Re Portland, Oregon, USA
City Commissioner Randy Leonard wants property owners who benefited
from -- and helped pay for -- streetcar construction to pick up more of
the operations tab. The streetcar has helped increase property values and
spur about $1 billion in development for two blocks along its alignment,
the city says.
Reap as you sow is fair. The trolley increased land values, those new and
higher values belong to the community. Funding transit from ground rents
would not even be subsidizing at all. At the same time, the values of
buildings and businesses belong to individuals; society has not the right
to tax true private property.
Perhaps you saw the Financial Times (the Wall St Journal of the UK; or is
it vice versa?) write confidently of this tax shift Feb 5. "A sixth issue
is the proper reform of land taxation. It would be possible, for example,
to accelerate the development of land by the introduction of high levels
of taxation on undeveloped land."
To put this principle into wider practice - pay for the values you take,
not for the values you create.
If you'd like more information on where this reform has worked, who else
promotes it, please just ask or check our website (below). For more on
just the transit-funding angle, you could check out my annotated
bibliography of over 80 academic articles on using ground rents to fund
transit at the website of the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute,
vtpi.org.
Thanks for your consideration. Ciao.
SMITH, Jeffery J.
President, Forum on Geonomics, www.geonomics.org
3604 SE Morrison St, Portland OR 97214 USA; 503/234-0809
Share Earth's worth to prosper and conserve.
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