Gary Flomenhoft

Overview

Gary Flomenhoft is an American ecological economist and public-policy researcher whose work centers on the ownership and governance of common wealth — valuing the economic rent of natural and social commons and returning it to the public through trusts, sovereign wealth funds, and citizen's dividends. He spent eleven years on the faculty of the University of Vermont (Lecturer in Applied Economics, Renewable Energy, International Development, and Public Policy in Community Development and Applied Economics/Natural Resources), with a secondary appointment as Research Associate and Fellow at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics under director Robert Costanza. He later moved to Australia as an International Post-Graduate Research Scholar and Centennial Scholar at the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, Sustainable Minerals Institute, University of Queensland, where he received his PhD in political economy in May 2020 (thesis: An inquiry into the economic commonwealth of mineral resources: does ownership matter?) and has held a Research Fellow position; he remains an Affiliate Fellow of the Gund Institute.

Contributions

• The Vermont common-assets valuation. For seven years Flomenhoft directed the grant-funded Vermont Green Tax and Common Assets Project at the Gund Institute, whose flagship output he edited and co-wrote: Valuing Common Assets for Public Finance in Vermont (2008), the first US state-level inventory of common-asset rents — finding roughly $1.2 billion/year in uncollected rent, enough for a $1,972 annual dividend to every Vermonter. He originated the Vermont Common Assets Trust (VCAT) bill, submitted to the Vermont legislature twice, and co-authored the project's peer-reviewed statement, "The Vermont Common Assets Trust" (with Joshua Farley, Robert Costanza, and Daniel Kirk, Ecological Economics 109, 2015).
• Exporting the Alaska model. His chapter "Applying the Alaska Model in a Resource-Poor State: The Example of Vermont" appears in the Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard edited volume Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 85–107), arguing that even states without oil can fund an Alaska Permanent Fund-style dividend from land, water, spectrum, and other commons.
• Australian rent accounting for basic income. He tallied Australia's total economic rents as a basic-income funding source in "Total Economic Rents of Australia as a Source for Basic Income," in Richard Pereira (ed.), Financing Basic Income: Addressing the Cost Objection (Palgrave, 2017), updated as "Total Economic Rents in Australia as a Source for Basic Income" in the 2023 edition of Financing Basic Income (pp. 95–117) — work in the same family as Prosper Australia's Total Resource Rents of Australia.
• Advising later inventories. He is an acknowledged contributor (credited as "Gary Flomenhoft, PhD, Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, University of Vermont") to Common Wealth Canada's working paper Natural Common Wealth and Economic Rent in Canada (2023), which benchmarks its land-rent method against his Vermont study.
• Vermont public banking. His 2013 report on Vermont public banking supported the "10% for Vermont" legislation passed in 2014, which allocated $35 million of state funds to local investment. [Per his own UVM biography; not independently verified against the legislation.]

See Also

• Valuing Common Assets for Public Finance in Vermont · Alaska Permanent Fund · Karl Widerquist · Peter Barnes · Citizen's Dividend

Sources

1. Gary Flomenhoft's UVM homepage and biography (uvm.edu/~gflomenh) — fetched directly — used for affiliations (UVM faculty years, Gund Institute fellowship under Costanza, UQ scholar/Research Fellow, PhD May 2020, Affiliate Fellow status), the seven-year direction of the Green Tax and Common Assets Project, the VCAT bill, and the public-banking claim (A-claims; self-description).
2. Vermont Green Tax and Common Assets Project (2008), Valuing Common Assets for Public Finance in Vermont — UVM PDF, fetched directly; the report names Flomenhoft as project director and instructor/editor — used for the 2008 study's findings ($1.2 billion/year in uncollected rent; $1,972 annual dividend) and Flomenhoft's role in it (A-claims). Full research page: Valuing Common Assets for Public Finance in Vermont.
3. Bibliographic records verified via Crossref: "Applying the Alaska Model in a Resource-Poor State" (DOI: 10.1057/9781137031655_6, Exporting the Alaska Model, 2012); "Total Economic Rents of Australia as a Source for Basic Income" (DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-54268-3_4, 2017) and the 2023 version (DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-29012-1_5); Farley, Costanza, Flomenhoft & Kirk (2015), Ecological Economics (DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.10.016); PhD thesis (DOI: 10.14264/uql.2020.776, University of Queensland, 2020). — used for the bibliographic details of the publications listed under Contributions (A-claims).
4. Common Wealth Canada (2023), Natural Common Wealth and Economic Rent in Canada — acknowledgements page, verified against the primary PDF; credits Flomenhoft's input — used for the claim that he is an acknowledged contributor to the Canadian inventory (A-claim).