Mason Gaffney Brief Biography

Mason Gaffney first read Henry George when a high school junior. After he served in the S.W. Pacific during W.W. II, this interest led him back to get a Ph.D. in Economics at Berkeley, where he tried to meet his teachers' skepticism and apathy with a dissertation, "Land Speculation as an Obstacle to Ideal Allocation of Land." Since then he has published many books and articles on land use, economics, taxation, and public policy. He has been a Professor of Economics at several Universities; a journalist with TIME, Inc.; a researcher with Resources for the Future, Inc.; the head of the British Columbia Institute for Economic Policy Analysis, which he founded; an economic consultant to several businesses and government agencies; and a frequent speaker on economic topics, domestic and foreign, and in political campaigns. He has been Professor of Economics at U.C. Riverside since 1976.

Dr. Gaffney has six children and one grandchild. He and his wife, Letitia Atwood, live in Riverside, CA, in the middle of an avocado grove.

http://www.masongaffney.org

Containment Policies For Urban Sprawl

Urban sprawl can be contained by not subsidizing infrastructure extensions, and by taxing central land to encourage more intensive central development

Full Employment And The Environment

"So long as employment is insecure and uncertain, so long will the environment be sacrificed to it, along with price stability, a measure of freedom, and a measure of world peace." Fortunately, it is possible to secure both full employment and a livable environment.

Henry George 100 Years Later: The Great Reconciler

Showing how Henry George's economic ideas offer an alternative to the bitter trade-offs of neo-classical economics.

How to Thaw Credit, Now and Forever

October 25 2008
Working capital is the bloodstream of economic life. It is physical capital, the fast turning inventory of goods in process and finished goods that supplies materials to the worker, and feeds and clothes her or his family.

The Great Crash of 2008

October 17 2008
This crash is The Big One; it has the signs of becoming a Category 5. How do we know? We’ve “been there and done that” so many times before, roughly every 18 years over the last 800 or more. Major wars and, rarely, plagues have broken the rhythm, along with the little ice age, reformation and counter-reformation, political revolutions and reactions, the rise of nation-states, the enclosure movement, the age of exploration, massive European imports of stolen American gold, the scientific and industrial revolutions, the Crusades, Mongol and Turkish invasions, and other upheavals.

Land Planning And The Property Tax

Revised version of a paper presented at the 1968 Conference of the American Institute of Planners in Pittsburgh, and published in the Journal of the American Institute of Planners, May, 1969.

Opportunities For International Financial Centers In The 21st Century

A Response to the Recent OECD Report on "Harmful Tax Competition".

The Property Tax Is A Progressive Tax

The property tax is a much more progressive tax than an income tax, because property ownership is much more concentrated.

Property Taxes And The Frequency Of Urban Renewal

From The Fifty-Seventh National Tax Conference of the National Tax Association, held at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, September 14-17, 1964.

The Taxable Surplus Of Land: Measuring, Guarding And Gathering It

Speech before the Russian Duma, January 19, 1999.

The Triangle Of Global Power:

Multinational Corporations, Corrupt Dictators, and U.S. Military Power. Is defense a "public good"?

Who Owns Southern California?

Notes on the concentration of land ownership. (1997)