Mason Gaffney
Biographic Data
| ID | 697714 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mason Gaffney |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mason |
| FAMILY NAME | Gaffney |
| SIGNATURE | GAFFNEY M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 49 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1961 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Corporate Power and Expansive U.S. Military Policy
Military defense is generally treated in economics texts as a “public good” because the benefits are presumed to be shared by all citizens. However, defense spending by the United States cannot legitimately be classified as a public good, since the primary purpose of those expenditures has been to project power in support of private business interests. Throughout the course of the 20 th century, U.S. military spending has been largely devoted to …
Nature, Economy, and Equity: Sacred Water, Profane Markets
Numerous conflicts over natural resources can be overcome by restoring reciprocity between public and private sectors of the economy. Chapter 1 reviews two competing forms of environmentalism: one that accommodates business interests by giving public resources to them, and one that sacralizes the bond between society and nature by protecting both environmental quality and social equity. Chapter 2 discusses problems around the world that can be tr…
New Life for the Octopus: How Voting Rules Sustain the Power of California's Big Landowners
The concentrated ownership of farmland has influenced rural life in the state of California for more than a century. Reformers have introduced measures to counteract that concentration, such as acreage limits on farms receiving water from federally funded projects. Large landowners have fought back with policies that have protected their ability to amass and maintain their empires. In the first part of this article, Mason Gaffney presents this hi…
A Real-Assets Model of Economic Crises: Will China Crash in 2015
Loosely derived from Henry George's theory that land speculation creates boom-bust cycles, a real-assets model of economic crises is developed. In this model, land prices play a central role, and three hypothesized mechanisms are proposed by which swings of land prices affect the entire economy: construction on marginal sites, partial displacement of circulating capital by fixed capital investment, and the over-leveraging of bank assets. The cris…
Going My Way? Wending a Way Through the Stumbling Blocks Between Georgism and Catholicism
This essay surveys the issues between Georgists and Roman Catholics in three classes: issues that are not peculiarly Roman Catholic (RC) but play out across faiths and denominations, issues that are peculiarly RC, and points of similarity and agreement. Addressed in this fashion are the tensions that arise between the social gospel and individual salvation, between specifics and glittering generalities, betweennoblesse obligeand governmental refo…
Money, Credit, and Crisis
The financial crisis of 2008-2009 has antecedents in earlier crises, including the Great Depression. In order to understand how the current crisis arose, we must review the most fundamental principles of banking. Doing that, we find that the main service performed by banks is the creation of liquidity, a collective good that can be destroyed by the behavior of individual financial institutions. The key element in creating liquidity is the monetiz…
A New Framework for Macroeconomics: Achieving Full Employment by Increasing Capital Turnover
Most forms of macroeconomics today, whether Keynesian or monetarist, presuppose that problems of economic instability can be treated as errors in financial management. Neither fiscal nor monetary policy recognizes the existence of systemic faults in the real economy that result in overinvestment in durable capital that turns over slowly, in contrast to forms of capital that interact more frequently with land and labor. Only by removing serious di…
The Role of Land Markets in Economic Crises
It is widely recognized that the economic crisis of 2009 was caused by unsound lending for real estate. Largely ignored, however, is that this contraction was easily predicted on the basis of a well-established pattern of land speculation, premature subdivision, and excessive building on marginal land that recurs approximately once every 18 years. Capital locked up in projects that are started during a land bubble is effectively lost during the d…
Keeping Land in Capital Theory: Ricardo, Faustmann, Wicksell, and George
Most economists today live in a two-factor world: There is just labor and capital. Land, so central to classical political economy, has been swallowed into capital and "disappeared." This paper surveys some of the better historical treatments of land and capital, their interrelations, and how they support modern Georgists and Greens who want land to reappear
A Simple General Test for Tax Bias
The paper infers the biasing effects of taxes from their differential effects on the present values of rival uses for given tracts of land. After-tax wage rates, interest rates, and commodity prices are exogenous, hence not affected by taxes, which are therefore all shifted to land rents and values. The effects are differential among rival uses, hence change their ranking in the eyes of the landowner-manager. Most taxes downgrade the highest use …
A Cannan Hits the Mark
Seligman and His Critique from Social Utility
The Role of Ground Rent in Urban Decay and Revival: How to Revitalize a Failing City
Alfred Russel Wallace's Campaign to Nationalize Land: How Darwin's Peer Learned from John Stuart Mill and Became Henry George's Ally
Alfred Russel Wallace rose to fame with Charles Darwin: They independently found the principle of natural selection. Wallace later focused on reforming Great Britain's land tenure system, under which a few owners had come to control most of the land, while most citizens had little or none of their own. In Land Nationalization (1882) Wallace proposed for the state to acquire all land, with limited compensation. The state would then lease it by auc…
What Price Water Marketing: California's New Frontier
We can multiply the value of output from limited natural water supplies by allocating them to higher uses. To this end we need a market in raw water, but existing markets work badly, for several reasons. Sellers are undermotivated, absent taxes or debt. Free groundwater subverts the pricing of surface water. Loss of elevation, and damage from effluents, and instream uses are not charged for. Obsolete subsidies abound; obsolete entitlements domina…
The Corruption of Economics
Journal Article The Corruption of Economics. Get access The Corruption of Economics. By Gaffney (Mason) and Harrison (Fred). (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1995. Pp. 271. £24.95 hardback, £10.95 paperback. ISBN 0 85683 160 3, 0 85683 151 4).A Philosophy for a Fair Society. By Hudson (Michael), (G.J.) Miller arid Feder (Kris). (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1995. Pp. 169. £22.50 hardback, £9.95 paperback. ISBN 0 85683 161 1, 0 85683 159 X.)Land and Taxati…
The Partiality of Indexing Capital Gains
Land Rent, Taxation and Public Policy: Taxation and the Functions of Urban hand Rent
A Selected Bibliography on Land Rent Taxation
What Is Property Tax Reform
Land Rent, Taxation, and Public Policy: The Sources, Nature and Functions of Urban Land Rent
Tax-Induced Slow Turnover of Capital, II
Tax-Induced Slow Turnover of Capital, IV
Tax-Induced Slow Turnover of Capital, III
Tax-Induced Slow Turnover of Capital, I
The Role of Land Markets in Economic Crises
It is widely recognized that the economic crisis of 2009 was caused by unsound lending for real estate. Largely ignored, however, is that this contraction was easily predicted on the basis of a well-established pattern of land speculation, premature subdivision, and excessive building on marginal land that recurs approximately once every 18 years. Capital locked up in projects that are started during a land bubble is effectively lost during the d…
The Unwieldy Time-Dimension of Space
This paper introduces the concept of "time-indivisibility," and suggests that it may interfere with optimal allocation of durable resources, and especially permanent resources. Space on the earth's surface is taken as a representative permanent resource. The limitations of leasing and lending as time-dividers are briefly sketched. A simple technique is advanced for analyzing on an annual basis the effects of time-indivisibility, and it is demonst…
A Real-Assets Model of Economic Crises: Will China Crash in 2015
Loosely derived from Henry George's theory that land speculation creates boom-bust cycles, a real-assets model of economic crises is developed. In this model, land prices play a central role, and three hypothesized mechanisms are proposed by which swings of land prices affect the entire economy: construction on marginal sites, partial displacement of circulating capital by fixed capital investment, and the over-leveraging of bank assets. The cris…
Money, Credit, and Crisis
The financial crisis of 2008-2009 has antecedents in earlier crises, including the Great Depression. In order to understand how the current crisis arose, we must review the most fundamental principles of banking. Doing that, we find that the main service performed by banks is the creation of liquidity, a collective good that can be destroyed by the behavior of individual financial institutions. The key element in creating liquidity is the monetiz…
A Simple General Test for Tax Bias
The paper infers the biasing effects of taxes from their differential effects on the present values of rival uses for given tracts of land. After-tax wage rates, interest rates, and commodity prices are exogenous, hence not affected by taxes, which are therefore all shifted to land rents and values. The effects are differential among rival uses, hence change their ranking in the eyes of the landowner-manager. Most taxes downgrade the highest use …
What Is Property Tax Reform
Land Rent, Taxation, and Public Policy: The Sources, Nature and Functions of Urban Land Rent
Tax-Induced Slow Turnover of Capital, I
Land Rent, Taxation, and Public Policy
Land rent, taxation, and public policy
New Life for the Octopus: How Voting Rules Sustain the Power of California's Big Landowners
The concentrated ownership of farmland has influenced rural life in the state of California for more than a century. Reformers have introduced measures to counteract that concentration, such as acreage limits on farms receiving water from federally funded projects. Large landowners have fought back with policies that have protected their ability to amass and maintain their empires. In the first part of this article, Mason Gaffney presents this hi…
Keeping Land in Capital Theory: Ricardo, Faustmann, Wicksell, and George
Most economists today live in a two-factor world: There is just labor and capital. Land, so central to classical political economy, has been swallowed into capital and "disappeared." This paper surveys some of the better historical treatments of land and capital, their interrelations, and how they support modern Georgists and Greens who want land to reappear
What Price Water Marketing: California's New Frontier
We can multiply the value of output from limited natural water supplies by allocating them to higher uses. To this end we need a market in raw water, but existing markets work badly, for several reasons. Sellers are undermotivated, absent taxes or debt. Free groundwater subverts the pricing of surface water. Loss of elevation, and damage from effluents, and instream uses are not charged for. Obsolete subsidies abound; obsolete entitlements domina…
Milliman on Urban Water Price and Tax Policy: A Comment
Corporate Power and Expansive U.S. Military Policy
Military defense is generally treated in economics texts as a “public good” because the benefits are presumed to be shared by all citizens. However, defense spending by the United States cannot legitimately be classified as a public good, since the primary purpose of those expenditures has been to project power in support of private business interests. Throughout the course of the 20 th century, U.S. military spending has been largely devoted to …
Nature, Economy, and Equity: Sacred Water, Profane Markets
Numerous conflicts over natural resources can be overcome by restoring reciprocity between public and private sectors of the economy. Chapter 1 reviews two competing forms of environmentalism: one that accommodates business interests by giving public resources to them, and one that sacralizes the bond between society and nature by protecting both environmental quality and social equity. Chapter 2 discusses problems around the world that can be tr…
Going My Way? Wending a Way Through the Stumbling Blocks Between Georgism and Catholicism
This essay surveys the issues between Georgists and Roman Catholics in three classes: issues that are not peculiarly Roman Catholic (RC) but play out across faiths and denominations, issues that are peculiarly RC, and points of similarity and agreement. Addressed in this fashion are the tensions that arise between the social gospel and individual salvation, between specifics and glittering generalities, betweennoblesse obligeand governmental refo…
A New Framework for Macroeconomics: Achieving Full Employment by Increasing Capital Turnover
Most forms of macroeconomics today, whether Keynesian or monetarist, presuppose that problems of economic instability can be treated as errors in financial management. Neither fiscal nor monetary policy recognizes the existence of systemic faults in the real economy that result in overinvestment in durable capital that turns over slowly, in contrast to forms of capital that interact more frequently with land and labor. Only by removing serious di…
The Role of Ground Rent in Urban Decay and Revival: How to Revitalize a Failing City
Alfred Russel Wallace's Campaign to Nationalize Land: How Darwin's Peer Learned from John Stuart Mill and Became Henry George's Ally
Alfred Russel Wallace rose to fame with Charles Darwin: They independently found the principle of natural selection. Wallace later focused on reforming Great Britain's land tenure system, under which a few owners had come to control most of the land, while most citizens had little or none of their own. In Land Nationalization (1882) Wallace proposed for the state to acquire all land, with limited compensation. The state would then lease it by auc…
Land Rent, Taxation and Public Policy: Taxation and the Functions of Urban hand Rent
A Selected Bibliography on Land Rent Taxation
A Tax Tool for Meeting Urban Fiscal Crisis
The Unwieldy Time-Dimension of Space
This paper introduces the concept of "time-indivisibility," and suggests that it may interfere with optimal allocation of durable resources, and especially permanent resources. Space on the earth's surface is taken as a representative permanent resource. The limitations of leasing and lending as time-dividers are briefly sketched. A simple technique is advanced for analyzing on an annual basis the effects of time-indivisibility, and it is demonst…
Milliman on Urban Water Price and Tax Policy: A Comment
The Benefits of Farm Programs: II Incidence, Shifting, and Dissipation
The Benefits of Farm Programs: Incidence, Shifting, and Dissipation
A Tax Tool for Meeting Urban Fiscal Crisis
Land Rent, Taxation, and Public Policy
Land rent, taxation, and public policy
Economic Aspects of Water Resource Policy
Tax-Induced Slow Turnover of Capital, II
Tax-Induced Slow Turnover of Capital, IV
Tax-Induced Slow Turnover of Capital, III
Tax-Induced Slow Turnover of Capital, I
A Selected Bibliography on Land Rent Taxation
What Is Property Tax Reform
Land Rent, Taxation, and Public Policy: The Sources, Nature and Functions of Urban Land Rent
Land Rent, Taxation and Public Policy: Taxation and the Functions of Urban hand Rent
The Partiality of Indexing Capital Gains
The Corruption of Economics
Journal Article The Corruption of Economics. Get access The Corruption of Economics. By Gaffney (Mason) and Harrison (Fred). (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1995. Pp. 271. £24.95 hardback, £10.95 paperback. ISBN 0 85683 160 3, 0 85683 151 4).A Philosophy for a Fair Society. By Hudson (Michael), (G.J.) Miller arid Feder (Kris). (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1995. Pp. 169. £22.50 hardback, £9.95 paperback. ISBN 0 85683 161 1, 0 85683 159 X.)Land and Taxati…
Alfred Russel Wallace's Campaign to Nationalize Land: How Darwin's Peer Learned from John Stuart Mill and Became Henry George's Ally
Alfred Russel Wallace rose to fame with Charles Darwin: They independently found the principle of natural selection. Wallace later focused on reforming Great Britain's land tenure system, under which a few owners had come to control most of the land, while most citizens had little or none of their own. In Land Nationalization (1882) Wallace proposed for the state to acquire all land, with limited compensation. The state would then lease it by auc…
What Price Water Marketing: California's New Frontier
We can multiply the value of output from limited natural water supplies by allocating them to higher uses. To this end we need a market in raw water, but existing markets work badly, for several reasons. Sellers are undermotivated, absent taxes or debt. Free groundwater subverts the pricing of surface water. Loss of elevation, and damage from effluents, and instream uses are not charged for. Obsolete subsidies abound; obsolete entitlements domina…
The Role of Ground Rent in Urban Decay and Revival: How to Revitalize a Failing City
Seligman and His Critique from Social Utility
A Cannan Hits the Mark
A Simple General Test for Tax Bias
The paper infers the biasing effects of taxes from their differential effects on the present values of rival uses for given tracts of land. After-tax wage rates, interest rates, and commodity prices are exogenous, hence not affected by taxes, which are therefore all shifted to land rents and values. The effects are differential among rival uses, hence change their ranking in the eyes of the landowner-manager. Most taxes downgrade the highest use …
Keeping Land in Capital Theory: Ricardo, Faustmann, Wicksell, and George
Most economists today live in a two-factor world: There is just labor and capital. Land, so central to classical political economy, has been swallowed into capital and "disappeared." This paper surveys some of the better historical treatments of land and capital, their interrelations, and how they support modern Georgists and Greens who want land to reappear
Political science (18 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Economics (17 works) · Library science (16 works) · Citation (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Capital (architecture) (10 works) · History (10 works) · Business (7 works)