It must be pretty damn bad if even the progressives over at Newsweek are advocating for the sale of government owned land holdings.
Yet there is another fiscal option that neither party seems to be considering. The U.S. needs to do exactly what it would if it were a severely indebted company: sell off assets to balance its books.
There are three different arguments against such asset sales. The first concerns national security. When Dubai Ports World bought the shipping company P&O in 2006—which would have given it control of facilities in a number of U.S. ports—the deal was killed in Congress in a fit of post-9/11 paranoia. The second argument is usually made by unions: private or foreign owners will be tougher on American workers than good old Uncle Sam. Finally, there’s the chauvinism that surfaced back in the 1980s when the Japanese were snapping up properties like Pebble Beach. How could the United States let its national treasures—the family silver—fall into the hands of inscrutable Asian rivals?
Such arguments were never very strong. Now, in the midst of the biggest crisis of American public finance since the Civil War, they simply collapse. First, standards of public safety and security are unlikely to be compromised by a change of ownership unless military technology is involved (and the U.S. has already sold a startling amount of that to foreigners, by the way). Second, the goal of public policy should not be to protect public-sector workers from market discipline that will raise their productivity. Finally, why is selling assets to Asians worse than paying them an annual rent called interest on the national debt?
Can’t say that I could have put it much better myself.
The US can’t sell its assets to raise funds, to much political pressure.
We could charge more for the airwaves (TV and radio licenses). We could charge more for fishing, harvesting lumber and oil. More for gates at airports, more for dock space at ports.
We could charge more for passports.
We could run our military as a for-profit venture (for example, if we had expropriated Iraq’s oil).
The sale of government land is silly, as in Russia-selling-Alaska and France-selling-the-Lousiana-Purchase silly. Unless you think the government should sell land and then Kelo back whatever it wants?
I don’t believe these sales would entail transferring sovereignty to a foreign power. The areas in question would still be part of the United States (and still subject to taxation) they would merely be privately-owned land, and not government-owned land.
If you own your plot of land out in the country, one day planning to build a retirement home there, it’s not a foreign country. And you still pay taxes on it. Same sort of thing.
As hard as I work to defend the public pensions I earned, one from the State for my LEO service and one from the military for my USAF service, I have been the first to suggest (here in OR, anyway) that the State offer pensioners shares of a REIT composed of properties with certified values instead of some of the money that they are owed by the State. In OR, State has millions of acres of State Forest. I would be delighted to take up to 15-20% of my pension money in a REIT composed mostly of timberland, land which, after giving the State the option to buy it back from me, I could actually take title to.
Yes, the States could EASILY buy their way out of their current difficulties in this manner, and doing so would restore much land that has been with-held from private ownership since it was seized from the Natives to tax-paying private ownership.