Lessons Not Fully Learned
Aug. 7th, 2024 01:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ndrosenThomas Savidge has an article in Reason about Lessons for the US from Japan’s Lost Decade. I agree in part with that, but he neglects the point that Japan’s lost decade followed the bursting of an unsustainable bubble in real estate prices, which mostly mean land prices. One lesson which the United States and the rest of the world should have learned is that the lack of land value taxation results in bubbles in land prices, which always burst sooner or later, generally leaving economic devastation in their wake.
Mr. Savidge mentions that Japan “raised a consumption tax,” which the late Professor Mason Gaffney had a few trenchant things to say about. Instead of discouraging the land speculators by making it expensive to keep valuable land out of use, the Japanese government hit ordinary consumers in their pockets.
Mr. Savidge mentions that Japan “raised a consumption tax,” which the late Professor Mason Gaffney had a few trenchant things to say about. Instead of discouraging the land speculators by making it expensive to keep valuable land out of use, the Japanese government hit ordinary consumers in their pockets.
