Subventions
Mason Gaffney: Canada's System of Revenue Sharing
It seems to me therefore that we need to face up to the question that is known in my trade as Fiscal Federalism, that is, how is money going to be distributed by the federal government out of its so-called surplus, either to people or the States, or localities? When we look at this issue, which is definitely a Georgist issue, we'll find interestingly enough that a lot of economists have gotten there first. Many of these are Canadian economists, and without exception they talk about rent. They talk about rich provinces and poor provinces, and the rich provinces are those that have resource rents. And when they say rent they are not talking about Frank Sinatra's voice, or Bridget Bardot's figure. They're talking about the income of natural resources. Now it's not just a question of distribution here… but a whole question of whether a growth oriented policy will sell at the local level.
The reason it's so hard to sell growth policies at the local level today in the United States is very much due to the fact that the United States federal government taxes people and it gives subventions to landlords. So the landlords can get the subventions without having the people. So who needs people? That's it in a nutshell. We need to reverse that, I think, if we're going to be able to make Georgism work at the local level.
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Wordsmith defines subvention as: 1. a grant of financial aid or relief by a government or other official source; subsidy |