tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-808642298710115632011-11-04T17:38:05.051+11:00Economics as if location mattersGRPnoreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-67150273242275210782010-04-27T17:56:00.004+10:002010-05-07T22:35:27.961+10:00

Presented on April 27, 2010, at the IU Global Conference 2010 (London, April 26–30) by Gavin R. Putland.* Abstract In the case of land subject to a mortgage, Henry George favoured treating the mortgagee (lender) as a part-owner for the purpose of the single tax. From the viewpoint of the beneficial owner (the borrower), this provision is equivalent to compensation for the debt against the land

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-66609677590600657092009-09-11T14:53:00.000+10:002009-12-11T14:53:45.582+11:00

Andrew J. Gunter writes in the Age (Letters, Sep.11, 2009): Make a stand THE Housing Industry Association's Gil King says that “any policies that aim to speed up development applications and increase Victoria's housing stock are welcomed” (The Age, 10/9). So does the HIA support the replacement of stamp duty and payroll tax with land tax collecting the same revenue? The replacement of local

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-43543636723577133912009-08-11T22:07:00.000+10:002009-09-05T22:08:00.470+10:00

Differential rating causes a problem: it lets councils give special favours to special interests. So councils like it. So the Victorian Government allows it only for capital-improved-value rating, which the Government prefers in spite of its economic deadweight. That is the context of the following letter by Andrew J. Gunter in the Age (Aug.11, 2009): Different thinking EVERYONE'S in

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-85413052118659343902009-04-02T22:48:00.004+11:002010-02-26T17:13:14.774+11:00

A submission to the Senate Inquiry into the investment of Commonwealth and State funds in public passenger transport infrastructure and services, by Gavin R. Putland, BE PhD.* Abstract The benefit of public transport is manifested as uplifts in land values in the serviced locations. The alleged difficulty of funding public transport is an illusion that arises because governments, at the

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-66330192340335849292009-03-05T16:35:00.004+11:002010-02-26T17:13:35.866+11:00

BY MR R. MURRAY SMITH, C.M.G.* One of the most intimate friends of the late Mr Max Hirsch was Mr R. Murray Smith, C.M.G., who was asked to-day to say something about Mr Hirsch, as he appeared to his friends. “It gives me great pleasure to say something in eulogy of my old and very dear friend, the late Mr Max Hirsch. He was a man of many parts, and, as you know, was industrious in

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-72290448408261246322009-03-04T11:16:00.003+11:002010-01-05T11:21:24.187+11:00

A private cable message, received in Melbourne, stated that Mr Max Hirsch, one of the best known public men in Victoria, had died at Vladivostock, at 6.30 this morning. Mr Hirsch, who left Melbourne some time ago on an extended tour, had not been in good health. Death was due to cancer on the liver. The deceased gentleman was a native of Cologne, Germany, where he was born on

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-57763777587056772182009-02-02T11:02:00.000+11:002009-02-16T18:09:14.432+11:00

Gavin R. Putland writes on the Letters Blog at the Australian: Rudd is nаked too Kevin Rudd has declared that the interventionists are back in charge, the non-interventionists having “no clothes” due to the global recession. He conveniently forgets that the non-interventionists took over after the interventionists were discredited by the recession of the mid 70s, but conveniently remembers

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-89440218281141497672008-11-20T17:22:00.001+11:002009-07-23T01:24:08.336+10:00

Three years and five months after warning that “the next adjustment of Australian interest rates would more properly be down,” Bryan Kavanagh claims vindication in the Age, noting that the Reserve Bank raised interest rates by 1.75 percentage points in three years, then dropped them 2 percentage points in three months — or two months from meeting to meeting. (Since then, of course, the Reserve

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-51396981007176279812008-04-03T16:14:00.001+11:002010-02-26T17:14:05.253+11:00

Gavin R. Putland marks an anniversary. Forty years ago, as Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the Promised Land and prophesied “I may not get there with you,” a quiet revolution in economic theory was beginning, which would ensure that Dr. King's hearers, except perhaps the occasional Caleb or Joshua, wouldn't get there either. The architects of the revolution didn't plan it that way, but that's

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-38565296541544583742008-03-28T11:37:00.001+11:002009-02-16T12:40:55.958+11:00

Australia's residential land market is a bubble about to burst. Because property is used as collateral for loans, a bursting bubble leaves lenders and borrowers exposed, causing a recession. It is therefore “irresponsible and incorrect” to blame “spiritual emanations from U.S. subprime mortgage lending,” says Bryan Kavanagh. The truth, as he writes in this article in the Age, is that “we have

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-61201528237912254002008-02-28T19:25:00.003+11:002010-02-26T17:14:39.098+11:00

The global economic crisis from a non-neoclassical viewpoint Final Edition — February 2008 Editorial: The myth of progressive taxation By “progressive” income taxation and “means-tested” welfare, governments make a great show of taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Of course this pretense conveniently ignores such things as “business” deductions, concessional taxation of

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-63750610292411110892008-01-31T18:42:00.002+11:002010-02-26T17:14:52.789+11:00

The global economic crisisfrom a non-neoclassical viewpoint January 2008 Editorial: Will we all be Keynesians again? As a U.S. recession looks more and more like a done deal, many will argue that this is a great time for America to invest in public infrastructure: railways, bus services, roads, water supplies, underground electrical and communications cables, sewerage, drainage, schools

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-82859227051252018652008-01-26T16:09:00.000+11:002009-12-30T16:10:25.159+11:00

It is appropriate that the surge in Melbourne home prices has rekindled debate on conveyancing stamp duty, but not so appropriate that the discussion has focused on the size of the duty instead of its base. Reducing the size of the duty must have a budgetary impact, but changing its base need not. Stamp duty is a transfer tax on the total value of a property including the building(s) and the

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-4450724622376104532007-12-27T17:24:00.003+11:002010-02-26T17:15:07.696+11:00

The global economic crisisfrom a non-neoclassical viewpoint December 2007 Editorial: The tragedy of the so-called “commons” There is no such phenomenon as the “tragedy of the commons”. The phenomenon that is usually called by that name arises because the so-called “commons” are treated not as belonging to all, but as belonging to no one — in other words, because they are not commons at all.

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-92087275392082013562007-11-28T16:34:00.003+11:002010-02-26T17:15:23.078+11:00

The global economic crisisfrom a non-neoclassical viewpoint November 2007 Editorial: The immovable tax One obvious consequence of Ricardo's law (see last month's editorial) is that a tax on the rental value of land cannot be “passed on” in the rent of the land; that is, it cannot be shifted onto a tenant. The maximum rent that the landlord can extract is the margin by which the productivity

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-36921379512410767292007-10-24T15:58:00.002+10:002010-02-26T17:15:37.133+11:00

The global economic crisisfrom a non-neoclassical viewpoint Inaugural Edition — October 2007 Editorial: Locational/comparative/absolute advantage Within one country, as labor and capital are mobile, the returns to laborers and investors (allowing for such things as risk, unpleasantness, and necessary skill) tend to be independent of location; if, for example, returns to labor in one location

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-73947572026796054652007-06-11T16:02:00.007+10:002010-02-26T17:15:58.683+11:00

The Melbourne Herald-Sun (June 11, 2007, p.27) says in part: A 34-year study of Australian property markets, Unlocking the Riches of Oz, has identified that rises and falls in the economy “follow” those in the property market by between 12 and 24 months. In other words, “the tail is wagging the dog”, the report's author and Land Values Research Group director Bryan Kavanagh said. “The

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-54422510911087080972007-05-30T17:08:00.005+10:002010-02-26T17:16:15.601+11:00

By Gavin R. Putland I assembled the monthly figures on new house sales (which are obviously related to construction) into quarterly figures... The green curve shows the change in real quarterly GDP since 3 quarters earlier (converted to an annual rate of change); the GDP figures are from www.bea.gov/national, under ‘Current-dollar and “real” GDP’. This curve goes negative three to six

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-55744672356366629332007-05-10T17:37:00.000+10:002011-11-04T17:38:05.214+11:00

An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII by Henry George New York, September 11, 1891 HTML version edited by Gavin R. Putland Contents Editor's preface Preamble Fundamental Principles affecting Land and its Rent Moral-philosophical foundations Security of land tenure Reconciling common ownership & private possession The need for public revenue Immorality of present methods of taxation

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-4039070587189266802007-04-12T16:40:00.003+10:002011-11-03T16:54:28.979+11:00

Parliament of Queensland A BILL To declare the Natural Law relating to the Acquisition and Ownership of Private Property (Sir Samuel Griffith, 1890)* Contents Preamble Definitions  1.  Land  2.  Value of land  3.  Rent  4.  Labour  5.  Wages  6.  Property  7.  Production  8.  Capital  9.  Interest 10.  Productive labour 11.  Net products 12.  Cost of production 13.  Positive law

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-12204218232760493522007-03-22T16:26:00.001+11:002011-11-02T16:27:41.066+11:00

Prosper Australia Working Paper No.7,* by Gavin R. Putland Abstract If an infrastructure project passes a cost-benefit test, the uplift in land values in areas serviced by the infrastructure will exceed the cost of the project, in which case the cost can be covered by reclaiming part of the uplift in land values, leaving the rest of the uplift as a net windfall for the affected land owners.

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-26462496826629972012006-07-12T14:55:00.003+10:002011-11-02T15:18:46.966+11:00

Prosper Australia Working Paper No.3,* by Gavin R. Putland Abstract Certain economic assets (called site-like assets in this paper) are not produced by private human effort. Greens and Georgists concur in recognizing and emphasizing this class of assets, but view it in different ways. For Greens, whose fundamental goal is ecological sustainability, site-like assets are chiefly gifts of

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-40681563141240052172005-12-28T18:33:00.005+11:002010-02-26T17:16:33.046+11:00

BOOM BUST: House Prices, Banking and the Depression of 2010, by Fred Harrison — reviewed by Gavin R. Putland.1 Decades ago — perhaps in the early 1970s — a dirty snowball about five kilometres in diameter was making a leisurely loop through the inner Solar System. Apparently it was following an elliptical orbit about the sun, in which case the snowball had made the same journey many times

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-26930246482959905482005-06-15T19:08:00.005+10:002009-12-13T16:52:04.993+11:00

Since the days of the first modern economist, Sir William Petty, the science of economics has gone backwards by forgetting the importance of land values — as Bryan Kavanagh writes in the Age (June 15, 2005). Pointing to the bubble in residential land prices, Kavanagh warns that “economic growth is primed to tank into a major deflation,” so that “the next adjustment of Australian interest rates

GRPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80864229871011563.post-15311234169998770482004-08-09T00:48:00.001+10:002010-01-08T14:52:58.073+11:00

Gavin R. Putland identifies a “patent” rort. Labor's proposal to penalize drug companies for abusing patents is ad hoc and does not address the fundamental problems of patent law. Those problems are threefold. First, if you independently invent and market something which, unknown to you, is covered by a patent, you are liable for breaching the patent. This law is not justified by the purpose

GRPnoreply@blogger.com