Land and Taxation 2nd Edition

With an updated introduction by Fred Harrison, Shepheard Walwyn has now published this classic book as an eBook. Economists know that the optimum conditions for private enterprise are achieved when taxes on the earned incomes of labour and capital are reduced to zero but, because neoclassical economic theory insists on treating land as capital, they dismiss the obvious alternative to taxing labour and capital – the unearned income from land. Prof. Mason Gaffney explains the importance of recognising land as a distinctive factor of production and the consequences of its uniqueness for economic policy, for example, that income from land is subject to market forces quite different from those that determine return on capital. Prof. Tideman brings together the classical literature on land taxation to explain the argument that such taxation is an economically efficient and ethical revenue source. The authors argue that reform of the structure of public finance would make it possible to restore full employment without causing inflation and to reduce the overall tax burden.

Nicolaus Tideman received his doctorate from the University of Chicago. He was Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard University (1969-73) and then Senior Staff Economist at the President’ s Council of Econmic Advisors (1970-71), before moving to Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, as Professor of Economics. Fred Harrison read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford, and received his MSc from the University of London. In The Power in the Land (1983) he correctly predicted the global recession of 1991 and in Boom Bust that of 2009. He is Director at the Land Research Trust. During the 1990s he was an advisor to Russian municipal governments and federal agencies on property and taxation reforms. Mason Gaffney received his doctorate from the University of California (Berkeley). He was Professor of Economics, University of California, Riverside (1976-2013). He is the author of an extensive list of studies on urban economics and public finance and several books, most recently The Mason Gaffney Reader: Essays on Solving the “ Unsolvable” .