The Geonomist Volume Nine Issue One

Geonomics is … close to the policy of the Garden Cities in England. Founded by Ebenezer Howard over a century ago, residents own the land in common and run the town as a business. Letchworth, the oldest of the model towns, serves residents grandly from bucketfuls of collected land rent (as does the Canadian Province of Alberta from oil royalty). A geonomic town would pay the rent to residents, letting them freely choose personalized services, and also ax taxes. Both geonomics and Howard were inspired by American proto-geonomist Henry George. The movement launched by Howard today in the UK advances the shift of taxes from buildings to locations. A recent report from the Town and Country Planning Association proposes this Property Tax Shift and their journal published research in the potential of land value taxation by Tony Vickers (Vol. 69, Part 5, 2000). (Thanks to James Robertson)

Chemists have us convinced that air is 1/5 oxygen, water is H20, and land, or sand, is mostly silicon oxide. Not long ago, alchemists told a different story. Today, economists prattle on about net profit, but ignore the source, leaving that to geonomists. The Urban Land Institute in DC publishes America's Real Estate (1997) which finds that corporate profit is over 50% real estate generated. Ibbotson & Associates in Chicago (www. ibbotson.com or 1/800/758-3557) find the financial assets of the world divided into: real estate 48%, stocks 26%, bonds 19%, cash 4%, precious metals 3%. Since about half of global wealth is real estate, about a quarter is land - not hi-tech or oil, but people paying for land (not a product of labor). If the profit from land was shared by society, and if other incomes and assets were no longer taxed, would corporations and other absentee owners win, lose, or break even? As awareness of geonomics spreads, we'll find out. In a 1998 series of focus groups with Californians, over half favored shifting the conventional property tax from buildings to land. (Thanks to Drs. Steve Cord and Fred Foldvary for the above sources respectively.)

In the US, it's a race to the bottom, as some find the flimsiest reason to like two rich front men for big business, while the majority of eligible voters won't bother come November. Elsewhere, it's another story as both Taiwan and Mexico made history, tossing out the only parties they had ever had in power. The new presidents, Chen Shui-bian in Taiwan and Vicente Fox in Mexico, both come from new parties sympathetic to geonomics. Chen's economic advisor, who met with this editor last December, promotes an update of their official land assessments; some lots in downtown Taipei are 90% undervalued. Fox leads PAN (National Action Party), which in the towns in Baja California where they had won influence, replaced the conventional property tax with a site-value tax. In his campaign, Fox (vicente@fox2000.org.mx) expressed admiration for Alaska's oil dividend. Once in power, many politicians turn a blind eye to the vision that got them elected. Yet economic necessity may tempt these new leaders to try what works. Meanwhile, we Americans make history by heading the other way.

It's supposed to let poor people prosper, but foreign aid mainly keeps powerful people in power. Aid is not how anyone ever developed. Trade is. A country can have lots of oil, like Angola, and be poor, or have zero resources, like Hong Kong, and be rich. A key difference is trade. Yet while sending aid, rich donor nations hinder trade with poor donee nations, placing tariffs on products from them. If, instead, developed nations ended both aid and tariffs, poor nations could develop, rich ones could save tax dollars, and consumers could enjoy lower prices. It makes so much sense, even the World Bank and IMF recently suggested it. Clinton rejected it, choosing instead to go steady with China (NY Times, April 9). But there's always a next time.

They're not dumb. Animals know when it's hunting season and make themselves scarce. Some high-income people react the same way to tax collectors. Offshore banks and tiny kingdoms like Liechtenstein, which has more paper companies than subjects, do a thriving business providing sanctuary to hunted profits. The US, the UK, et al brand the tax havens, their competition, as corrupt (Christian Science Monitor July 3). Yet whose money is it? If it's earned, government should leave it alone - and collect its own. England did. Canada will. (See below.) Who's next?

Densely settled Britain, by auctioning licenses to bandwidth, raised $36 billion. In its November auction, sparsely settled Canada expects to raise from C$4 billion to C$6 billion. The licenses, 56 to cover the country, are for high-capacity frequencies to be used by "third-generation" services that connect wireless devices like phones and pagers to the Internet. Companies must post deposits to enter, leaving out start-ups with shallow pockets that would otherwise be able to drive down prices for cellular phone hookup. Older firms came into existence via the governments pre-auction method: a "beauty contest" to determine which company merited a license. For this auction, only Canadian companies are eligible; a future auction is planned for international companies. (Reuters, Jun 28) Were countries to auction off all the spectrum - radio and TV included - and all other sought-after resources, and surface sites, too, it'd raise so much money that it could forgo taxes and, like a successful company, pay its shareholders, the citizenry, a dividend.

The economy might be booming for some but not everyone. After a decade of expansion (way behind Taiwan's three decades of growth, but they collect more rent than we do), the number of working poor has stayed at 3% of the work force, about what it's been for 20 years. Even the stagnating 1970s had fewer working poor than now. Better-paying factory jobs, 30% in 1965, fell to 15% in 1998. Lousy-paying retail and service jobs grew from 30% to 48%. Low-skill manual work that can be automated away cannot support a family; it's not career work. Minimum wage increases, which do little for people without jobs, do not keep up with inflation. The poor's biggest expense is housing (The National Center For Policy Analysis www.ncpa.org Jun 29). Half of that expense is land, our common heritage, and potentially the source of a second income for all. Better than a hodge-podge of minimum wage, welfare, tax credits, etc is a Citizens Dividend, paid from what belongs to us all, the value of sites and natural resources. Then a rising tide would lift all boats.

Rich people were the original target of the income tax. As time passed, however, the rich rose above the tax and everyone else ascended into its web. Repeated reforms, too, were designed, ostensibly, to net fat incomes that had slithered away. Yet each reform was matched by another loophole. Indeed, twice as much income gets exempted as taxed. The most recent reform is a minimum tax implemented to catch those millionaires who paid no tax; if they dodge the top rate of 39.6%, at least the minimum rate of 26% would catch them, tho' they'd still be 13.6% below the original expectation. Now as middleclass incomes rise and the tax's threshold stays the same, the minimum is catching these unintended victims. Now they must pay 26%, too, instead of the middle income rate of 15%, 11% more than before (The Olympian, July 2).

Owing does not necessarily mean paying. Those setting an example for the rest of us, our elected leaders and their assistants - have not paid $10.5 M in back taxes. In the House of Reps, 8.4% were delinquent; in the Senate, 7.5%. Among the rest of us, 8.1% don't comply (USA Today, Mar 31).

The experts have been wrong before. They introduced atomic particles as the smallest; now it's sub-atomic particles (the 12th and supposedly the last was just proven to be). They used to "cure" patients with blood-sucking leeches; now with pill and scalpel. And they used to placate volcano gods with virgins. Now it's the scourge inflation with workers. Experts blame labor (higher wages) but not capital (higher lending rates). They blame more costly oil, the lifeblood of developed economies, but not more costly land, tho' homes and businesses don't locate in midair. The most demonstrable cause of inflation - a greater volume of newly issued notes exceeding output of goods and services, as Milton Friedman showed - they overlook entirely.

In the 90s, we enjoyed both high employment, which raised wages, and low inflation. In the 70s, we endured the opposite, simultaneous unemployment and inflation. According to the experts, neither decade was supposed to happen. Despite the evidence, the experts stuck with their explanation. To prevent inflation, the Federal Reserve (a private consortium of the nation's biggest and boldest banks) slowed the economy, altho' the boom has not reached everybody. The Fed raised their lending rate six times over the past 12 months - and delivered the opposite of what they had promised. While inflation had been 2.7% last year (doubling prices in 27 years), now it's at 3.7% for the first half of this year (doubling prices in 19 years). (NYTNS, July 28 in The Oregonian)

If a more costly input - oil, labor, capital, or land - could cause inflation, we would have discovered perpetual motion. To pay for more costly oil, you'd raise what you charge your customers. To pay you more, they'd raise what they charge. To pay them, others would charge more ad infinitum, never slacking but always gathering speed. Yet the rise in prices slows, even stops and reverses, since some people, instead of being able to pass on higher costs, must simply pay them and make do with less discretionary income. There was a time when coal was king, as essential as oil. When the coal barons gouged their customers, economists did not cry inflation; people merely paid more.

Of the four, the input that comes closest to the actual cause of inflation (more money than goodies) is the last. More costly land forces buyers to borrow more; granting loans is how banks issue new notes. Despite sky-high land costs, inflation has been kept at bay by the torrential outflow of dollars via trade and tourism and the use of dollars as the official and quasi-official currency in unstable economies, e.g. Ecuador.

Talking about inflation and the non-problem of rising wages keeps attention off a real problem, debt for land. In New York, recent zoning changes enhanced the value of building sites. A 17,500 square-foot lot in Chelsea bought for $5 million in 1998 just sold for $13 million. The cost of housing has gone thru the roof. There are waiting lists to pay $1 million and more for lofts overlooking the Holland Tunnel exit. Warehouses and factories that rented for $1 a square food in the 1960s now sell as condominiums for $500 to $800 a square foot. In downtown Cincinnati, the rent for a two-bedroom townhouse with deck is $800 a month. (The New York Times real estate section July 30)

With progress comes poverty, as Henry George noted over a century ago. High-paying work has driven up home prices twice the rate of inflation and rental prices 1.5 times the inflation rate. Houses affordable to poor families declined 370,000 units (5%) from 1991 to 1997, says The State of the Cities 2000 report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Rather than simply collect then disburse to residents this rise in land value, the HUD bureaucrats suggest more government programs of subsidized rents, public housing, job training, and housing vouchers with no ideas for how to pay for such largesse. (AP, Jun 14 via Georgist News)

Americans borrow more than ever. Households owe $6.5 trillion, up 60% from five years ago. US nonfinancial corporations owe a record $4.5 trillion, up 67%. The value of corporate "junk bonds" outstanding, $173 billion a decade ago, has soared to $529 billion. Some 5.4% of US companies with junk bonds defaulted on interest payments in the past 12 months - up from over 1% in 1997. Low-credit borrowers took on $40 billion of "subprime" mortgage loans, 4% of total mortgages in 1993; they took on more than $160 billion last year, almost four times as much. Over 40% of new home mortgages are extended to homebuyers who put down less than 10%. SMR Research estimates that at least Ľ, maybe more, of all new mortgagors are "basically broke". (Wall Street Journal, July 5; thanks to Edward J. Dodson, Director, School of Cooperative Individualism, www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/5148) To reduce debt, change land from something we buy, which requires borrowing, to something we lease; even poor people afford a monthly rental payment. Less debt precludes any coming crash, besides halting inflation.

As long as there's been a US, the US has made land or housing cheap. It's to help everyone become homeowners, yet it also helps the ambitious become land speculators. The latest instance is flipping - constantly reselling the same building to generate fees. The flipper's mortgage payment is guaranteed by low-cost insurance backed by the US taxpayer, says the Government Accounting Office (GAO). Without the cheap insurance, dealers couldn't buy and flip. The Department of Housing & Urban Development, responsible for the insurance program, claimed the flipping goes on without their help. (The Olympian, July 2) Other real estate giveaways don't even pretend to benefit the poor. The swaps by the US Forest Service with the likes of Weyerhauser of their stumps for our woods, says the GAO, leaves the taxpayer with the short end of the stick. (The Oregonian, July 13)

For even more bias for big business, see this year's Green Scissors just out. This report by Friends of the Earth and assorted fiscal conservatives in Washington, DC lists the billions in the budget - all 50 of them - that funds eco-ploitation. Cutting these expenditures would save both money and the planet it rode in on. (www.foe.org/eco/scissors2000)

Once exhausted, fish stock cannot recover. Even if not one more canary rockfish were caught, it'd take from 26 to 37 years for the population to build back up. To give species a chance to recover, the US National Fisheries wants to cut the Pacific fleet by up to 70%. (The Olympian, July 2) This decision by a political agency would have already been taken by the market, if government had all along kept the fee for a fishing license at market value. As soon as fish started to get scarce, the fee would rise, and some fishermen would drop out, before the fishing stock could be depleted. Instead, we don't charge people when they deplete resources. Afterwards, we pay them. The US wants to compensate the grounded fishermen. What will those out-of-work fishermen do? Maybe whatever they had in mind after they had exhausted the oceans, but sooner, leaving some fish for our progeny. The transition to other work loses its trauma when fishermen, and all of us, receive not one-time compensation but a constant Citizens Dividend, fattened by the costlier licenses to harvest fish and all natural resources.

While life would go on without one more fish species, the sum total of our depleting and polluting leaves us an environment that challenges radiant health and beauty. In the developed, industrial world, asthma and allergies increased 80% during the 90s. Now over 1/5 of First Worlders have asthma or an allergy. (The Oregonian, July 19)

Rep. Mel Hancock (MO), speaking at the hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives, July 16, 1996, said p 85, "Even more important than the way the federal tax applies to development of real estate (is a reform) called land value taxation."

Ralph Nader, Green Party candidate for president (actually, for 5% of the vote, enabling the GP to receive federal funds next campaign), broke bread with geonomists in Philly. In his subsequent speech at U of Penn, Ralph stressed the shift of taxes from values we make to values we take. (GroundSwell, Mar-Apr) Thru-out his career, he founded many organizations that recommended both the tax shift and the subsidy shift (subsidize goods, not bads). Ralph raises the issue of the income gap, but not the solution of a Citizens Dividend, preferring the safer minimum wage boost.

Other candidates who explicitly campaign on a platform to shift the property tax from buildings to locations are Meta Heller, Democrat running for governor of Washington, and Dr. Fred Foldvary (California) and Wayne Parker (Mississippi), Libertarians running for US Congress. Their respective campaign web sites are: http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/foldvary2000 and http://members.aol.com/parker4congress.

Brookings Institution's recent Review contains "Nothing left to Lose: Only Radical Strategies Can Help America's Most Distressed Cities" by Edward Hill and Jeremy Nowak who say: "Cities should replace the business property tax with a tax on the market value of land (to) encourage businesses to place as much capital on property as is economically justifiable. … The land component of the residential property tax should be assessed on an equal basis with the business land tax, again providing incentives to develop in neighborhoods with low land values, as well as preventing speculative land banking." (From Jake Himmelstein via Ed Dodson)

In the UK's Town and Country Planning Association (tcpa@tcpa.org.uk) 2000 report, "A Taxing Question: the contribution of economic instruments to planning objectives", Bob Evans & Richard Bate urge ""the Government (to) seriously examine the case for establishing a system of land value taxation in the UK."

Our list of notable greens on taxing only land now totals 101. In Taking Its Toll: The Hidden Costs of Sprawl in Washington State, published by Climate Solutions and Sierra Club Cascade Chapter in Olympia (WA), Patrick Mazza (former Portlander) and Eben Fodor (current Oregonian) write, "eliminate property taxes on buildings altogether and tax land exclusively. This would encourage property owners to make improvement, while discouraging speculative holding of land …"

Aldous Huxley and Ernest Callenbach both said that if they had heard of the tax shift beforehand, they would have included it in their classic novels. Now Brian Czech (http://homestead.juno.com/brianczech) writes geoist Adam Monroe, "If I had read Dr. Mason Gaffney's Corruption of Economics prior to writing Shoveling Fuel, I also would have had a lot more to say about Henry George. After reading Corruption and a paper by Bill Batt from New York, I can see the connection of Georgist to ecological economics." (July 15)

In New Statesman & Society, David Boyle last millennium (1994 Oct 7) promoted both the collection of rent and its disbursement to residents while quoting James Robertson, former British Cabinet advisor and Europe's most notable geonomist. Boyle's article was sandwiched ironically between one on the Green Party sans green economics and one on the Labor Party seeking new ideas everywhere but beneath their feet.

Property In a Humane Economy by Samuel L. Blumenfeld, Ed., has a chapter by George I. Mavrodes, which previously appeared in The Personalist in summer of 1972, who proposed "opportunity grants" on page 205 paid to everybody from collected rents.

After World War II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the ruler of Japan during the US military occupation, hired a professor out of Columbia, Carl Shoup, who died March 23, to help rewrite Japan's tax code. MacArthur agreed with economist Henry George about the role of land in development. Hence the new constitution reversed the portions for owners and tenants; the latter went from paying 2/3 of their harvest to keeping it. The new rules paved the way for Japan's miraculous economic recovery. James Michener in his novel Hawaii based a character on Shoup implementing the land tax in Japan. The New York Times' lengthy obit quoted Shoup's colleague, Geonomy Society Advisor C. Lowell Harris, emeritus Columbia, but omitted Shoup's Georgism. ("All the news fit to print"?)

Japan could use a reminder today. Land prices follow the Peter Principle; like managers rising to their own level of incompetence, land costs rise to their own level of unaffordability. Once land values reach an upper echelon, speculators are reluctant to accept a lower bid, preferring to wait. A decade ago, all Japan cost as much as four Americas. In 1999, their land prices fell for the eighth straight year, this time by 7% to 146,000 yen ($1,339) per square meter (11 square feet). Japan's most expensive piece of land, before the Kyukyodo stationery store in Tokyo's swanky Ginza shopping district, cost per square-meter $107,156. Japanese producers, who spent the last decade in economic limbo, still wait for land prices to drop to affordable levels. (The Associated Press, Aug 4, thanks to Ed Dodson, above)

In 1798, the nouveau Republic of France paid for 80% of its budget out of collected land rent. Might this tapping into the flow of rent, as much as any other revolutionary reform, have motivated Europe's monarchs, whose fortunes were little more than concentrations of land rent, to attack France en masse? If the monarchies had left France in peace, might The Revolution have been less bloody? Might the whole world now be geonomic or physiocratic as it was called back then? One heir apparent actually speeded up his ascension so that he could implement physiocracy. In Denmark, the crown prince bloodlessly overthrew his uncle, the king, then ended serfdom, proclaimed tenants' rights, and helped peasants become owners. He also proposed reforming the land tax so that its amount was geared to site value, not size (as was traditional thru-out Europe). His reform finally became law in 1844, giving Denmark the widest distribution of titles to land in Europe, a distinction the nation has held since. (Visit or order our "Where Tax Reform Has Worked".) Back in France, in 1807 Napoleon's government crafted a tax on the increase in land value to be levied when parcels were sold but never applied the law (probably due to war, also why England never applied its land tax law a century later). By 1830, rent as revenue was down to 25%. In 1980, France still collected enough rent to fund 13% of its budget, more than do many other far less successful nations. May France's physiocracy rise again? (Vincent Renaud in Lincoln Institute monograph #82-3; Land taxation and land use; Papers presented at the Advanced Research Institute Workshop on Land Policy as a Tool for Planning, July 16-19, 1981, La Napoule, France; Laconte, editor.

After tax revolts, are you looking for ways to fill those huge holes in public budget? Copy old Kansas City. The Wall Street Journal in 1988 ran a letter from GeoSoc member Joe Casey that cited KC, Joe's home in the 70s. Back in the 1950s under the leadership of Mayor Bartels, the city used straw parties to secretly buy up half of Platte County (then rural farmland) for an airport. (Hong Kong uses land rent to fund their new metro). The city leased sites around its new airport (opened in 1972) at full market value for hotels, warehouses, an aircraft overhaul base, postal distribution center, etc - even to farmers. Outside airport land, investors bought land and built hotels. When the 1970s recession hit, all the hotels buying land went broke while the hotels renting city land survived. Able to learn, some big hotel chains survived the crash at the end of the 80s by separating the hotel real estate into REITs apart from corporate hotel operators.

In the 1950s, the mayor (Bartels?) strongly supported taxing site value. When the city charter was revised in the 1950s, the site-value tax was included. KC's land taxes may predate Bartels. One was for parks and parkways (pleasant streets that wend through parks in ravines) built in the 1930s. Another was for trafficways, multilane throughways that move traffic with synchronized traffic lights built in the 1940s or 1950s. To fund boulevards (thru streets with synchronized lights that preceded the trafficways) KC levied a "front-foot" tax rate on each lot's front footage on the boulevard. This is close to a land value basis because all the boulevards are straight and in a grid street pattern. In the 1980s, voters approved by referendum doubling the land tax rates. In Missouri, speculators challenged the land taxes as against the state requirement for all real estate taxes to be levied on the value of land and buildings. The court ruled that the land taxes were "special assessments" and not subject to the state requirements for taxes.

"Pave paradise, put up another parking lot." Or put up something a bit more productive. Hawaii had hotels headed their way; they'd either be poorly placed and built, or well-placed and well-built. Aiming for the latter results, Honolulu shifted from a conventional property tax to a tax only on site value. Within a few years, this property tax reform led to 30 large resort hotels in Waikiki Beach. Built value was up to 25% more than it would have been, concluded Richard Pollack and Donald C. Shoup in Land Economics 53, no 1 (1977), p 67-77.

Rather than review one title, we invite you to peruse our bibliography of scholarly works that addressed the question of the impact of taxing land rent on urban settlement patterns. Academics split about 50-50, with another 10% coming to both conclusions, sometimes in the same sentence. Most authors used models, a few cited empirical data. Most noted a need for more data, yet few fostered a political climate in which a jurisdiction might be emboldened to try the Property Tax Shift from the conventional to land-value taxation (LVT). The list of 40 books and articles with abstracts and feedback is available online or from us. Just write, e-mail, or call.

Ben Lear, website visitor, July 26, asks: "Down here in Contra Costa County, CA, there is a movement to stop new development and put a lock on the remaining open space. However, there is a tremendous influx of new residents looking to work in the new businesses here. I know you would have these people live in high-density housing such as large apartments but is this what the people want? I know I would love to have a home in the suburbs, but I cannot afford such a treat and as more and more people bid on these homes their prices go up and up. Unfortunately, so do the rents on apartment units. What does the geonomist see as a reasonable and doable alternative? By the way, I used to live in Portland, OR and I know that prices are going up there as well."

Most people cannot afford to live in town (so somebody wants to live there). The 'burbs are more attractive than they should be since expansion of the infrastructure is not born only by those who need it expanded - newcomers - old-stayers pick up part of the tab, too. Also, towns can't live up to their potential as lively places for face-to-face interaction, gutted as they are by wide streets, parking lots, and cross town freeways for cars driven by suburbanites. Were people to move in and leave their cars behind, you wouldn't notice them. Americans love European cities; they're people-dense, not car-dense (tho' it's worsening). Charge only drivers for roads, crashes, smog, etc; they'd replace their mobility with accessibility, with being near jobs and shops and the things that make civilization fun, like parks and theatres. Collect rent, impelling efficient use of land. Owners would in-fill urban areas and transform suburbs into edge cities small enough to pedal and walk around. To drive a longer distance, residents could hire a car. Until we quit favoring sprawl and cars, we don't know how necessary - if at all - the command and control approach is. What people want depends on what options they're offered. (See our "Will sprawl for rent" and "Metro smog vs. mass transit".)

Remembering his childhood, Mark Twain said he didn't have enough time to both go to school and get an education. George Bernard Shaw said the only time his education was interrupted was when he was in school. Albert Einstein said it was a miracle human curiosity survived public education. All three critics also had kind things to say about Henry George, last century's proto-geonomist.

Geonomics, to end distortion of price, would replace taxes with fees and subsidies with a Citizens Dividend. We'd even end subsidies to schools, an institution that is costing more and teaching less, according to the National Association of Scholars. Schools would no longer be public but become private. From the CD, we'd pay for teachers directly; parents could choose those who best meet their kids' needs.

Now we arrest innocent children for six hours a day, five days a week, nine months a year, to teach or to keep them out of our hair? In competition, schools would use new, effective techniques to become as fun as amusement parks. Learning is fun for infants, and used to be for older children in pre-agrarian societies where they pestered parents, uncles, aunts, older siblings to include them, to show them how to do things, to satisfy their burgeoning curiosity. In a Geonomy, adults would have time for children. If learning stays fun, kids would clamor to get into school, as into a video arcade today. Instead of running away to a circus, it'd be to a school.

Would the kids of irresponsible parents get educated? Cynically, one could reply that they're not taught now; they're just babysat. If irresponsible parents did not pay tuition for their kids, the community could dock the parents' CD, just as now we garner for child support. Twain and friends were just ahead of their times.

Presented in February at Portland State. In April in Brazil at the IV Biennial Eco-Cities Conference. Brazil already has a land tax; they need a higher rate, like the 6.8% some South African towns charge. Thanks to the Robert Schalkenbach Fdn for funding. In April in Mexico after a rally for Vicente Fox met the local PAN leaders. My Mexican Green friends do get to talk to Fox himself. In Mexico, the major parties challenging the established PRI need the backing of a minor party to appear broad and inclusive; the major candidates campaign with the candidates and insignia of lesser parties. PAN's partner is the Mexican Green Party. May in Mexico in the resort of Zihuatanejo (where President Zedillo will retire) to the local well-connected environmental group, Viva Bahia. (Full reports available) Want to see the show? Invite us to present to your group or event. Copies of the the above talks are available. Same with below.

"Unplugging Abundance, The Citizens Dividend" appears in the Proceedings of the World Congress on The Global Community. From the time the Preliminary Program was uploaded on the website in January 22, 2000, to the end of February, there were 44,000 visitors who have printed out text for a total of 143 MB. Join the discussion at http://members.home.net/global2000

Our web page articles spurred readers to say:
Apr 12. "I hope you don't mind me putting those 20 case studies of where real tax reform has worked on my page. On second reading they are really great. I have also put links to the Geonomy Society and Citizen's Dividend page, which are also looking good." Stephen Bint, English cyclist. We now have 24 case summaries.

May 5. "Visiting a lot (your) home page, I have read most of your articles. (They) are interesting. I would like to read more about the 20 cases where PTS worked (now 24). Could you suggest how different zones should be taxed to secure a fairness and efficiency? I support your ideas and would like to apply (them) in my home country. In your paper 'Giving Life to the Property Tax Shift' you mention Georgists in Estonia. Please provide me with their contact data." Tea Nommann, Assistant Professor, Concordia Intenational University, Estonia

May 15. "I've just visited your site and I am so impressed." Emer O'Siochru, an executive, Consumers Association of Ireland, and on the steering group for Feasta, Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability (www.feasta.org or .sustainable.buz.org/feasta_pages/)

Jun 10. "Jeff, this is an excellent piece of writing - skillfully crafted!" Bill Batt, Ph.D., tax researcher.

Jun 12, to Bill Batt (above). "This IS an interestingly written article, but I tried to look up "geonomic," in regard to Pittsburgh, and couldn't find it in three dictionaries. (Spellcheck suggested "gnomic" as an alternative!) Also, what are "keep-out-snout houses"? But yes, I do think it's skillfully written, in my humble opinion." Dr. Kate Duncan.

Jun 4. "I took the liberty of introducing you as a member by posting the land use piece and pointing people to your site. I thought it was very well done." Ed Clarke, PhD Chicago, Office of Management & Budget The piece is due out in August in Planning and Markets www-pam.usc.edu, a fully refereed journal edited by Jim Moore, Assoc Prof, and Peter Gordon, Prof, Dir, Master of Real Estate Development Program, School of Policy, Dept Economics, U Southern California.

Our article in Terrain: Journal on Built and Natural Environments www.terrain.org last summer still elicits interest: "I am teaching a seminar on environmental tax policy this fall at Vermont Law School and would like to reproduce "Suburbonomics: Harnessing Land Values To Transform Sprawl", which would be extremely useful to students as they consider ways in which property tax systems can be used to achieve environmental protection." Prof. Janet Milne, Vermont Law School

"Giving Life to the Property Tax", which was commissioned by San Francisco's Redefining Progress and which appears in our website, drew this feedback: Feb 13. "I linked this paper on my "community" page. One editor said that it helps to give life to the page. I'm probably due for annual dues. Let me pay my taxes first." Ed Clarke, Ph.D., OMB (above) Jul 14. "CONGRATULATIONS!!!! Great writing! Excellent introduction and organization. I must give a copy to Jim Shouse, the local columnist. It's going to be great fun working with you." Steve Porter, Olympia (WA), former candidate for state legislature.

Apr 26. "Can you email the geoist amendment to the US Constitution? We want to use it in our computer games." Craig M. Collins, Technician, University of Illinois at Chicago

After our presentation in Brazil in April, Ruben Pesci, president of Mesa Directiva, and editor of a glossy new architectural magazine in both Spanish and Portuguese for all South America, requested and was delivered a 1500 word article in Spanish and English on the benefits to buildings when they're not taxed but the value of the land beneath them is shared. (copies available)

In the Mexican city of Zihuatanejo, the prominent local group Viva Bahia in May requested a plan for repaying a multi-million dollar loan from the US Im-Ex Bank to clean up the bay and used water; the resultant rise in rent is now their target. (copies available)

May, in the Mexican city of Zihuatanejo, after our presentation, the local paper ran an article on the Property Tax Shift and the popular local talk radio show did a program on same.

The Olympian, the daily paper in the capital of the State of Washington, letter to the editor July 18, "Let the market dictate the uses of property":

"Ordinarily, land-use planners have as much use for markets as generals do for anarchists. Yet markets can make life for planners much easier. Not today's markets skewed as they are by taxes, subsidies, and -- most subtly -- by the private retention of publicly generated land rent… (copies available)

John Fisher, Canadian Green candidate, Apr: "Really enjoy The Geonomist and so it appears do a few Ontario Greens. Keep up the good work. Enclosed is a small donation for the cause!

Mason Gaffney, UC-Riverside, Economics, Mar: "State Tax Notes, a newsletter, published weekly by Tax Analysts, has a few thousand subscribers who pay $999 a year for it (more likely, get their agencies to pay). At that price, I assume they read it. Feb 14 it published 'Why Sales Taxes?', the notes for a short talk on why not to tax e-commerce that leads up to a pitch for LVT."

Tom Greco, author of books on issuing new money, Apr: "Thanks for the latest issue of the Geonomist. It's excellent. I will be sending you a small check within the next couple days. I'll also be adding your website as a link from mine. More power to you."

Ansje Miller, Research Associate, Redefining Progress, May: "It is fine for you to post the scoping paper (you wrote for us) on your website. By the way, you've been doing a great job of getting the issues out there. Keep up the great work!"

Michael Neil, California health products, Apr: "Thank you for your continuing work! PS: Don't need the promo items." Thanks for the help and saving us some paraphernalia.

John Rohrbach, PennFuture, June: "I enjoyed your email and aim to make the Property Tax Shift a priority on our second iteration of our tax report. Can you give me your web site?"

Chris Thacker, Missouri student, June: "I am a frequent reader of The Geonomist and a frequent visitor of the web site. Occasionally I notice guest essays. My enclosed paper is an introduction to economics and Georgist thought with some interesting information. Do as you please with it." It's on its way to our webmaster.

Ireland: "My house bought in 1986 for 43,000 K is now worth 500,000 K! House prices have gone up on average of 20% for 6 years. Growth is 7-12%; interest rates are low. Ireland has no property taxes on residential or agricultural land and cut its Capital Gains Tax on developable land to 20%. A public tribunal is uncovering the sleazy links between developers and politicians in local planning. We propose an annual tax of developable land. This would wipe out speculation, land scarcity, and political bribery. We hope to have a conference on the housing crisis in late September 2000. Can you suggest a speaker? Your help is already bearing fruit!" Emer O'Siochru, CAI and Feasta (above)

Estonia: "Estonia is an opportunity. We are having difficulties raising revenues from traditional sources. Politicians are looking for new solutions. Giving back, substituting, or making up the property that was taken away by Soviet occupation regime is not ended. Realizing land as a revenue source may hasten the process. Our government is merging 274 municipalities, cities, and settlements into fewer than half. The number of inhabitants of these new municipalities determines tax revenue from their incomes. I am going to write a short article for our biggest daily newspaper about land tax developments elsewhere. I will contact these numerous contacts you've sent and set up a network for study projects or an international conference." Tea Nommann, Asst Prof, Concordia Intenational U, Estonia

Argentina: Miguel A. Rementeria, CIMA Secretary of the Forum of Buenos Aires, requested more information on geonomics as a prelude to a conference. The article in Pesci's architectural magazine (above) should generate interest. Alfredo Armando Aguirre, author and peronista, noted the overlap between peronism and geonomics (land value as a common heritage). He also made contact with Hector Sandler, an Air Force officer well-known in Argentina for his stand against the military dictatorship and well-known among geonomists around the world for his geonomic institute.

Earth: The world can soon breathe a sigh of relief. The first book on geonomics by this editor is now almost finished. It uses humor and vignettes to present the big picture of how the flow of rent shapes our world for better or worse. It's a new view that should shift the prevailing paradigm. Care to edit this draft? Contact us.

For ordering literature, thanks to Mike Nickerson of Canada who ordered 20 top items. For a list of 50 items, just ask. For joining and rejoining, thanks to Arlen Bass (osteopath of southern California), John Fisher (Canadian Green), Hamlet Hilpert (retired naval officer in Washington State and oft-published letter writer), Schera Chadwick & Ted Lollis (Pennsylvania), John A. Morales (Missouri), Michael A. Neil (health practicioner of southern California), Heather Remoff (Pennsylvania), and Christopher Thacker (Missouri student).

Visit our website. Order an article or three. Join! Sign up others! Persuade foundations to support us. Come to a meeting. Organize meetings, lobbying, letter-writing campaigns to editors and elected officials. Invite us out to present our show. Then in your spare time, smile for the camera and run for president.

Weigh our worth. It is on the wings of donations that awareness spreads. And the sooner the word gets out, the sooner the world gets well. Thanks.

THE GEONOMIST

Vol. 9, No. 1
Editor: Jeffery J. Smith

THE GEONOMIST

Vol. 9, No. 1 Editor: Jeffery J. Smith

Vol. 9, No. 1
Editor: Jeffery J. Smith