part of it, returning when they kill,
and thus they have fresh meat all the time. Together they hire a schoolmaster,
and the children of each are taught for a fractional part of what similar teaching
would have cost the first settler. It becomes a comparatively easy matter to
send to the nearest town, for some one is always going. But there is less need
for such journeys. A blacksmith and a wheelwright soon set up shops, and our
settler can have his tools repaired for a small part of the labor it formerly
cost him. A store is opened and he can get what he wants as he wants it; a
postoffice, soon added, gives him regular communication with the rest of the
world. Then come a cobbler, a carpenter, a harness maker, a doctor; and a little
church soon arises. Satisfactions become possible that in the solitary state
were impossible. There are gratifications for the social and the intellectual
nature — for that part of the man that rises above the animal. The power
of sympathy, the sense of companionship, the emulation of comparison and contrast,
open a wider, and fuller, and more varied life. In rejoicing, there are others
to rejoice; in sorrow, the mourners do not mourn alone. There are husking bees,
and apple parings, and quilting parties. Though the ballroom be unplastered
and the orchestra but a fiddle, the notes of the magician are yet in the strain,
and Cupid dances with the dancers. At the wedding, there are others to admire
and enjoy; in the house of death, there are watchers; by the open grave, stands
human sympathy to sustain the mourners. Occasionally, comes a straggling lecturer
to open up glimpses of the world of science, of literature, or of art; in election
times, come stump speakers, and the citizen rises to a sense of dignity and
power, as the cause of empires is tried before him in the struggle of John
Doe and Richard Roe for his support and vote. And, by and by, comes the circus,
talked of months before, and opening to children whose horizon has been the
prairie, all the realms of the imagination — princes and princesses of
fairy tale, mailclad crusaders and turbaned Moors, Cinderella's fairy coach,
and the giants of nursery lore; lions such as crouched before Daniel, or in
circling Roman amphitheater tore the saints of God; ostriches who recall the
sandy deserts; camels such as stood around when the wicked brethren raised
Joseph from the well and sold him into bondage; elephants such as crossed the
Alps with Hannibal, or felt the sword of the Maccabees; and glorious music
that thrills and builds in the chambers of the mind as rose the sunny dome
of Kubla Khan.
Go to our settler now, and say to him: "You have so many fruit trees which
you planted; so much fencing, such a well, a barn, a house — in short,
you have by your labor added so much value to this farm. Your land itself
is not quite so good. You have been cropping it, and by and by it will
need manure. I will give you the full value of all your improvements if
you will give it to me, and go again with your family beyond the verge
of settlement." He would laugh at you. His land yields no more wheat or
potatoes than before, but it does yield far more of all the necessaries
and comforts of life. His labor upon it will bring no heavier crops, and,
we will suppose, no more valuable crops, but it will bring far more of
all the other things for which men work. The presence of other settlers — the
increase of population — has added to the productiveness, in these
things, of labor bestowed upon it, and this added productiveness gives
it a superiority over land of equal natural quality where there are as
yet no settlers. If no land remains to be taken up, except such as is as
far removed from population as was our settler's land when he first went
upon it, the value or rent of this land will be measured by the whole of
this added capability. If, however, as we have supposed, there is a continuous
stretch of equal land, over which population is now spreading, it will
not be necessary for the new settler to go into the wilderness, as did
the first. He will settle just beyond the other settlers, and will get
the advantage of proximity to them. The value or rent of our settler's
land will thus depend on the advantage which it has, from being at the
center of population, over that on the verge. In the one case, the margin
of production will remain as before; in the other, the margin of production
will be raised.
Population still continues to increase, and as it increases so do the
economies which its increase permits, and which in effect add to the productiveness
of the land. Our first settler's land, being the center of population,
the store, the blacksmith's forge, the wheelwright's shop, are set up on
it, or on its margin, where soon arises a village, which rapidly grows
into a town, the center of exchanges for the people of the whole district.
With no greater agricultural productiveness than it had at first, this
land now begins to develop a productiveness of a higher kind. To labor
expended in raising corn, or wheat, or potatoes, it will yield no more
of those things than at first; but to labor expended in the subdivided
branches of production which require proximity to other producers, and,
especially, to labor expended in that final part of production, which consists
in distribution, it will yield much larger returns. The wheatgrower may
go further on, and find land on which his labor will produce as much wheat,
and nearly as much wealth; but the artisan, the manufacturer, the storekeeper,
the professional man, find that their labor expended here, at the center
of exchanges, will yield them much more than if expended even at a little
distance away from it; and this excess of productiveness for such purposes
the landowner can claim just as he could an excess in its wheat-producing
power. And so our settler is able to sell in building lots a few of his
acres for prices which it would not bring for wheatgrowing if its fertility
had been multiplied many times. With the proceeds, he builds himself a
fine house, and furnishes it handsomely. That is to say, to reduce the
transaction to its lowest terms, the people who wish to use the land build
and furnish the house for him, on condition that he will let them avail
themselves of the superior productiveness which the increase of population
has given the land.
Population still keeps on increasing, giving greater and greater utility
to the land, and more and more wealth to its owner. The town has grown
into a city — a St. Louis, a Chicago or a San Francisco — and
still it grows. Production is here carried on upon a great scale, with
the best machinery and the most favorable facilities; the division of labor
becomes extremely minute, wonderfully multiplying efficiency; exchanges
are of such volume and rapidity that they are made with the minimum of
friction and loss. Here is the heart, the brain, of the vast social organism
that has grown up from the germ of the first settlement; here has developed
one of the great ganglia of the human world. Hither run all roads, hither
set all currents, through all the vast regions round about. Here, if you
have anything to sell, is the market; here, if you have anything to buy,
is the largest and the choicest stock. Here intellectual activity is gathered
into a focus, and here springs that stimulus which is born of the collision
of mind with mind. Here are the great libraries, the storehouses and granaries
of knowledge, the learned professors, the famous specialists. Here are
museums and art galleries, collections of philosophical apparatus, and
all things rare, and valuable, and best of their kind. Here come great
actors, and orators, and singers, from all over the world. Here, in short,
is a center of human life, in all its varied manifestations.
So enormous are the advantages which this land now offers for the application
of labor, that instead of one man — with a span of horses scratching
over acres, you may count in places thousands of workers to the acre, working
tier on tier, on floors raised one above the other, five, six, seven and
eight stories from the ground, while underneath the surface of the earth
engines are throbbing with pulsations that exert the force of thousands
of horses.
All these advantages attach to the land; it is on this land and no
other that they can be utilized, for here is the center of population — the
focus of exchanges, the market place and workshop of the highest forms
of industry. The productive powers which density of population has
attached to this land are equivalent to the multiplication of its original
fertility by the hundredfold and the thousandfold. And rent, which measures
the difference between this added productiveness and that of the least
productive land in use, has increased accordingly. Our settler, or whoever
has succeeded to his right to the land, is now a millionaire. Like another Rip
Van Winkle, he may have lain down and slept; still he is rich — not
from anything he has done, but from the increase of population. There
are lots from which for every foot of frontage the owner may draw more
than an average mechanic can earn; there are lots that will sell for
more than would suffice to pave them with gold coin. In the principal
streets are towering buildings, of granite, marble, iron, and plate glass,
finished in the most expensive style, replete with every convenience.
Yet they are not worth as much as the land upon which they rest — the
same land, in nothing changed, which when our first settler came upon
it had no value at all.
That this is the way in which the increase of population powerfully acts
in increasing rent, whoever, in a progressive country, will look around
him, may see for himself. The process is going on under his eyes. The increasing
difference in the productiveness of the land in use, which causes an increasing
rise in rent, results not so much from the necessities of increased population
compelling the resort to inferior land, as from the increased productiveness
which increased population gives to the lands already in use. The most
valuable lands on the globe, the lands which yield the highest rent, are
not lands of surpassing natural fertility, but lands to which a surpassing
utility has been given by the increase of population.
The increase of productiveness or utility which increase of population
gives to certain lands, in the way to which I have been calling attention,
attaches, as it were, to the mere quality of extension. The valuable quality
of land that has become a center of population is its superficial capacity — it
makes no difference whether it is fertile, alluvial soil like that of Philadelphia,
rich bottom land like that of New Orleans; a filled-in marsh like that
of St. Petersburg, or a sandy waste like the greater part of San Francisco.
And where value seems to arise from superior natural qualities, such
as deep water and good anchorage, rich deposits of coal and iron, or
heavy timber, observation also shows that these superior qualities are
brought out, rendered tangible, by population. The coal and iron
fields of Pennsylvania, that today [1879] are worth enormous sums, were
fifty years ago valueless. What is the efficient cause of the difference?
Simply the difference in population. The coal and iron beds of Wyoming
and Montana, which today are valueless, will, in fifty years from now,
be worth millions on millions, simply because, in the meantime, population
will have greatly increased.
It is a well-provisioned ship, this on which we sail through space. If
the bread and beef above decks seem to grow scarce, we but open a hatch
and there is a new supply, of which before we never dreamed. And
very great command over the services of others comes to those who as the
hatches are opened are permitted to say, "This is mine!" ... read
the whole chapter of Significant Paragraphs
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