Justice

This Tax Makes All Other Taxes Redundant

by Rinske Bijl

On a lazy Sunday morning I managed to get my son Miran (9) and his friend Tinus (10), who lives next door to us, to play a game of Monopoly. They were not very enthusiastic at first; they find the game boring and predictable. The player who can build houses first quickly gets ahead in the game. Especially if he reinvests the money he earns in new houses. For the others, it’s hard to catch up. The winner accumulates piles of money, the other players are broke and frustrated. There’s hardly any strategy involved. It’s just a matter of being lucky or unlucky.

The current housing market in the Netherlands looks a lot like a Monopoly game. If you bought a house at the right time, your wealth is growing. If you don’t own a house yet, it is almost impossible to get in on this wealth growth.

Free Newark Now!

by Joshua Vincent

Along with New York City, Newark, New Jersey, possesses one of the best locational advantages of any city in the United States. Founded in 1666 by Connecticut Puritans, the town grew by leaps and bounds; the Industrial Revolution sparked a meteoric increase in population and a multi-sector industrial and commercial base. First, canals and then railroads converged into the city. With a population of 8000 in 1820, people poured in, swelling the city’s population to 367,000 by 1910.

The civic confidence of Newark was such that city leaders in government and business thought it was time to go big. In the era of bold public development, the Meadowlands of New Jersey (known as Newark Meadows) consisted of 46 square miles of what today we would call wetlands but then were called “wastelands.” 4300 acres lay inside the city limits of Newark, and plans were executed and funded by the city to build a port from the “reclaimed” land.

The Privatization of Everything

by Kris Feder

In The Privatization of Everything, Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaelian argue that, over the past four decades, private entities have wrested control of many of the functions of federal, state, and local governments. Free-market ideologues and cost-cutting “small government” bureaucrats have cooperated with business firms… Read More »The Privatization of Everything

Shared Truth

by Steve Sklar
6 Comments

Apparently, cyberattacks do not only involve computer programming. There is a thing called perception hacking, a name for the kind of disinformation campaign that starts online and seeks to sow distrust and division deeply and widely in a society. In the run up to the… Read More »Shared Truth

Tax Induced Opportunities for Expanding Community Land Trust Housing in Portland, Oregon

by RSF Staff

Article by Tom Gihring, Research Director – Common Ground OR/WA Consequences of Two Property Tax Systems For several years property tax reformers have been calling for a land value tax (LVT) to counteract rapidly rising home prices. A property tax system that raises the tax… Read More »Tax Induced Opportunities for Expanding Community Land Trust Housing in Portland, Oregon

CPTR Mapping Tool: LLCs in New York City

by RSF Staff

LLCs are a way to combine the benefits of a traditional corporate structure with enhanced anonymity and reduced tax-liability, making them the ideal method for limiting risk while at the same time maximizing profits. This incentivizes land speculation rather than reinvestment in the land in… Read More »CPTR Mapping Tool: LLCs in New York City

Book Review: The Dawn of Everything

by Rich Nymoen

The new book, The Dawn of Everything, by anthropologist David Graeber (who died before its publication) and archeologist David Wengrow is fascinating. It starts by exploring why the origins of inequality suddenly became a concern in 17th and 18th century Europe, a society that had experienced only inequality… Read More »Book Review: The Dawn of Everything

Dutch Pioneers take their land off the Market

by Rinske Bijl
1 Comment

In a small village in the Netherlands, 2,220 square meters of land was taken out of the economic system. It cannot be bought nor sold for at least seven generations to come. “Land is a basic resource, just like the air we breathe.” This article… Read More »Dutch Pioneers take their land off the Market

Review: Daniel Mandell, The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America: 1600 to 1870. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (2020)

by RSF Staff

Historian Daniel Mandell’s fourth and most recent book is an important contribution to studies about the relationship between property, wealth, and history. Published in 2020, this book has not received the attention it deserves. The author has unearthed substantial new material, which along with roughly… Read More »Review: Daniel Mandell, The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America: 1600 to 1870. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (2020)

Racism Has Been Mobilized — Why Now?

by Steve Sklar

Barton Gellman’s “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun” (The Atlantic, January/February, 2022) solidly makes the case that it is largely masculine racism — the fear felt by a disturbingly large number, albeit a minority, of white, male, not especially young Americans that their place in… Read More »Racism Has Been Mobilized — Why Now?