TED Community » Wendell Fitzgerald

Comments

• TEDCred score: +0.30 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +1

  A comment on Conversation: What do you think will help our species survive in a space-limited world with a constantly growing population?

  Mar 7 2012: Two areas of public policy if changed that by themselves would completely change the course of human history for the sustainable better and allow for the proper stewardship of the planet. They are monetary reform and tax reform. The needed monetary reform already well thought out and under consideration is the move to debt free creation of money by sovereign governments. (Google "Steven Zarlenga"). The needed tax reform in existence in its modern form for over a century (Google "Henry George") and well thought out and tried in enough places to verify the validity of the theory is the shift of taxation off of earned incomes from labor and real capital investment in the real economy onto community created land and natural resource values. It is this tax reform that is especially crucial to create the economic context wherein all other human progress and in particular technological progress can benefit all people instead of being siphoned away by economic elites and monopoly owners of the earth. These two pieces of social/political/economic technology will allow what is workable about free markets/free enterprise to work as promised. Without these two public policy changes and especially the shift of taxes to community created land values it will be very difficult for humanity to share the earth and benefit from all other forms of progress. The survival of humanity from this vantage point is now dependent on sharing the earth and the establishment of an honest monetary system. Mere technological fixes as wonderful and exciting as they promise to and no doubt will be cannot resolve issues of economic justice. What is necessary is a paradigm shift in our relationship to the earth so that we no longer pay a small percentage of our own kind for the right to have a place to be on our own planet. The earth belongs to all of us, we all create its value and thus the rental value of the earth rightfully belongs to all of us as an equal inheritance.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: The City 2.0 according to YOU... 2 Things a City that YOU design, Must Have...

  Mar 6 2012: I suggest that one of the most important elements of sustainable cities of the future will not be the technology of building or planning but taxation. All cities are built on land and the most valuable land on the planet is under cities because the proximity of people and everything people do and build has the result of making city land more and more valuable. It is a well known fact of economics that land value is created not by the owners of particular pieces of land but by the community of all people in the city and for many miles around. The value of land is therefore literally created by the community and land value is the one thing that community as a whole creates that can be measured in dollars and cents. Historically ownership of land has included the right to collect the value land comes to have but it is clear and acknowledged by all economists although they rarely speak of it that such income is wholly unearned. It is the private collection of community created land value that gives rise to land speculation, under use/inefficient us of city land for purposes of cashing in on future increases in land value and urban sprawl.
  
  The proposal here has been on the table for over a century is to shift the property tax and eventually other local taxes such as sales and business taxes that fall on the earned incomes of labor and real capital invested in the real local economy onto community created land values. This would have the result of giving positive economic incentive to build, rebuild and improve land within cities, it would result in the building of more affordable housing, crate more local jobs, encourage massive capital investment within the existing borders of cities and curtail if not completely end urban sprawl.
  
  I suggest that without this shift of taxation to the community created value of land that cities will always be at the mercy of conflicting values which to date have usually been trumped by the motive to cash in on unearned land value
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Clean technology, while a huge opportunity, will not go to scale in time to prevent a global economic and social crisis.

  Mar 6 2012: A very large contributing factor to economic inefficiency, economic un-sustainability, the largest incentive for every sort of environmental abuse and the historical root cause of the disparity of wealth on the planet is private ownership of land and natural resources which has resulted over the centuries in a virtual monopoly of the most valuable land and natural resources in the hands of a relative few of our kind. It is estimated that 3-5% of people and their corporations own 85% of the most valuable land and resources. A little appreciated fact of economics is that the value of land is created 100% by the community of all people and therefore the income from land and natural resources which amounts to anywhere from 20 to 40% of GNP incomes everywhere is wholly unearned. This simple underlying fact of economics mostly unappreciated today obscures the fact that the effect of all human progress including the increase of population and the increase of productive capacity enabled by our technology is to increase land and resources values and most of it goes into the pockets of private owners of the earth thus giving the impression that progress does not benefit everyone. Which it does not. This is why mere technological progress will most likely be a disappointment because it will not benefit enough of our kind to alleviate poverty which it otherwise could easily and already would have done. In addition the massive increase in human productivity will further increase land and resources values further enriching the already wealthy.
  
  One of the technical advances that could be adopted is a political advance in turning the mechanism just described to the benefit of all people. It is called "land value taxation" whereby taxation is shifted off of earned earned incomes from labor and real capital investment onto community created land values and the unearned incomes derived thereform. In this way the earth will be shared while not disturbing "ownership" of land.