What happens when you go for a job interview?

What goes on when you interview for a job? I think the first thing the interviewer has in mind is: "What can this person do for our company?" They size you up and guess that you can contribute a value to the company that they convert to dollars per hour. Then, assuming that they calculate a positive value, they have to figure out what it will cost them to hire you. Some of the costs will be the furniture you need, the share of the building you will need, and the share of the land that building occupies that you will need, and the additional taxes they will need to pay if you are hired. All of these things can be calculated in term of dollars per hour. They then have to figure: this person is worth, say, $20 per hour to our company; it will cost about $1 per hour for furniture, $3 per hour for building and tool rent and $3 an hour for land rent (including parking) and $3 an hour in extra taxes our company will pay. So that means that the most I can offer this person is ($20 - $1 -$3 - $3 -$3) or $10 per hour, and not lose money on them. See the graphs here and here. Now, what if, the government collected the land rent as tax, rather than taxing work activities. That would mean that the employer would pay the land rent and the tax concurrently. (kind of like serving a two jail sentences concurrently) This is possible because the person who is now collecting land rent is not producing anything, he is just a title-holder, an idle noble. So if the government takes over this function, it can not only give you back more of the benefit of your work, but will reduce the burden on this person who is thinking about hiring you. In that case the employer can offer you $20 - $1 -$3 - $3 or $13 per hour.

Often the person or organization which owns that land is also the one that owns the building and the tools, but the effect is the same as if it were two people: as building owner he is receiving compensation for something he has provided or has traded his labor with someone for, but as land owner he is getting something for producing nothing, since land is a gift of Nature/God/Higher Power, not the result of any human effort.

If you think that the fact that land value is close to building value seems inaccurate, I took the numbers from the relative value of an office building in Cameron Village in Raleigh: the building is valued at $1.7 million, the land at $1.5.

What you produce belongs to you; what no human produces belongs to everyone.

The graph can be downloaded as Powerpoint or Open Office (Simpress) so you can slide the Tax and Land-rent parts together. Open Office is free, available here.

Integrated, Neighborhood Schools; possible?

I just realized that one of my favorite authors, Jane Jacobs, in her book, "The Death and Birth of Great American Cities", stated that the one of the biggest obstacles to affordable, integrated, housing and integrated cities is the combination of zoning laws and neighborhood covenants. I would add to this Socialized Parking supported by Parking Requirements.

For a start, check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs#The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities

or

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities

You can also see comments on her book at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=F4NHAAAAMAAJ&q=jane+jacobs&dq=jane+jacobs&ei=Z_-US8LCEYqukASRroDiDQ&cd=1

Integrated Schools or Neighborhood Schools?

There has been a great deal of discussion in our county on whether the Wake County should abandon the program that buses children from their neighborhoods to schools in other neighborhoods in order to maintain balance of children from more well-to-do families and those from less well-to-do families.

I believe that it is possible to work for Integrated Neighborhood schools. That would imply that we have neighborhoods that are integrated economically. So the question is: what is it that keeps neighborhoods segregated economically? One of the factors is zoning and neighborhood covenants. Many of these mandate that only certain lot sizes or certain house sizes and that houses and business be built with parking privileges attached to them.

Things that need to be discussed are:
What is the purpose of zoning?
Why is it necessary?
Who is in favor of it?
Does it shut out the working poor from living in much of the city/county?
Does it, in effect, segregate?

Whose Parking do you want to Pay for?

One of the biggest uses of public land is for transportation. Since transportation is used directly or indirectly by everyone, there is usually a public policy to subsidize transportation. Usually people don't think of this subsidy, unless they are talking about mass transit: the subsidy to transit is mentioned, while the subsidy to private automobiles is ignored. Some of the examples of subsidy to private automobiles are: the land used for roads and parking is not taxed; the pollution and congestion that automobiles cause is not paid for by the motorist, but by the population in general, whether they so pollute or not; the tax on new cars (at least here in NC) is less than the tax paid on other items.

Another large subsidy to automobiles is mandated parking: a person who wants to build a house or business must provide parking, usually for the worst case that that business or house would need. This ensures that many businesses do not open and many houses are not built, because the owner or builder doesn't have the land available to provide it, or cannot afford to provide the $15,000 or so per parking space that a parking deck would cost. Those who do provide this mandated parking simply add that cost to the cost of their product, so that everyone who patronizes that business or buys that house, has the cost of parking added to their bill, whether they use the parking or not. This ensures that people will drive even if they could walk, bike, car-pool, or take transit, because they perceive that driving is so cheap. This in-turn creates more demand for street widening, and subsidized parking.

So the question is: whose parking do you want to pay for? If we have mandated parking requirements for businesses or residential units, this will mean that you will pay for everyone's parking, whether you use it or not. Worse than that, mandated parking means that housing is less affordable, because the price of a parking space is included in the unit, whether the person needs it or not. The has a disastrous effect on people of lower income, who see the cost of housing increase as more requirements are put on housing.

Donald Shoup has written extensively on this topic; he has spoken here in Raleigh and his talk is available here.

The Jubilee

One of the most interesting concepts of the Bible is that of the Jubilee. It's an event that happens every fifty years, and is found in the book of Leviticus Chapter 25. The chapter expresses a concern, not about "Law", but about People, especially those who are apt to be taken advantage of. Two main points are Freedom for Slaves, and return of Land to its original owners. These two concepts are related. The person who has control over the land that another person works, or lives on, has partial control over that person; a partial slavery. The idea is that Land is very different from selling the work of our labor for several reasons: Land is a Gift from God, and Land is Forever. The Jubilee is, in effect, a kind of continual land reform. Land is not a commodity that can be bought and sold. It is an inherent right of all people. Interesting that this concept is several thousand years old, yet has been mostly ignored in the living out of religious values.

Land Value Taxation is a way of accomplishing this continual Land Reform, by making sure that all people have a share of the land, or its income. The Jubilee also warns us against thinking that we can abuse our environment: the land is to rest every seven years.

What is the goal of (Landsharing, Geonomics, Land Value Taxation) ?

The purpose of shifting taxes from taxes on buildings, wages, sales, to a tax on land, is to give all people an equal share of the earth's land or the rental income from that.

One way to think of it is that there are two pies.
One pie consists of all the land in the world, in the sense of all natural opportunities, including land, air, water, radio spectrum. The land has a rental value. This rental value for land, for example, can be found out by seeing what someone is willing to pay for a given parcel of land. This is often done with long-term leases. Air has a social cost which is the cost to battle the effects of pollution of that air. This "pie" is a gift of God/Nature which belongs to everyone in the world. If someone uses more than their share, they are indebted to the rest of humankind for that use. If we collected all the rent in an area (precinct, city, county, country) and divided and distributed it to all the permanent residents of that area, that would satisfy that debt. One effect of this tax or land rent collection would be to encourage frugal use of land, leaving more for others and for Nature to rejuvenate itself and protect our environment. It also allows communities to set up parks and beaches for the recreation of all.

The other pie represents what humans produce. Examples would be a worker's labor, a doctor's services, the production and showing of a movie, food. This "pie" is due to the individual's or organization's efforts and should not be taxed or divided. It takes nothing away from the common good. It does not need to be taxed. This encourages all people to work efficiently.

The folly of Socialism and Communism is that they try to divide both pies, taking away incentive to work. To the extent that democratic governments tax wages, buildings, and other work, they also destroy incentive to work. To the extent that governments leave land untaxed, they encourage land speculation and they encourage attempts to acquire more land than we need, leaving less for those who need it.

This does not have to be done in the whole world or entire country at once. Many cities in this country and others have instituted a two-tier real estate tax, whereby land is taxed at a higher rate than buildings. Examples are Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Sydney, Australia. The result has been an increase in economic activity and the presence of more affordable housing. See: http://www.progress.org/geonomy/geono05.php

Social Cost

One of the concepts that we need to understand is that of social cost, that is the cost of certain activities that is born not born by the person doing the activity, but by the public in general, particularly the public in the area where the activity take place. An example of this would be the cost of pollution, which is often not born by the polluter, but by those who live in the area, especially people who are most exposed to the pollution.

One way to discourage this is by shifting taxes from being based on what people earn, spend, or have, to being based on what we pollute. Sometimes these are called green taxes, Pigovian; an example would be a carbon tax.

A land tax is an example of a green tax. It discourages buying land only for speculative purposes, since those who don't use it by building on it, or employing people one it, would have to pay more tax that what they do now. That means that taxes could be lowered on those who do use the land by building and/or employing. Land tax is also green because it encourages frugal use of land, resulting in compact growth, which means that more trips are walkable, bike-able, or would require shorter driving or transit trips.

Some other sites which advocate for Land Value Tax rather than Tax on Work are:
http://www.savingcommunities.org/
http://www.henrygeorge.org/
http://www.landreform.org/