Virtual Land

Richard Siklos Fly, be free Fly, be free The Age: Games Review Philip Rosedale, chief executive of Linden Labs, the San Francisco company that operates Second Life, says that until a few months ago only one or two real-world companies had dipped their toes in the synthetic water. But more than 30 companies are now working on projects there and dozens more are considering them. "It's taken off in a way that is kind of surreal," Mr Rosedale says. ....Linden Labs makes most of its money leasing "land" to tenants, Mr Rosedale says, at an average of roughly $US20 per month per "acre" or $US195 a month for a private "island." The land mass of Second Life is growing at about 8 per cent a month and now totals "60,000 acres", the equivalent of about 246 square kilometres in the physical world. Linden Labs, a private company, does not disclose its revenue....As many as 10,000 people are in the virtual world at a time....(a US Congressional committee is reportedly considering taxing virtual assets and incomes). ...Sony BMG is also toying with renting residences in the complex and selling music downloads that people can listen to throughout the simulated world..."Users are the content - that's the thing that everybody has a hard time getting over," says Michael Wilson, the chief executive of Makena Technologies, which operates its own virtual world, There.com.

Housing Affordability - The Other side of the debate

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Water charging system defies logic

Belfast Telegraph

22 September 2006 The decision to link water rates to the value of a home defies all logic. It seems that a system based on the actual usage of water would be fairer. I lived in Canada for 30 years and we paid our water bills based on usage plus sewer rates. I fail to see how this new system is fair if a home, valued at £100,000 with six people living in it and using more water, would pay less than a home valued at £200,000 with two elderly people. Is it not possible to install meters in every home? Taken on top of the new rates valuation system this may well force many elderly householders on fixed income to sell their homes. It's not their fault that real estate values have gone through the roof. I'll wager that if property values drop drastically you will not see a drop in your rates. For that we will have to fight them for it. S J Ross Belfast

How Government Destroys Moral Character

by Robert Higgs: "

...I thought about this matter for the umpteenth time when I read an October 15, 2006, Washington Post story by Gilbert M. Gaul, Dan Morgan, and Sarah Cohen, 'Aid Is a Bumper Crop for Farmers.' The story concerns the widespread practice of farmers' receiving, first, subsidies to purchase crop insurance, then payments from that insurance when their crops fall short, and then, on top of that payoff, additional government payments denominated 'disaster aid.' Many farmers routinely collect large amounts of money from the public treasury by means of this double-dipping – altogether they've extracted almost $24 billion from taxpayers to fund crop-insurance and disaster-aid programs since 2000. The reporters interviewed several farmers and others not only about the workings of these programs but also about their propriety. Although none of the recipients quoted in the article exactly gloated about his serial commission of the offense, none chose simply to condemn it, either. The prevailing attitude seems to be the one expressed by farmer Charles Fisher, of Tulare County, California: "Whether it's right or wrong, if they are offering it, you're foolish to turn it down." In that single sentence, Fisher has encapsulated the rotten core of the welfare state, and he has concisely expressed how such a state destroys the people's moral character. The loot is there for the taking; you're a fool not to take it, notwithstanding that your taking it may be wrong. Financial gain trumps moral probity. Don't be a chump; take the money. I don't know Charles Fisher, but if he is like a great many others who profit by despoiling their fellow man, with government acting as the facilitator of the crime, then I suspect that he is probably not the kind of man who would pocket his neighbor's wallet if he saw it fall to the ground unnoticed, and he is almost certainly not the kind of man who would wait beside the road to carry out an armed robbery of the first passer-by. Yet he will steal from countless strangers – in effect, a little bit from everyone who pays federal taxes – "whether it's right or wrong," simply to bulk up his income from farming. (Needless to say, the so-called disaster payments rarely go to anyone who has suffered a genuine disaster; like most of what the government does, this program is for the most part a sham from the get-go.) It would be tempting to attribute this agri-plunder to some idiosyncratic moral defect caused by the farmers' spending too much time in the sun. We might recall, for example, H. L. Mencken's trenchant description of the American farmer: "No more grasping, selfish and dishonest mammal, indeed, is known to students of the Anthropoidea." Unfortunately, however, the farmers are morally the same as countless others; they are simply more politically successful than most of the others. Sad to say, for every specific form of farmer swag, the government must open the door to a thousand other sorts of booty completely unrelated to agriculture. The moral rot is comprehensive, not confined to a few bad apples, and it defiles businessmen, doctors, lawyers, clergymen, students, retirees, and countless others along with the farmers. Virtually everybody has checked his morality along with his pistol at the entrance to the legislature. "The state," Frédéric Bastiat told us long ago, "is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else." If only the great man could see us now. Even he might be amazed, and appalled, by the heights to which this futile quest has been raised. In fact, this hoary fantasy arguably has become the central truth about government in our time.

"

Know it now.

St. Petersburg Times | tampabay.com "

DAVIE, Fla. (AP) -- Democrat Jim Davis and Republican Charlie Crist each promised to do something about ...property taxes if elected governor, but criticized each other's approach to the problems during their first debate Tuesday. Crist supports changing the constitution to allow voters to double the homestead exemption county by county, and to make it easier for property owners to move without paying higher taxes on their more valuable homes. But Davis said the plan would take four years to help homeowners and would come at the expense of renters and business owners. He said he would propose a $1 billion property tax cut next year that would help all home and business owners.

"

Urban Renewal's Final Implosion

washingtonpost.com: "

CITIES IN RUBBLE By Jonathan Finer Page 4 NEW HAVEN, Conn. Veterans Memorial Coliseum, which for the past three decades has occupied -- some say blighted -- a downtown block of this oft-maligned city, is expected to be demolished next month. ...When the coliseum opened in 1972, New Haven officials had hoped that the 10,000-seat stadium would usher in a more prosperous era for a city with high rates of poverty and crime. But by 2002, after too many seasons with too few paying customers, the massive building was shuttered; local authorities projected that it would lose $50 million over 10 years, and that tearing it down would cost a fraction as much. The coliseum's destruction will be a depressing coda for Urban Renewal, the controversial nationwide movement that reshaped dozens of American cities from the late 1940s through the 1970s, claiming large swaths of rundown neighborhoods for huge government public works projects. Its foremost laboratory was New Haven, where officials spent $745 per resident on urban renewal projects from the 1940s through the late '60s, more than twice as much as the next most ambitious city (Newark, $277). The coliseum was the showpiece. Urban renewal spread quickly after a 1949 housing act authorized and partly funded the taking of private land by eminent domain. Flush with federal money, states and cities rushed to adopt the model perfected by Robert Moses, a mid-20th-century power broker responsible for most of New York City's modern infrastructure of bridges and tunnels, parkways and highways. His imitators around the country seized entire neighborhoods, bulldozed them flat, and constructed new roads and grandiose civic buildings. The goal was to provide "a decent home and suitable living environment" for all Americans by demolishing downtown slums, but the result was something different. Hundreds of thousands of residents, many of them black and poor or recent immigrants, were forced out. Much of Boston ($218 per resident, third on the list), including the historic West End neighborhood, was demolished to build apartment towers, a sprawling City Hall plaza and a giant elevated highway (the recent notoriously overdue and over-budget Big Dig was a costly effort to bury that roadway). Pittsburgh ($160, fourth place) built most of its downtown "Golden Triangle" during this time. In the District ($94, eighth among U.S. cities), acres of the southwest quadrant of the city were razed and rebuilt in this manner during the 1950s, with only a few stray markets, churches and townhouses left intact. In New Haven, as elsewhere, the results were mixed at best. In a book about the city's architecture written shortly after the coliseum was built, historian Elizabeth Mills Brown wrote breathlessly of its "gigantic scale" and the spectators' "experience of sheer spatial intoxication." But long before Bob Hope crooned at the building's debut concert, locals had already begun to carp that its design was a monstrosity, drawn from an aptly named architectural movement called Brutalism. Its three-story rooftop garage cast a bizarre silhouette on the skyline, and the spiral-shaped concrete parking ramps proved difficult to navigate. Two planned department stores never really took hold, and are now vacant. Today, the area is the deadest part of New Haven. "The day it was built," the Coliseum "already almost had the feel of a ruin to it," said Douglas Rae, author of a recent book about New Haven and urban development and a professor at Yale, whose leafy Gothic campus is half a mile up the street. "It is really an appalling thing to look at." ...At a series of public hearings in recent years, backers of the coliseum pitched redevelopment plans. But toward the end of a 2003 gathering, Mayor John DeStefano Jr. took the microphone. "Be realistic," he implored. "It never created any economic activity around it. It didn't even sustain a bar on the corner." As in many Northeastern cities that were once industrial centers, the coliseum's plight was but one symptom of the city's economic crisis. Even the gun manufacturer that made New Haven famous -- the U.S. Repeating Arms Co., producers of Winchester, "the gun that won the West" -- has finally ended a 140-year association with the city by closing a factory that was once the largest local employer. It was New Haven's last remaining major manufacturer. These days, theories of urban renewal have themselves been modernized. Urban planners now advocate community-oriented approaches to development, in which residents and business and political leaders are more involved in decision-making. But New Haven officials are still in love with the Big Idea. The latest large-scale scheme to transform the city is the $230 million Gateway Downtown Development Project, slated to include a sprawling community college campus, a theater and a hotel complex. There are also plans to spruce up nearby streets with wider sidewalks and antique lampposts, in the hope of reviving street life. "The city keeps putting all of its eggs in one big basket," Rae said. "I'd be happier if they subdivided the land the coliseum is on, sold it off and aimed lower -- shoe stores, bars, that kind of thing." Beny Mezza, who runs Coliseum News, a small cafeteria across George Street from what's left of the arena, said: "Whatever they put in here, I hope it gets this place going, or I'm out." During the noon lunch hour one recent weekday, there was one customer -- an elderly man watching raptly as the lottery numbers were announced on a wall-mounted television.

McCarty says someone should sue the state over appraisals.

Boca Raton News - The Leader in Local News Online:

Published Thursday, October 19, 2006 by By John Johnston For Commissioner Mary McCarty, problems with the current property tax system can be reduced to three main issues: • People who currently receive a homestead exemption are 'trapped in their homes' because to move would mean substantially higher taxes in a market that has seen real estate prices explode over the last five years. She advocates so-called 'portability' – transfer of the homestead exemption to another property. • Home renovations are also not being done, she said, 'because of the tax hit.' • And perhaps the single largest issue in McCarty's eyes is the latitude given to property tax appraisers in application of the eight state guidelines to follow in making property appraisals. In a skyrocketing real estate market, assessing a property on the basis of its 'highest and best use' is forcing landlords to either 'increase rents, or convert to condos,' she said. There is too much property appraiser discretion,' she said, having already gone on the record recently favoring both the current use of a property and its currently income as needing more weight in Palm Beach County Appraiser Gary Nikolits' appraisal formula. McCarty's comments came earlier this week during a general discussion among county commissioners to develop positions that County Legislative Affairs Director Todd Bonlarron could then use in Tallahassee lobbying efforts to in turn amend the state constitution. The discussion eventually supported McCarty's positions, although support for an additional $25,000 homestead exemption was added to the county's wish list. Commissioner Warren Newell also pointed out a pet peeve: the 'abuse' of agricultural land tax exemptions, but on which land 'there are only 3 cows.' Asked by commissioners for his view on the current climate in Tallahassee for property tax reform Bonlarron agreed 'there are inequities across the board' in the current property tax system.' I think the state of Florida is going to do something,' Bonlarron said. Nonetheless, McCarty wants to press the issue. 'I wish somebody would file suit,' she said. She wants someone to challenge the latitude sanctioned by the state, with some property tax appraisers giving much greater weight to 'highest and best use' standards in making appraisals, whereas other appraisers -- i.e., the appraiser in neighboring Broward County -- giving much greater weight to other standards. 'I don't know why somebody hasn't challenged this,' McCarty said. 'Instead of talking about how we structure homestead exemption, we need to talk about the real problems.' John Johnston can be reached at 561-549-0833, or at jjohnston@bocanews.com

Value of land is worth more than money

Sept. 28, 2006 12:00 AM: Not far from Pima Road, there is a place where saguaros still stand thick and stately, almost as if they belong. Where chollas still shimmer in the sunlight for mile after mile, uninterrupted by the unrelenting march of the inevitable brown house. There is nothing easy about this land. It juts and jars and dips and soars into a sky so blue that sometimes you can hardly bear to look atValue of land is worth more than money it.No, there is nothing easy about it. For a decade, Scottsdale has been trying to preserve this land. Laws have been passed and taxes have been raised, and still it sits there, just beyond our reach. Waiting to one day be auctioned off to the highest bidder. And here's a hint: It probably won't be us. Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-6873. Read her blog at robertsblog.azcentral.com.

Northern Ireland: Domestic Rating

Currently each domestic property in Northern Ireland is assessed on the basis of its rental value (known as the net annual value) as at 01 April 1976. The basis of valuation is set out in Article 39 and Schedule 12 of the Rates (NI) Order 1977. Each domestic property has been valued in line with comparable properties in the same vacinity. The basis of valuation for domestic properties in Northern Ireland is to change to a rating system based on Capital rather than Rental Values. This means your rates bill will be based on the open market value of your property as at 1 January 2005. These changes come into effect on 1 April 2007. Domestic Rating Comment SRDA campaigns against both these bases in preference to site value only.

Bought for $262,500 in 2003, sold for $95,000 last week

Michelle Singer and Matthew Benns September 17, 2006 ...one-bedroom unit in Cabramatta sold at auction last week for $95,000. In November 2003 it cost $262,500. The mortgagee repossession sale is part of a trend, say real-estate agents and analysts, who are united in the belief falling house prices are more common in Sydney's west than elsewhere in the city. ... prices have come back $40,000 to $60,000 and the talk of interest rate rises terrifies them." "This was an opportunity to buy when the market is depressed...(buyer) as long as the rent comes near or covers the mortgage. Raine & Horne Cabramatta selling agent Vera Wang said: "In a boom-time market, prices go through the roof, nobody cares and nobody holds back. Michael McNamara, from Australian Property Monitors, said: "The drop since the height of the boom in Sydney has only been about 7 per cent, so to get a drop of that amount is highly unusual. However, it doesn't surprise us there's a certain part of the market that has quick sales." Ms Wang said the unit was likely to return $130 a week in rent…She is listing about three mortgagee repossession sales a month…"A lot of people are overcommitting themselves," she said. Macquarie Bank property research analyst Rod Cornish said defaults among mortgage brokers and low-documentation loans were higher than major banks. However, he said Australian Prudential Regulation Authority figures showed the number of loans across Sydney in default with the major banks had begun to rise. "You would expect the price impact on homes would be worse in the outer western suburbs where the rates rises and fuel rises would have a higher impact," he said. Elliott Shiner First National real-estate principal Angela Elliott said: "Everything that is selling now is selling for $40,000 to $50,000 less than it was in 2003. Properties have dropped by a good 30 per cent in value. "You can pick up properties in the Mount Druitt area for $180,000 to $200,000. There are real bargains to be had, but where are the buyers?”

Record number of Iranians get nose jobs.

Saturday Sep 24, 2006

For the whole of Britain 7,000 cosmetic surgery operation have been performed, while one Iranian Cosmetic Surgeon has performed 30,000. “The younger genertion doesn’t have enough work, so they chase girls”. says the surgeon.

News Hour BBC

March against Coca-Cola unit

Thursday, Sep 21, 2006 PALAKKAD: The Plachimada Solidarity Committee and the Anti-Coca-Cola Agitation Committee jointly organised a march on Wednesday to the office of the Ground Water Department here seeking action against the depletion of ground water by Coca-Cola unit at Plachimada. Inaugurating the march, the agitation committee patron Vilayodi Venugopal demanded that the Government take action against the Coca-Cola unit for depleting and polluting the ground water of Plachimada and surrounding areas. Solidarity Committee chairman R. Ajayan said the Ground Water Department notified Chittur taluk as water deficit area prohibiting exploitation of ground water. But the Coca-Cola unit located here exploited ground water indiscriminately depleting the water table. The Hindu ePaper

Monopliconomy thrives on water rights.

Water deals leave farmers in the dry Carmel Egan VICTORIAN water is being bought and hoarded by speculators... with no intervention from governments and water authorities. ...huge volumes of water are being traded and transferred away from districts that impose restrictions during droughts to areas where there are few, if any, controls. ... multimillion-dollar investment corporations to swoop on water as it is sold by desperate farmers. ... companies are estimated to have last year bought 85 per cent of water traded out of the state's largest authority, Goulburn-Murray Water. Timbercorp, a publicly listed company controlled by Melbourne racing industry identities, bought the lion's share and has been accused of manipulating the water market and distorting prices with its aggressive acquisitions. Established 10 years ago, Timbercorp is a multimillion-dollar Managed Investment Scheme (MIS) which entices investors by offering tax incentives against the management fees and establishment costs of large-scale agribusinesses such as hardwood plantations, almond and olive orchards. ...Since water trading began in Victoria in 1994, just under 150,000 megalitres in annual rights have been permanently sold. ...Water brokers estimate that up to 75 per cent of Goulburn-Murray water and up to 100 per cent of Lower Murray water sold this year has been bought by just three licensees — Timbercorp, SAI Teys McMahon and Macquarie Agribusiness. The companies are all MIS programs.

Hanson defends new capital value rating system

13 September 2006 Finance Minister, David Hanson MP has defended the new capital value rating system and reaffirmed his decision not to introduce a maximum limit, explaining that a cap would have to be paid for by other ratepayers. Launched earlier this month, the Northern Ireland Fair Rates Campaign wants household rates to be capped in line with the council tax in Great Britain. The first valuations were sent to householders in Northern Ireland at the start of July, and those who wish to challenge or query their rates estimate have six months to do so. More than 7,000 homeowners have already challenged the rateable estimates of their homes. Not everyone will have to pay all or any of the new charges. More than 175,000 households will pay a reduced rate or no rates at all. If a cap were to be set at a capital value level equivalent to the highest Council Tax Bills in England (those in Band H), it would benefit less than 3,000 properties here - less than half percent of the entire Northern Ireland housing stock. These households would have capital values of around £500,000 and over, as at 2005. Hanson commented: "In making the decision not to introduce a maximum limit, I was conscious that if a cap were imposed I would be asking other ratepayers to shoulder a larger share of the rates burden." Turning to the issue of those on low income, Mr Hanson said: "At present almost 175,000 low income households receive support with paying their rates. The new rate relief scheme aims to assist those just outside the housing benefit thresholds. Around 40,000 households could receive assistance, with on average £270 awarded. I am conscious that many older people may be reluctant to claim this relief for a number of reasons, but I would encourage anyone on low income to apply for this entitlement." Hanson also said that if politicians wished to express their concerns about the changes they could do so as long as they met the devolution deadline on November 24. Northern Island News Comment The economic intelligence of taxing improvements is absent in this article as with most. To tax the building is to fine it's construction, quality renewal and maintenance. The site is where the value of property is stored. This is best reflected when after demolition the vacant land attracts a higher price than when the building was standing. The above revenue measure is politically driven by monopoly privileged interests and is the cause of the slum category.

Northern Ireland: Parties attend meeting on rates

Wednesday, 13 September 2006, 06:54 GMT 07:54 UK Representatives from the main parties have attended a meeting called by the Northern Ireland Fair Rates campaign. It is calling for changes to proposed household rates legislation. UK Unionist leader Bob McCartney, who was at the packed meeting, says people should pay last year's rate plus 10% rather than the new rates."The people are not just going to wear this sort of extortion and they're quite right not to do so," Mr McCartney said. "That is not some sort of breaking of the law "If a law is patently and palpably unfair and unjust and is being used to bully people into a political situation I believe people have the right to peaceably and democratically object." Addressing the meeting in Belfast, Ann Monaghan from the campaign said plans being proposed here will give people a raw deal. She said the legislation which is currently out for consultation "does not provide for a similar system as to what operates in the rest of the UK". Part of the proposed laws leave it up to the assembly or executive to implement measures such as capping or relief for pensioners, she said. "What we're saying is we'll deal with whoever we need to deal with, but we are not going to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. "And we're not going to be treated differently to the rest of the UK," Ms Monaghan said. At the weekend, petitions against the new rating system were signed outside a number of churches in affluent south Belfast. People at both Catholic and Protestant services in the area, where some residents face bills of up to £6,000, were asked to lend their support. The petitions will be handed in to the Northern Ireland Office on Thursday. Cap Launched earlier this month, the Northern Ireland Fair Rates Campaign wants household rates to be capped in line with the council tax in Great Britain. Finance Minister David Hanson has insisted he is determined there will be no cap, but said his decision could be overruled if devolution returned by the November deadline. The first valuations were sent to householders in Northern Ireland at the start of July, and those who wish to challenge or query their rates estimate have six months to do so. More than 7,000 homeowners have already challenged the rateable estimates of their homes. Not everyone will have to pay all or any of the new charges. More than 175,000 households will pay a reduced rate or no rates at all. Anyone who wants to check the value of their home can do so by logging onto the Valuation and Lands Agency's website at www.mycapitalvalueni.gov.uk. Comment While buildings & sites are packaged in one tax, no intelligence can be compiled on land use policy, town planning & infrastructure investment. Regardless of the valuation of an asset, regardless of the amount collected in taxes. The call for capping, then, likely differentials as a compromise, or thresholds even exemptions are political decision which debase statutory land valuation theory. Taxation of buildings is the cause. Therefore both sides in this debate do not know what an economic condition and therefore to the extent to which they are from it. The community of Northern Ireland are further from being ratepayers and are more akin to local government taxpayers as a consequence. Only people and the products of people can be taxed. Only land can be rated.

Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity

August 28, 2006 By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and DAVID LEONHARDT ...the current ... period of economic growth ... fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers. The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity...has risen steadily over the same period. As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.” Since last summer...the value of workers’ benefits has also failed to keep pace with inflation, according to government data. At the very top of the income spectrum, many workers have continued to receive raises that outpace inflation, and the gains have been large enough to keep average income and consumer spending rising. In a speech on Friday, Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman...warned that the unequal distribution of the economy... “threaten the livelihoods of some workers and the profits of some firms,” Mr. Bernanke said, policy makers must try “to ensure that the benefits of global economic integration are sufficiently widely shared.” ...Earlier this month, the University of Michigan reported that consumer confidence had fallen sharply in recent months... Economists offer various reasons for the stagnation of wages. ...the buying power of the minimum wage is at a 50-year low...health care is far more expensive than it was a decade ago, causing companies to spend more on benefits at the expense of wages. Together, these forces have caused a growing share of the economy to go to Companies (Ed., property speculators) instead of workers’ paychecks. In the first quarter of 2006, wages and salaries represented 45 percent of gross domestic product, down from almost 50 percent in the first quarter of 2001 and a record 53.6 percent in the first quarter of 1970, according to the Commerce Department. Each percentage point now equals about $132 billion. Total employee compensation — wages plus benefits — has fared a little better. Its share was briefly lower than its current level of 56.1 percent in the mid-1990’s and otherwise has not been so low since 1966. Over the last year, the value of employee benefits has risen only 3.4 percent, while inflation has exceeded 4 percent, according to the Labor Department. In Europe and Japan, the profit (Ed., read privilege: speculation, licences, patents, copyrights) share of economic output is also at or near record levels, noted Larry Hatheway, chief economist for UBS Investment Bank, who said that this highlighted the pressures (Ed., inequality) of globalization on wages. Many Americans, be they apparel workers or software programmers, are facing more competition (Ed., more desperate) from China and India. ...economists at Goldman Sachs wrote, “The most important contributor to higher profit (Ed., speculation) margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor’s share of national income.” ...Worker productivity rose 16.6 percent from 2000 to 2005, while total compensation for the median worker rose 7.2 percent, according to Labor Department statistics analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group. Benefits accounted for most of the increase. (Ed., subsequently captured by land price) “If I had to sum it up,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the institute, “it comes down to bargaining power and the lack of ability of many in the work force to claim their fair share of growth.” (rent) Nominal wages have accelerated in the last year, but the spike in oil costs (Ed., monopolised resource rents) has eaten up the gains. Now the job market appears to be weakening, after a protracted series of interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve. ...gains are a result mainly of increases (Ed., privileges) at the top of the income spectrum that pull up (Ed., corrupt) the overall numbers...workers at the 90th percentile of earners — making about $80,000 a year — inflation has outpaced their pay increases over the last three years, according to the Labor Department. “There are two (Ed., non-) economies out there,” Mr. Cook, the political analyst, said. (Ed., monopliconomy,) “One has been just white hot, going great guns. Those are the people who have benefited from globalization, technology, greater productivity and higher corporate earnings. “And then there’s the working stiffs,’’ he added, (Ed., poviconomy) “who just don’t feel like they’re getting ahead despite the fact that they’re working very hard. And there are a lot more people in that group than the other group.” In 2004, the top 1 percent of earners — a group that includes many chief executives — received 11.2 percent of all wage income, up from 8.7 percent a decade earlier and less than 6 percent three decades ago, according to Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, economists who analyzed the tax data. Original 1650 words

Senate says tax cheating by super rich out of control

August 1, 2006 Tax Cheats Called Out of Control By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON So many superrich Americans evade taxes using offshore accounts that lawenforcement cannot control the growing misconduct, according to a (US) Senate report that provides the most detailed look ever at high-level tax schemes. Cheating now equals about 7 cents out of each dollar paid by honesttaxpayers, as much as $70 billion a year, the report estimated. “The universe of offshore tax cheating has become so large that no one, not even the United States government, could go after all of it,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat whose staff ran the investigation. ...The report details how, ...a tax shelter” using $9.6 billion “worth of fake securities transactions that were used to generate billions of dollars of fake capital losses.” ...Senator Levin said that when investigators asked for trading records they were first told the trades were private, over-the-counter transactions. He said investigators asked for trading tickets or other evidence of who owned the $9.6 billion worth of stock and were told the stocks were never owned by the parties involved. ...“They just wrote down numbers on paper and claimed losses,” he said. “It was just like fantasy baseball, except the taxes not paid were for real.” ...The investigation, which took 18 months, involved 74 subpoenas, 80 interviews and the collection of more than two million documents, and yet Senator Levin said “the six cases we present are just examples, just apinhole look.” The 400-page report recommends eight changes, some of them aimed at going after the law and accounting firms, banks and investment advisers that the report says enable tax schemes that rely on complexity, secrecy and compartmentalizing information so that advisers can claim they had no idea that the overall transaction was a fraud. “We need to significantly strengthen the aiding and abetting statutes to get at the lawyers and accountants and other advisers who enable this cheating,”Senator Levin said, adding that “we need major changes in law to stop the use of tax havens” by tax cheats. It also recommends new rules that strip away the underlying legal presumptions that make offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands, Nevis, the Isle of Man and Panama attractive places for Americans to hide assets and income from the Internal Revenue Service. ...Senator Levin said the law “should assume that any transaction in a tax haven is a sham.” He said that during the investigation he grew angry as he learned how common cheating had become and how existing government rules aided tax cheats. He said that complex schemes were broken into discrete pieces, allowing professional advisers working on each piece to assert that they had no idea that, taken as a whole, a scheme was improper. “I get incensed by people who use tax havens to not pay their taxes while the average guy has to pay his taxes because they are taken out of his pay before he gets it,” he said. ...The technique involved a complex set of circular transactions using what the Senate report characterized as sham corporations in the Isle of Man with shell corporations given names like Jackstones. Their ownership was kept secret. “Ain’t capitalism great!” ... an e-mail message extolling the tax benefits of the deal. The report says that Credit Suisse First Boston, Lehman Brothers and Bank of America “all knew that the offshore entities” for which they made trades were associated ... but ignored rules requiring disclosure of these transactions and helped them hide the true ownership of the assets. ...(They)“ were counseled by an armada of lawyers, brokers, financial professionals and offshore service providers. 1392 word version

Catchup Economy

Jared Bernstein senior economist Economic Policy Institute August 22, 2006 Reminders.

...corporate profits as a share of the economy are at their highest level

on record...it has climbed to 12.7 percent in 2004, adding 5.4 million persons, including 1.4 million children to the ranks of the poor. ...an economic recovery that has produced an alarmingly large gap between growth and the living standards of most families. -- economic pollution ranking: Car backfire economic relevancy ranking: None 860 words version

US housing slump fuels crash fears

Floundering American property market could spark global slowdown worse than dotcom collapse The downturn will force businesses to slash 73,000 jobs a month in the new year. New homes sold in July was 22 per cent lower... prices...flat, fears are mounting.. will become a full-blown crash. 'Freefall' said Paul Ashworth, chief US economist at Capital Economics...The number of unsold new homes is now at a 10-year high....Capital calculates that 73,000 jobs a month will be lost. ...the long-expected housing market crunch. Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley...the slowdown will shave at least 2 percentage points off GDP growth next year, taking the US perilously close to recession, as construction spending plummets and homeowners lose. 'For a wealth-dependent US economy,...A bursting of the property bubble...for...an increasingly integrated global economy,' he added. Fionnuala Earley, group economist at Nationwide, said ...immigration suggests there's going to be tenant demand... people are going to think again about whether they should move and whether they should stretch themselves.' Heather Stewart, economics correspondent Sunday August 27, 2006 The Observer Monopoliconomy economists prefer not to use the terms, rent, site value & land values instead: "the cushion of extra wealth that comes from rapid price rises.' housing market, homeowners lose, another asset bubble, fragile housing sector, property supply constraints.'

MaxedOut

IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Quotes from the Film's Talking Heads "There's a lot of shame and a lot of guilt attached to the issue of money mismanagement...Everybody feels like the other couple has a perfect marriage and a perfect everything...Turns out, I've met Ken and Barbie and they're broke." -Dave Ramsey "Basically it's food, rent, and a bit of entertainment. Just survival. They're having a hell of a time." -Brian Lurie "The real point is the basics are driving families right to the edge. What it costs to have a house, to have health insurance, to have child care, to have two cars so that you can both get to work." -Liz Warren "Nobody would watch Lifestyles of the Poor and the Unknown." -Robin Leach "There's not as much money in Washington as they're used to be!" -George W. Bush "I guess if you look like you make money eventually you will." -Beth Naef "If you go to a vocational school or if you have a job, they [the credit card companies] don't want you. Maybe it's because they think you know the value of a dollar. It's the college students who get the cards. So we're setting up a two-tiered system here and I believe they're exploiting the college students. An easy market." -Janne O'Donnell "They [Bank One] wanted us to be the FirstUSA spokesguys...I guess how Bill Cosby is to Jell-O, that would be us to credit cards." -Luke McCabe "I know for a fact that [the banks] aren't looking for people with experience. They want people who have jobs at the mall. Their whole approach is they want someone who is retail-driven. They want people who can sell, sell, sell." -John Ballew "The bottom line is, the deck is stacked against you from day one. If you're smart enough to understand that and know that, God bless you; if not, boy are they going to make a lot of money off of you." -Bud Hibbs "I like to think of myself as a pirate and you're just walking that person out on the plank. And then you pull them back when you get what you want. Of course, sometimes, in the beginning, you're going to push a little too far." -Bob Johnson "Basically I was just a real big typographical error." -Doris Gohman "The size of our problem out there is very large. I regret to say that the word billion does not encompass the nature of the problem." -Alan Greenspan "Consumers think they have a right to privacy...The Constitution protects you from the government, but where is your right to privacy from an individual or a private company? Where is your right to privacy from me? And the truth is, there is no right to privacy." -David Szwack http://www.maxedoutmovie.com/about/index.html

If only the Greens had developed more policies around this candidates arguement.

..."Don’t try to tell me that the Liberals are interested in getting it right for all Tasmanians when they wanted to abolish land tax that would have benefited only those who own more than one property. A move that could never have guaranteed lower rental prices. I’ve never heard of a landlord that lowered the rent in my life." Toby Rowallan, Green candidate for Denison Tassie forum article link

Land Tax to sell thirty-four properties for back taxes.

Wednesday, 22 March 2006 The Barbados Land Tax Department has served notice that it will put some major properties on the auction block to collect millions of dollars in back taxes. Today the Barbados Land Tax Commissioner published a list of 34 commercial and residential properties which he intends to sell to recover land taxes owed to the department.  The Commissioner of Land Tax has also announced that he intends to sell more than 20 residential properties located across Barbados.  Caribbean Broadcasting

Boldly Militarizing where no one has gone before.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70303-0.html   "Lobbyists from the fledgling commercial space industry are   besieging Capitol Hill, hoping to persuade the government to hand   out contracts to help put the U.S. military into orbit," reports   John Lasker. The main "talking point" for the 50 to 75 lobbyists is   "how the private sector can help the U.S. military build space-based   weapons a lot faster and with a lot less of taxpayers' money." The   Defense Department's report Joint Vision 2020 advocates for "Full   Spectrum Dominance," or overwhelming power on land, sea, air and   space. "We need to operate in the realm of space," a U.S. Space   Command public affairs officer told Wired. Bruce Gagnon, the   director of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in   Space and an Air Force veteran, criticizes these plans. For that,   he's been secretly monitored by NASA and the U.S. Air Force,   according to court documents uncovered by the American Civil   Liberties Union. Wired News, March 1, 2006

What should replace flawed council tax?

"Replace both the council tax and the uniform business rate (dummy, if it's against a business then it's a tax) !!! with a land value tax (LVT) or what really is a location rent, (take note of author's qualifier) since it is not so much a conventional tax as a charge for the space that we occupy" (Jerry Jones, "Morning Star", 27th. April 2005). "The value of land is created not by landowners but by what nature provides and by its position in relation to public utilities, communications and population. In other words, it is created by society, and therefore it should be society as a whole that receives the benefit." (ii)    The latest version of that repeat failure, the development land tax, is the roof tax, "to be paid by developers at a rate of about £20,000 for each home they build" (Lech Mintowt-Czyz, "Evening Standard", 12th. April). "The plans are being piloted in Milton Keynes... The tax does not require legislation and can also be applied to commercial developments." Exactly why taxing the building of new houses is thought to be a good idea, is not explained. (iii)    "The Deputy Prime Minister has met huge criticism for his plan to flatten houses in the North and Midlands and build a smaller number of modern homes" (Joe Murphy,  He has only himself to blame. He should know by now that neither he nor anyone else in government need intervene. LVT will do the job, unaided. Faced by the annual demand for the land value duty, the landholder will set about appropriate re-development to secure tenants and thus an income from which to meet the tax bill; or he will sell out to someone else who will. "Evening Standard", 20th. May 2005).

Women, The Most Efficient Partners in the Struggle to End Hunger: International Womens Day 2006

blah blah....women are the main providers of food around the world; hence the solution to hunger ought to be found in consultation and participation with women. (but doesn't)... gender (read monopoly) analysis that recognizes power relations and the use and distribution of resources....blah blah....to better understand hunger in terms of causes...For more blah blah. http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/news/press/release_mar8_06.html

Alexander Fraser Tytler in 1776

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. 

Pentagon ok's propaganda for Iraq (and possibly elsewhere).

Declaring it "within our authorities and responsibilities," the top U.S. general in Iraq, George Casey, announced that the Lincoln Group program that covertly places stories written by U.S. troops in Iraqi newspapers will continue. Van Buskirk's report "could pave the way for the Pentagon to replicate the practice ... in other parts of the world." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-infowar4mar04,0,1357115.story?coll=la-home-world

USA: Tax thugs slam theft self-assessment software

Arizona Republic “Using a computer program to figure income taxes takes longer than doing it by hand, the IRS claims, infuriating the tax-preparation software industry. The accounting profession also is protesting the agency’s estimates of the costs of having a professional calculate various types of returns. The outcries are in response to what the Internal Revenue Service introduced in its latest tax instruction booklets as a new, ‘more accurate’ method of estimating the time and cost of filing. The figures are based on a survey of 15,000 taxpayers and 400 tax professionals, IRS spokesman Raphael Turino said. Since publishing the figures, the IRS has issued a statement online saying they are all but useless. Calling the data ‘fatally flawed,’ a trade group representing the makers of such programs as TurboTax and TaxCut urged this month that the Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board investigate ‘this genuine mess.’” (02/23/06) http://tinyurl.com/qvqa3

USA: Grounds for change? Land tax is best remedy, says Libertarian

USA: Grounds for change? Land tax is best remedy, says Libertarian Debbie Gebolys Ohio could get rid of its slums, gain new buildings on vacant lots and stop suburban sprawl. It could even save the average homeowner a little money. So says retired Case Western Reserve economics professor Bill Peirce, the Ohio Libertarian Party candidate for governor. The way to change Ohio's landscape, Peirce says, is to throw out the property-tax system and replace it with another first proposed in 1880. Peirce doesn't harbor any illusions that he'll be living in the governor's mansion next year. But he hopes his maiden voyage into politics allows him to convey some alternative notions to voters. That's where land-value tax comes in. versions of the system are in place in Pennsylvania, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Australia, among other places. It's been mentioned in Ohio several times in the last century, and people in Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Virginia and West Virginia are among those considering it. Here's how it would change things here: To make taxes fair, Peirce said, the state should abolish all tax incentives and allow market forces to dictate where construction goes. Then, it should upend the property-tax system, which has valued buildings at roughly three times the value of land for the last century or more. In its place should go a system in which land makes up at least half of the taxable value of a property. The value of buildings, if taxed at all, would be radically reduced. The result An end to tax policy that rewards owners of dilapidated and vacant properties with low tax bills and penalizes those who invest in their properties with higher tax bills. Since buildings become less important to total value, property owners don't pay higher taxes when they add a Florida room or build a 12-story office instead of a two-story. Owners of vacant lots or dilapidated buildings see their taxes rise to the level of similar-size properties nearby. The tax increase motivates slumlords to invest enough to pay the higher bill or sell out. When new buildings appear, surrounding land is worth more money, too. So as surban renewal beautifies neighborhoods, it raises their relative tax contribution. That means tax bills in other neighborhoods can come down. Since land becomes the prominent basis for taxes, people save tax money if they buy smaller lots. That could help stop sprawl. Does it really work like that? Joshua Vincent, executive director of two Philadelphia groups dedicated to land-value tax, said it does. He heads the Henry George Foundation of America, the lobbying arm of an international tax-reform movement, named for the 19 th-century inventor of the land-value tax. Vincent also runs the Center for the Study of Economics, which conducts feasibility studies for communities considering the tax system. "Everything we want, new buildings, improved buildings, is punished by taxation," Vincent said. "Land tax is the only way to tax without distorting anything." Of 19 Pennsylvania cities using landvalue tax systems, Scranton has been doing so longest, since 1913. All of the others adopted it since 1975, when the Midwest was becoming known as the Rust Belt. As the steel industry tanked in Pennsylvania, so did the fortunes of many of its towns. Cities like Altoona, Allentown, McKeesport and Harrisburg were in desperate straits when they adopted the tax system, Vincent said. "In one city, they couldn't pay the municipal light bill, so they turned off their street lights and stoplights. In Aliquippa, they laid off the entire police force," he said. "The reason they adopted land tax was to spare their citizens higher taxes, frankly." Land-value taxes accomplished at least one goal. Construction rose, and cities began to recover. "They're not in great shape now, but they're a hell of a lot better than they were," Vincent said. Pittsburgh used land-value tax until 2000, during its own severe economic decline. Several economists studied how it worked in Pittsburgh, where taxes on land were raised to more than five times the rate on buildings in 1979. They found that while Pittsburgh did have a 1980s building boom, other factors could have helped. Among them were tax breaks on new construction. Is Pennsylvania so much different from Ohio ? Candidate Peirce doesn't think so. "What we want is to make it easy for people to establish businesses and make them grow," Peirce said. "Let's get the economy moving enough so kids have a chance to stay at home rather than leaving the state." Ohioans need the urgency that prompted Pennsylvanians to change their system, he said. "The major (political) parties have our state in a perilous position with a difficult employment situation, a difficult economic situation and tax rates among the highest in the country," he said. Ohioans' state and local tax burden has skyrocketed in the past three decades, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington that promotes lowering taxes and simplifying the tax system. In 1979, Ohio ranked 47 th nationally for the percentage of income people pay for state and local taxes. By 2004, Ohio had jumped to seventh. The state fared better when the Tax Foundation focused on 2002 property taxes per capita. Ohio's $933 per person ranked 23rd highest in the country. Pennsylvania ranked 28th, at $885 per person. Both were below the national average of $971. Ohioans before Peirce have proposed land-value taxation, most recently in the late 1990s. Gov. Bob Taft convened a committee to study how to make Ohio more attractive to businesses. A Cleveland State University economist suggested land value tax, said Frederick Church, deputy commissioner for tax policy in the Ohio Department of Taxation and a committee adviser. The idea was quickly discarded. "Land-value tax merits are a fairly abstract argument," Church said. "Completely overturning a property-tax system to encourage redevelopment of downtowns is a pretty blunt instrument for the problem at hand." Franklin County Auditor Joe Testa said taxpayers might have trouble accepting such a radical change. Neighboring houses on identical lots in Schumacher Place, for instance, are now valued at $150,000 and $500,000. "If you took away the building, because they are on the same size piece of dirt you would value them the same. Make them both what' Both $150,000 or both $500,000' " Peirce isn't saying exactly how tax bills would change, and that creates uncertainty for some observers. "Until you understand all the ramifications, it's hard to advocate one way or another," said David Beach, steering committee chairman of Greater Ohio, a land-use planning advocacy group. But in general, change could be good. "A different way of taxing land could have an impact on preserving our cities and towns," he said. "Tax policy is a very important issue, and it can influence where land is developed and whether it's easier to rebuild cities or build out in green areas." Because of that, "Peirce's idea is one that we might want to take a look at," Beach said... The Columbus Dispatch

...Signs of Trouble in Foreclosures

February 22, 2006 By VIKAS BAJAJ and RON NIXON ... The housing boom of the last decade helped push minority home ownership rates above 50 percent for the first time in 2004 and the overall foreclosure rate below 1 percent. But hidden behind such success stories lies a disturbing trend: in the last several years, neighborhoods with large poor and minority populations in places like Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlanta have experienced a sharp rise in foreclosures, in some cases more than a doubling, according to an analysis of court filings and other housing data by The New York Times and academic researchers. The increase in foreclosures could be the first of a wave of financial distress for many minority homeowners, experts say, because they are twice as likely as whites to have taken out expensive subprime mortgages, most of which will jump to higher interest rates in the next two years, according to an analysis of data that lenders disclose under the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. ...Some housing experts worry that the minority foreclosure rate could worsen if the economy or the housing market, nationally or regionally, hits a rough patch as it has in industrial Midwestern states like Ohio. ...The Mortgage Bankers Association of America plays down the severity of foreclosures, noting that most new minority homeowners are doing well and that the Midwest is facing unique economic challenges. ...In Cuyahoga County, court filings by lenders seeking to foreclose on delinquent borrowers totaled more than 11,000 in 2005, more than triple the number in 1995. ...A similar pattern can be seen in Chicago, where foreclosure filings tripled, to 7,576, from 1993 to 2005. ... The same trends have been documented in Atlanta and Philadelphia, according to researchers from Harvard and the Reinvestment Fund. ...Almost 70 percent of subprime loans issued since 2001 will shift from low, fixed introductory rates to higher adjustable rates in the next two years, according to an analysis by Fannie Mae. ...Mr. Douglas G. Duncan, the chief economist, Mortgage Bankers Association and others in the industry say that higher foreclosure levels in the Midwest should not be seen as worrying signals for the nation because the region's economic problems are unique. Ohio lost 215,000 jobs from 2001 to 2005, with 63,800 of them coming from the Cleveland metropolitan area. The state unemployment rate was 5.6 percent in December, up from 4 percent in 2000. The jobless rate in Cleveland was 5.5 percent in December, up from 3.8 percent. The Cuyahoga County treasurer James Rokakis, his county's 17 percent foreclosure rate is creating blight in many neighborhoods. ...In Slavic Village, about 500 homes, or 5 percent of its properties, are vacant, Mr. Rokakis said. "Who pays for the damage done to these communities?" http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/business/22home.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Executives Modified Enron Data, Jury Is Told

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO Published: February 22, 2006 HOUSTON, Feb. 21 � The former chief executive of Enron, Kenneth L. Lay, took an active role in preparing misleading and often conflicting statements about financial conditions at the company, a former investor relations manager and board secretary testified on Tuesday. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/business/businessspecial3/22enron.html

Questionable liens hit Arizonans

Robert Anglen The Arizona Republic Feb. 22, 2006 12:00 AM A financial setup orchestrated by a convicted criminal has left more than a thousand homeowners in Arizona and California facing illegitimate liens on their homes. The liens are being used to force people to pay thousands of dollars to a California collection agency. In order to get the liens lifted, homeowners are told by the agency that they must pay credit-card debts that, in many cases, have already been paid, written off in bankruptcies or aren't actually owed. http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0222lienfraud0222.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How is it that no one (except a mechainic) can but a lien on my car without my knowledge and consent while anyone, living anywhere in the world can put a lien on my house simply by filling out a few papers. This is nuts! If our law makers need some insentive to act on this, perhaps every homeowner in the state should put a lien on any property owned by every lawmaker. Once they realize that they have two hundred fifty thousand liens on their home the matter might be taken seriously. (William3700, February 22, 2006 05:49PM)

Let the good times average out nicely

Random Walk, by Rob Peebles ...Take California home prices, the turbo charger on the newfangled engine. In fact, take the number of homes in California that sold for more than $1 million last year, and this is what you get: You get 48,666 million dollar homes. That’s 47% more million dollar homes sold in 2005 than in 2004, according to the Los Angeles Times.  For the record, 48,666 million dollar transactions comes to 1 in 13 California home sales achieving status as a million dollar deal. That’s a nice ratio. And that ratio compares to “just” 1 in 20 in 2004. And that compares to 1 in 2, which is the ratio of Californians who want to quit their jobs to become real estate agents once they do the math on the commission involved in a million dollar transaction. According to DataQuick’s numbers quoted in the article, a million dollars in California will get you four bedrooms and 2,480 square feet, assuming you spring for the median million dollar home. Now 2,480 square feet is a fine sized home, but it wasn’t that long ago that for a million bucks you could get another couple of thousand feet and a butler.  The LA Times notes that there were 2,902 condo sales in the $1 million or more category last year, up a smart 73% from 2004. Sure, California real estate is hot, but homes are hot nationwide. Apparently there are one million homes around the country now worth at least $1 million. That compares to only 350,000 as recently as 2000.

'Doomsday' seed bank to be built

Rice is one of the world's most important crops Norway is planning to build a "doomsday vault" inside a mountain on an Arctic island to hold a seed bank of all known varieties of the world's crops. The Norwegian government will hollow out a cave on the ice-bound island of Spitsbergen to hold the seed bank. It will be designed to withstand global catastrophes like nuclear war or natural disasters that would destroy the planet's sources of food. Seed collection is being organised by the Global Crop Diversity Trust. "What will go into the cave is a copy of all the material that is currently in collections [spread] all around the world," Geoff Hawtin of the Trust told the BBC's Today programme. Mr Hawtin said there were currently about 1,400 seed banks around the world, but a large number of these were located in countries that were either politically unstable or that faced threats from the natural environment. "What we're trying to do is build a back-up to these, so that a sample of all the material in these gene banks can be kept in the gene bank in Spitsbergen. The Norwegian government is due to start work on the seed vault next year, when it will drill into a sandstone mountain on Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard archipelago, about 966km (600 miles) from the North Pole. Permafrost will keep the vault below freezing point and the seeds will further be protected by metre-thick walls of reinforced concrete, two airlocks and high security blast-proof doors. The number of seeds and types of plants in the bank would be determined by the countries wishing to use it. Rice paddy, AP http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4605398.stm

Increasingly uncomfortable living in a material world

Optimism about quality of life has slumped among Australians. ...In other words, we are seeing a profound loss of faith in a future constructed around notions of material progress, economic growth and scientific and technological fixes to the challenges we face. We no longer believe in the "official story" of the future on which our governments base their policies. Environmentalists and scientists have won the minds of the public. Now they need to win our hearts, to give us the courage to act on our convictions. Richard Eckersley is at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the ANU, and is the author of Well & Good: Morality, Meaning and Happiness (Text, 2005). SMH

Roseville to pry land from owners

North Metro Insider Sarah McCann, Star Tribune The Roseville City Council voted 3-2 last week to approve using eminent domain to acquire four commercial properties needed for the Twin Lakes redevelopment project. The mixed-use development includes housing, retail and office space. Developer Rottlund Companies, which owns most of the land, has been trying to buy the properties but hasn't come to an agreement with some owners. The council vote approving eminent domain could result in more serious negotiations, as eminent domain procedures can be costly and time-consuming for all parties involved. If the property owners don't agree to sell, the city could file for eminent domain in court as early as January. Although many local government officials say they use eminent domain as a last resort, a U.S. Supreme Court decision last summer said it was OK for cities to use eminent domain for economic development http://www.startribune.com/142/story/144702.html

Train Wreck of the Week: The end of the housing bubble.

by Bob Chapman The housing bubble is in the early stages of implosion. We do not know for sure how long the adjustment will take or are we sure how deep it will be, but we do know it has to happen and that the risks to our economy and the world economy are enormous. The only thing the Fed can do is keep interest rates relatively low and keep increasing M3, money and credit at a 12% plus rate. The downside is hyperinflation. If they move interest rates higher and cut back on monetary aggregates, they’ll have a depression. If they keep doing exactly what they are doing now, the economy will slide downward and inflation will relentlessly increase. The housing boom has reached almost every area of the country, money fled a collapsing stock market and was lured by low interest rates into housing. Low rates were assisted by lax lending standards engineered by the Fed. Sub-prime loans now make up over 50% of mortgages and with those come all sorts of exotic mortgages that borrowers do not understand and eventually won’t be able to service. That means many millions of Americans will go broke and bankrupt over the next several years. $11 trillion in real estate values in just a few years time could become $6 trillion in value. Sixty-five million Americans own homes and many put zero to 5% down, plus they have ARMS and zero savings to bail themselves out. Their other personal debt has doubled over the past three years as well. In addition, never has our financial system been more vulnerable. Thirty-six percent of recently purchased homes were second homes or speculative purchases. That is accompanied by record fiscal and current account deficits, derivatives and a stock market that cannot stay up while real estate is falling. The consumer is 76% of the economy and real estate and stock dislocation means less consumption and a falling economy. Low interest rates, endless credit and monetary printing presses won’t stop the onslaught. Just look at Japan when their real estate and stock bubbles began to implode in 1989. They lost $12 trillion in real estate values and a 42,000 Nikki Dow became 7,600. Why would our collapse be any less vicious? As the real estate bubble breaks and the bear market in stocks resume, Americans are faced every day with the loss of good paying jobs via offshoring and outsourcing. Thus, we can only conclude that our elitist Fed planned it that way. How can any nation consciously allow free trade and globalization in an advanced high-income economy? It’s simply suicide. We have been set up to deliberately fail along with Canada and Europe. By bringing these economies to their knees, citizens will be forced to accept universal, fascist, one-world government. Today’s debt and leverage makes the 1920s look like child’s play. You cannot have an economy that is 60% dependent on real estate. Industries such as construction, commodities, lending, brokerage, mortgages and insurance are holding America economically together. The parallels between now and the 1970s are huge, only this time we have enormous debt and leverage. We have another guns and butter economy. Look at our weekly statistics from the Fed, which they are going to cancel in March. Tremendous amounts of moving is being absorbed by the real estate market. Once that demand declines we would expect those funds to find new homes, perhaps Treasuries, gold and silver would be options. If the stock market is falling not many would want to risk funds there. The options for placing funds will be limited. The real question is how much money will come out of real estate? How much can as the losses pile up? All that equity will be disappearing and the piggy bank will be empty. Consumption could easily fall back to 62-64% of GDP. How can a market be solid and safe when you have to have new buyers whose average down payment is 3%? They’ll walk away from negative equity in a nanosecond. How many had to have mom and dad dig into their own home equity to buy that house? Worse yet, 45% of first-time buyers put down nothing on their new digs. Vertically rising markets are inevitably followed by vertically falling markets. And, remember, houses are not liquid. You cannot sell them on the spot and get payment in three days. You can be financially entrapped in your home. What happens when home equity falls and the market falls and you have your house as collateral in your brokerage account? It’s called a disaster - wipeout. We are seeing all the classic assumptions of an asset bubble. This frenzy underway over the past two years has given us 1.1 million real estate brokers, up 36% in five years. What idiot really expects house prices to rise 20% annually in the next 10 years? They’d have to be on drugs, which unfortunately, many of them are on. Just to show you how docile homeowners have become, 77% believe real estate is much safer than the stock market. What fools, all investing is gambling. More signs of mania in real estate as ads in newspapers rose 45% in the second quarter. That is 25% of all ads. That is $4.15 billion of $16.6 billion in classified ad revenue nationwide. In addition, online real estate ads now make up 15.9% of the total real estate ad market. Are you one of the people interviewed by the University of Michigan Consumer Confidence Index who believes now is a good time to buy a house, because its risk-free and virtually guaranteed to keep rising? If you are, we are sure we have a bridge that we are sure you would be interested in. Building is still booming. This year 38.1% put 5% down on their new homes and 45% put down nothing. If that doesn’t concern you it should. Forty percent of Californians are paying about 40% of their take home pay on their mortgages. They call this affording the unaffordable. We believe real estate market prices are unsustainable. Interest-only mortgages nationwide average 31%. In California, they make up 61%, and in Santa Rose and Vallejo, where they are 77% and 78% respectively. Would you have ever believed that bankers and the Fed would let this distortion go that far? Next year, 2006, about $300 billion in mortgage debt will enter its adjustable period. Borrowers will have to begin repaying interest and principal at new higher interest rates. Then there are buyers who take out two mortgages at once to buy a home. Standards there are no standards. It’s whatever the lender wants to do. There are no qualifications for a loan. You can be blind, crippled, crazy, bankrupt, unemployed, have no credit or income or be an illegal alien. Mortgage related assets now make up 50% of total bank assets and in just last year alone 24% of loans were sub-prime. While all this officially sanctioned madness goes on, foreigners are clamoring to buy mortgage-backed securities. If we are right they are going to have a terrible financial hangover. They are prolonging the boom by chasing a very dangerous yield. That yield is guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of which we believe will be bankrupt in three years. Do you really believe the government will make these securities good in a depression? We don’t think they will. It is not only foreigners who’ll get bagged, it will also be hedge funds, insurance companies, and pension funds. These purchasers of these mortgages are buying desirable and undesirable loans. Last year they bought over $400 billion in sub-prime loans. Last year 70% of these loans had less than full documentation of the borrower’s income and assets. You know if house prices fall these loans will be a bag of worms. In the last four years homeowners have removed $550 billion in equity from their homes. Cash out financings are over 18% this year of all refinancings. Home equity is now 56.3% of real estate value. Forty-seven percent of all residential mortgages by dollar volume are now non-traditional. Equity from refinancings is being used to put food on the table. The Fed says homeowner loans added $600 billion to consumer spending last year and who are we to contradict the Fed. That is 7% of disposable income versus 3% in 2000 and 1% in 1994. If it weren’t for this infusion we’d already be in recession. If you’ve been attentive you now know real estate is in for changes. Sir Alan Greenspan is telling us the truth on his way out. “In the US there is a pernicious drift towards fiscal instability and the adjustment process will be painful.” Sir Alan, along with our elected dolts in Washington and the neocon White House have buried the US economy. This is not fiscal and monetary instability; it’s been insanity. Sir Alan said Congress has to make significant adjustments, in reducing benefits for future retirees because the US has promised benefits it cannot afford. He said government demands for investment would squeeze private capital formation and cast an even larger shadow over growth of living standards. In the end, he warned, the consequences for the US economy of doing nothing could be severe. Web source: http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/trainwreck.php?Id=103&PHPSESSID=9dab509e24326857b1c41f16545eb47a

Curitiba: A Global Model For Development

Tuesday, November 8, 2005 CommonDreams.org by Bill McKibben I could see as much green as I could concrete. And green begets green; land values around the new parks have risen sharply, and with them tax revenues. …At the moment, in the center of Novo Bairro, COHAB is building "Technology Street," an avenue of 24 homes, each built using some different construction technique-bamboo covered with plaster, say-so that people can get ideas for the kind of house they might want. The houses are all smaller than most Americans would want to live in, but they all say something about the people who built them. "It's a house built out of love," says the housing chief. "And because of that, people won't leave it behind. They're going to consolidate their lives there, become part of the city." …Hitoshi Nakamura is the city parks commissioner and one of Lerner's longtime collaborators. "We have to have communication with the people of the slums," he said one day as we were talking about the problems posed by settlers invading fragile bottomlands along the rivers. "If we don't, if they start to feel like falvelados, then they will go against the city....If we give them attention, they don't feel abandoned. They feel like citizens." Ed The most vaguest article I have ever read. To deliberate evade an explanation for the existence and perpetuating condition of vagabonds and pauperism and worse the author announces to the worlds Rentiers, 'there's a new crop of wage slaves ripe for the owning via the title to land they inhabit'. To not associate the cause of disparity, dispossession and inequality is an injustice. Instead reporting (pandering) to the speculative interests. Bloody typical. 4,000 word version

French government agrees air tax

Wednesday, 23 November 2005, 16:50 GMT The French government has approved plans for a new tax on airline tickets to boost aid for the world's poor. The tax, which needs parliamentary approval, would range from one to 40 euros depending on the distance travelled and type of ticket. Levied on every passenger boarding a flight in France, it could raise up to 210m euros ($248m; £144m) a year. President Jacques Chirac has been campaigning for an international air tax to help fight global poverty. He first raised the idea during the Word Economic Forum in Switzerland last January, saying an international tax of one euro should be charged on the 3 billion airline tickets issued each year. He has the support of the UK government, which has agreed to divert revenues from its existing Air Passenger Duty. In Chile, a $2 surcharge will be added to tickets on all outgoing flights from January 1 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4463204.stm

House Cuts Food Stamps for More than 220,000 Vulnerable People While Poised to Cut Taxes for Wealthy

WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives passed a budget bill yesterday that changes eligibility requirements for the Food Stamp Program, cutting benefits for approximately 220,000 to 250,000 vulnerable people. The budget reconciliation bill aims to cut the Food Stamp Program by $675 million. "We are disappointed that the House made cuts to the Food Stamp Program and are poised to cut taxes for the wealthy. Their choice takes food from families struggling to make ends meet and puts more money in the pockets of those who need it the least," said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. "This is morally wrong and will make Thanksgiving bleaker for hundreds of thousands of hard-working families." ..."With hunger on the rise and the forces of nature exposing poverty anew, plans to cut this vital, proven program make no sense. House leaders should be ashamed of trying to preserve tax cuts for our nation's wealthiest people at the expense of basic assistance for working families struggling to put food on the table," Rev. Beckmann said. Last month the U.S. Department of Agriculture released the statistics on hunger and food insecurity for 2004. The number of people living in food insecure households has risen by nearly 2 million people (from 36.3 million individuals in 2003 to 38.2 million in 2004). More than 13 million children live in food insecure households. The number of people who live in households that suffer from outright hunger rose from 9.6 million to 10.6 million. These increases in hunger and food insecurity are sharper than in previous years. http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/1118-01.htm

Redistributing the Land, Hugo Chavez Style

Published on Monday, November 14, 2005 by the Toronto Star Analysts say president's land-expropriation plan a world away from disastrous Zimbabwean program by Jens Erik Gould The privately owned, 1,200-hectare Santa Isabel farm has grown sugar cane for decades, but Antiaga says the Venezuelan government will help him use the land to grow pumpkins, beans and squash. Under a land redistribution campaign led by President Hugo Chavez, thousands of rural poor like Antiaga are being granted rights to farm arable land traditionally concentrated in the hands of wealthy landowners. But Artiaga isn't waiting for the government to take the lead. He and other farmers are slashing the Santa Isabel cane with machetes and laying claim to land they say is rightfully theirs. "We're obligated to take this land because it is state land," says Antiaga, clad in a torn shirt dirtied by the rich soil. "Commander Chavez is with our movement." Venezuela's land-reform campaign has won support from the rural poor but has sparked criticism that it could infringe on private property rights. "In Yaracuy, there is no rule of law," says Santa Isabel owner Vicente Lecuna, who accuses state officials of encouraging peasants to settle on his property. He says farming co-operatives like Antiaga's have destroyed 40 per cent of his sugar cane. Chavez insists his government respects private property rights and contends that the land expropriations are being carried out only for public use or for social necessity in a country where most non-state land is owned by a small elite. In the latest stage of what he calls the "new socialism of the 21st century," Chavez has called on state officials to take over private land deemed "idle" or lacking property titles dating back to 1848. Soldiers have enforced some of the takeovers, at times denying owners and workers access to the land. In recent months, the government has extended its campaign to corporate-owned land. One state government expropriated an idle tomato processing plant from U.S.-based H.J. Heinz Co. and another seized a silo installation from Empresas Polar, Venezuela's largest food company. The state government paid Heinz $256,000 (U.S.) for its seized plant, distinguishing Venezuela's reform from Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's massive land redistribution effort, which has not reimbursed thousands of white landowners for their seized farms. While critics say both the Venezuelan and Zimbabwean governments are giving land to peasants with little agricultural experience, Venezuela offers farming loans while Zimbabwean farmers severely lack resources to develop their land. With agriculture a small player in Venezuela's oil-dependent economy, it is unlikely that a fall in food production would cause the kind of food shortages and other crises it has in Zimbabwe, notes Orlando Ochoa, an economics professor at Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas. Mugabe's reform also seized farms on the basis of race, targeting land owned by white farmers, while Caracas focuses on productivity and property titles, Ochoa says. Critics argue that the Venezuelan expropriations are concentrating more power in the government by giving peasants farming licences for — rather than ownership of — the land they farm. But Carlos Escarra, a constitutional lawyer and professor at the Central University of Venezuela, rejects this common criticism, saying peasants actually become property owners who lack only the right to sell their land. Chavez says that having co-operatives like Antiaga's farming on expropriated land will lessen Venezuela's dependence on imports by satisfying domestic deficits in food. And the government has launched a campaign to plant more than 200,000 hectares of new sugar cane and cassava to produce sugar-based ethanol gasoline. Yet Yaracuy farm owner Vladimir Rodriguez says it is ironic that the same government has not prevented co-operatives and extortionists from destroying more than $15 million worth of sugar cane on 33 farms in his state alone, according to his statistics. A state-run agrarian fund known as Fondafa also grants loans for farming machinery to co-operatives that have taken over private property without state permission and uprooted sugar cane crops. In one case of extortion, local delinquents — who farm owners say posed as landless peasants — murdered sugar cane farm owner Antonio Vieira after he refused to pay them to not destroy his crop. Yaracuy state secretary-general Col. Angel Yarza, who called on the government to take over 48 ranches, denied in an interview that he had seen large quantities of destroyed sugar cane. He assured that the state does not encourage land invasions, but will not intervene to protect privately owned farms. Antiaga says Yarza and other state officials are helping his group's long fight to take land away from owners like Lecuna, who for him represent a system of traditional land ownership that prevent the rural poor from acquiring farms or landing sustainable jobs. "We're human beings, too, and we have to eat," he says. But for farm owners, seizing private property and issuing loans to poor farmers is no solution to poverty and unemployment. "(The co-operatives) just want credits that they won't pay back," says Lecuna. "They're not going to produce." Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited

Henry George (1839-1897):

For justice to be done between men it is not necessary for the State to take the land; it is only necessary to take its rent...Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. In allowing one man to own the land on which and from which other men must live, we have made them his bondsmen in a degree which increases as material progress goes on. Introduction: Protection or Free Trade A tax on land values is of all taxes that which best fulfils every requirement of a perfect tax. As land cannot be hidden or carried off, a tax on land values can be assessed with more certainty and can be collected with greater ease and less expense than any other tax, while it does not in the slightest degree check production or lessen its incentive. It is, in fact, a tax only in form, being in nature a rent - a taking for the use of the community of a value that arises not from individual exertion but from the growth of the community. For it is not anything that the individual owner or user does that gives value to land. The value that he creates is a value that attaches to improvements. This, being the the result of individual exertion, properly belongs to the individual, and cannot be taxed without lessening the incentive to production. But the value that attaches to land itself is a value arising from the growth of the community and increasing with social growth. It therefore properly belongs to the community, and can be taken to the last penny without in the slightest degree lessening the incentive to production. Progress and Poverty The way taxes raise prices is by increasing the cost of production and checking supply. But land is not a thing of human production, and taxes upon rent cannot check supply. Therefore, though a tax upon rent compels owners to pay more, it gives them no power to obtain more for the use of their land, as it in no way tends to reduce the supply of land. On the contrary, by compelling those who hold land for speculation to sell or let for what they can get, a tax on land values tends to increase the competition between owners, and thus to reduce the price of land. Book 8, Chapter 3.

11,000 Brazilians Keep US$ 93 Billion Abroad, Mainly in Tax Paradises

Written by Stênio Ribeiro Friday, 04 November 2005 A survey by the Central Bank found that 11,245 Brazilians possessed US$ 93.243 billion in foreign deposits, investments, and business assets as of December 31, 2004. This amount represents an increase of 12.8% over the US$ 82.692 billion declared a year earlier. This information was provided Thursday, November 3, by the head of the Department in charge of Combating Illegal Financial Assets and the Supervision of Exchange and International Capital, Ricardo Liao. Liao attributed the increment to the increased global insertion of the Brazilian economy, stimulated by the growth in exports in recent years and the variation in the number of individuals and firms that filed declarations of Brazilian Foreign Capital Assets (CBE). The number of declarations this year, referring to calendar year 2004, rose by 623 in relation to the number filed in 2004, referring to calendar year 2003. According to Liao, the US$ 10.6 billion increase in this year's declarations was heavily influenced by mergers between domestic and foreign firms, as well as a US$ 5 billion increase in inter-company loans and the enhanced market value of Brazilian companies abroad. Liao said that, as in previous years, the greatest concentration of Brazilian assets was detected in the so-called tax paradises, due to the "facility offered by these countries for movements of capital." The largest sums of Brazilian capital have traditionally transited through the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, and Luxembourg.

Soldiers are the state

anti-state.com by Joel Wilcox "I find it strange, to say the least, that among those who call themselves anarchists, anti-statists, radicals and individualists, there are so many who are quick to defend soldiers who fight for the state while condemning those who take joy in the soldier's demise. The most common arguments are that we cannot blame the soldiers for the wars they fight because most of them are young and impressionable, brainwashed, impoverished or otherwise well-intentioned. It is demanded that the state is squarely to blame and, in fact, the soldiers themselves are additional victims. For this, we should compassionately give our sympathy and support to those who fight while reproaching that which they fight for. Now, I would expect these arguments from a dyed-in-the-wool statist or even a minarchist but again, from a self-described enemy of the state, such arguments are bizarre." http://tinyurl.com/bbskb

The myth of a social contract

Strike the Root by Jim Davies "Ever since monarchs first felt the rumblings of discontent, they reached for a way to justify their miserable existences in the eyes of those upon the product of whose labor they lived in luxury; for many centuries the 'Divine Right' theory did the job. ... The entire establishments of both State and Church did very nicely out of this scam for centuries. It began to unravel when a few bright minds began to wonder whether the underlying myth was supported by rational fact, and found it wanting; that enlightening process began in the 18th Century and came to full fruit in the 20th, by when few monarchies remained and none of those are more than figureheads (observe Charles and Camilla, currently on a US visit.) Alas, however, the dictators were replaced by an even more insidious myth: that of the 'Social Contract,' the idea that all members of a society have in some way agreed to bind themselves to certain standards and laws for the common good." http://www.strike-the-root.com/52/davies/davies7.html

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

If I were to re-write this book, I would offer a third alternative - the possibility of sanity - Economics would be decentralist and Henry Georgian. foreword to Brave New World

Samuel Gompers (1850-1924)

I believe in Land Value Taxation. I count it a great privilege to have been a friend of Henry George: First President American Federation of Labor:

Confucius 551-479 BC

Once, natural resources were fully used for the benefit of all, and not appropriated for selfish ends. This was the age of the Great Commonwealth of peace and prosperity.

William Blackstone: 1723-1780

The earth, therefore, and all things therein, are the general property of all mankind, from the immediate gift of the creator. ...there is no foundation in nature or in natural law why a set of words upon parchment should convey the dominion of land. Commentaries

Avoid a VAT

Ernest S. Christian/Gary Robbins Our current tax system runs to more than 60,000 pages of laws, regulations and rulings. It's so confusing that many, if not most, Americans mail their return with no idea whether or not they've filled it out properly. ...However, a handful of tax reforms would do more harm than good....The proponents of this scheme (the so-called two-track system) propose a high-rate, value-added tax (VAT) of the type used in Europe, which is a hidden tax on wages, dividends and consumer purchases. ...the two-track system is a prescription for enormous expansion of government and escalating tax rates. The increasing taxes will especially burden the minority of voters subject to income taxes as well as the VAT. .... It would place a surtax on hard work, productivity and success. It would penalize Americans who have already succeeded and discourage others from even attempting to succeed. That's because even if they worked harder and more productively, they'd know that income taxes would take a large bite out of their earnings. A reasonable person near the income-tax threshold would likely decide that the increased income wasn't worth losing his exemption from the income tax and, in his view, having to start "paying taxes" for the first time. The Washington Times: Commentary

What you put online may be used against you!

...An alarming trend is developing at many universities where officials are searching Facebook profiles and Webshots accounts for incriminating photos to use against students. By Heights Editorial Board

GOP Plan to Tax You Out of House & Home

Chuck Muth ...the Jeffersonian notion that the nation would be stronger if more citizens owned their own homes, Congress in the early 1900s created the ìgovernment-sponsored enterpriseî known popularly as Fannie Mae (short for Federal National Mortgage Association). Fannie Mae - and its sibling, Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.), created in 1970 - are private companies which do NOT get direct money from taxpayers, but which DO enjoy some favorable treatment by the federal government in return for making home ownership more available to more Americans. The essence of these GSEs is this: They dont lend money directly to you, the home-buyer. Instead, once a bank lends you the $100,000 to buy your house, Fannie and/or Freddie buy your new mortgage from the bank. This is what is called the ìsecondary mortgage market,î and it immediately frees up that $100,000 lent to you for the bank to lend to another potential home buyer. This is an extraordinary benefit if you were #11 on the bankís lending list. Their purpose, then, is to help moderateñ and low-income families obtain the American dream of home ownership. ...Their purpose, then, is to help moderateñ and low-income families obtain the American dream of home ownership. ...In the old days,î before Freddie Mac, the 30-year fixed mortgage was almost unheard of in the home-lending market. Today, somewhere around 70 and 80 percent of such home mortgages are issued under such terms. The 30-year mortgage, combined with relatively stable and lower interest rates, have made monthly home-loan payments affordable for millions of average-income citizens who otherwise would still be renting instead of buying. ...once Fannie or Freddie buys your mortgage from the local bank, they generally do one of two things with it: They turn around and sell it to investors (often overseas investors who see the U.S. real estate market as a safe bet and want a piece of the action), or they retain the mortgage in their own portfolio, allowing Fannie and Freddie share-holders and investors to reap the profits from the interest you pay on your home loan. ...Franklin Raines (a former Clinton official; go figure), OVER-stated its earnings to shareholders by a whopping $11 billion. ...Rather than merely assuring accurate accounting, these members of Congress are considering an active role in actually manipulating the market and picking new winners and losers. opinion editorials.com guestcontributors

Lands of Catastrophe: The Case of India and Pakistan

Jayant Bhandari ...For imperialist rulers, it is the land — not people — that matters. ...Millions suffer every year in the subcontinent from a cycle of horrible floods and water shortages. Millions die of easily and cheaply treatable diseases. Hundreds of thousands die like flies — and nature gets the blame. ...Facts will continue to come to light..is really the result of human arrogance and stupidity...To "make the nation strong," the state of India controlled the cement industry. ...Cement houses were far less insulated and, in a final irony, they needed more wood for heating. So much for saving the trees...While the "environmentalists" and the state destroyed the natural order, the void in the construction industry was filled by corrupt bureaucrats...Kashmir is one of the world's most militarized zones...To enable them to prepare for war, Pakistan and India spend 3.9% and 2.5% of their GDPs respectively...The total deployed troops are a million strong. Lessons: ...the people in these countries should have learned long ago is that when the crisis strikes, the state disappears...human stupidity has no limits...the media will romanticize whatever they can...Millions will continue to die, suffer, and live in utter misery, and the people of these countries will keep electing the same rulers. The culprits and the victims are the same; they only change positions. ...Leftists in the West will keep blaming globalization and the free market for all these problems. http://www.mises.org/story/1951

What's So Eminent About Public Domain?

Tim Lee Or consider the newly formed Property Rights Alliance (a project of Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform) which sponsored a panel at last month's State Policy Network meeting in which lobbyists from the movie and recording industries shared the podium with grassroots activists fighting eminent domain abuse. The Alliance's founding press release lamented that "recent Supreme Court decisions gutting physical and intellectual property rights have left little choice but to unify and organize." ...The Eldred decision is a good example. Until 1909, an author could receive copyright protection for no more than 56 years, after which the work would fall into the public domain. But thanks to industry lobbying, Congress extended the terms in 1976, and again in 1998. As a result, no copyrights have fallen into the public domain since the 1970s unless their owners chose not to renew them. There's every reason to think Congress will grant another extension around 2018, when the current terms begin to expire. Despite the Constitutional requirement that copyrights be "for limited times," Congress has effectively made them perpetual, one extension at a time. ...By lumping together the very real threat of the government taking people's land with an imaginary threat of IP anarchists abolishing intellectual property, the copyright industry and its allies hope to portray themselves as defenders of traditional property rights. http://www.reason.com/hod/tl103105.shtml

USA: Huntington could become the first city in West Virginia to pass a payroll tax.

City council will meet next week to debate whether to impose the 1 percent tax on people who work in the city. The fee would replace Huntington's $2-a-week service fee, similar to Charleston's $1-a-week user fee. Instead of paying for police officers and street services, the payroll tax revenue would go toward paying down Huntington's skyrocketing employee pension debts. "Nobody's going to be happy with any tax. I'm aware of that," said Huntington Mayor David Felinton. "But I think this is a lot more fair than the user fee. You look across the border and you see all these other states have the ability to do things like this, but it's just brand new in West Virginia. I think all cities need more flexibility to do this." Cities like Pittsburgh, Columbus and Cincinnati have for years charged people up to 2 percent in payroll taxes for working there. Parts of surrounding states like Kentucky and Virginia also charge the fees. Until recently, West Virginia cities and towns had no authority to tax the income of their workers. Instead, places like Huntington and Charleston have adopted user fees, the across-the- board fee that generally helps pay for road repairs and police services. Payroll taxes, on the other hand, vary depending on a person's income, and the tax typically brings in a lot more money than $1- or $2-a-week service fees. Huntington, however, is the only city in West Virginia right now that's eligible to pass a payroll tax. State lawmakers approved a plan just last year to allow cities to charge the tax only if their employee pension plans are severely under-funded. Huntington is the only city so deeply in debt, with reserves to cover less than 3 percent of its future pension obligations. It has pension liabilities that top $117 million. "This (tax) is probably the most viable option the city of Huntington has, other than some sort of increased property tax," said Mark Muchow, fiscal policy director for the state Department of Revenue. The tax would affect any person or family in Huntington earning $10,000 or more a year. A household making that much would pay $100 annually, whether.the money supports one person or four. Someone with an income of $50,000 would owe $500, and someone making $250,000 would have to pay the city $2,500. If the tax passes, most people who work in the city will end up paying more than the $104 now charged for the service fee. Felinton said revenue from the tax would amount to about $8 million a year, all of which would go to pension payments. The city's service fee is bringing in $3 million a year, which helps pay for police and street services. If the payroll tax passes, those services would get some added support from money now being used to pay off pension debts. Felinton has brought up the possibility of passing a payroll tax in the pass, but other city leaders have shot it down in favor of other alternatives. Now, those options seem to be running out. Felinton said the city is likely to miss a state deadline in December to reconfigure its pension payments, a plan that would have allowed it to start a new contribution plan for new hires. "This is a bit tougher to sell," Felinton said. "This scenario isn't as good as (our other options were), but we have to do something and we have to do it sooner than later." Cities around the state have been examining several new funding options, like the payroll tax, that lawmakers approved last year. While most places don't have a choice of adding a payroll tax right now, cities do have the option of abandoning a business and occupation tax in favor of adding their own sales tax in order to boost revenue. Charleston City Council Finance Chairman Bobby Reishman said city leaders here aren't talking about changing the tax structure any time soon. The city has for two years charged a $1-a-week service fee for anyone who works in Charleston, and Reishman said that plan is working out well. "Some of those taxes have been set up for cities that are in real trouble, and we're in good shape," Reishman said. "We're collecting more than we used to, and we certainly don't want to raise taxes any more than we have to." Felinton plans to bring up the payroll tax at the Oct. 24 council meeting, and council members could vote on the option early at a meeting in mid-November. Contact writer Kris Wise at 348-1244. J Kennedy Bennett response to the Editor & K Wise. This regressive revenue measure was drafted by your city's privileged few, who do not receive the bulk of their income from wages but from tenant rents & monopoly interest payments. It will further alienate the wealth of the Produces and shift it to vested interest in land. Your article quotes Mayor of Huntington David Felinton as saying "Nobody's going to be happy with any tax. I'm aware of that." And then offering an alleged counter argument as "But I think this is a lot more fair than the user fee." Neither is fair nor economic and yet his first assertion is true. Nobody is happy with any tax because tax is theft it maybe legal but it is not moral nor economic. The economic alternative is to rate the value of land which the Mayor allegedly governs. None of your cities do this let alone the States or Federal Government. Taxation can only occur after wealth is produced and is therefore external to the economic transaction of its creation. The rent of land is the return for its use and is integral to the economic use and production process and is the just base by which public revenue should be raised. As the value of production and consumption is stored in the land on which it occurs land is traded in a monopoliconomy for a price which is capitalised rent. Fewer and fewer Americans are securing titles to the land. Due to the rising monopoly ownership laws. So that your cities are becoming wage slave centres of compliance and regulatory nightmares for the dispossessed and your public administrations are exporting these policies around the world. The debate is council should rate land via valuation notices with incremental increases in the dollar as all other imposts are struck off until the the single source of revenue achieves a site revenue society with the absence of land price and taxation a consequence. Poverty crime homelessness terrorism would all disappear with it. PS. In a revenue analysis, I am able to quantify what the magnitude is, of the amount of suppressed economic activity by the impost measure herein proposed. If I were to obtain the city's valuation data of all property values (which the Huntington Council should have.) I then can advise as to what the revenue base formulae is, for the highest economic integrity. To replace this proposed slum facilitating measure.