LVTFan's Blog

U.S. Government Sells 400,000 Acres in Gulf

Why on earth would we-the-people sell assets such as this instead of leasing them, producing an income that would benefit future generations???   That would be Natural Public Revenue.

 

The value of that acreage will rise over time.  Why will that be private, or corporate, gain, rather than public gain??

 

U.S. Government Sells 400,000 Acres in Gulf

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS  AUG. 20, 2014

The federal government has sold more than 400,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas coast for oil and gas exploration and development, an official with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said Wednesday. The acreage represents a small fraction of the 21.6 million acres the agency had offered as part of a five-year program to develop resources on the outer continental shelf. Offerings since 2012 in the western Gulf attracted buyers for about 60 million offshore acres, adding about $2.3 billion to the Treasury. Wednesday’s sales, if approved, will bring in about $110 million. BP submitted the largest number of high bids, winning 27 of the 81 tracts that sold. It was the first sale in the western Gulf for BP since it was barred from such auctions after the 2010 oil spill. Conoco Philips spent the most of the 93 bidders in the sale, paying about $61 million for a tract in the ultra-deep-water Alaminos Canyon area.

Some thoughts about Piketty's "Capital in the 21st Century"

I posted this comment elsewhere, and thought it worth sharing here:

I've not read far into the book yet -- and it is available online as a PDF file -- but by the time I was into the first chapter, it was clear that Dr. Piketty's economic education, extensive as it might be, entirely omitted the ideas of the classical economists who described a 3-factor economy: land, labor and capital. Piketty, like nearly everyone educated in economics in the past 40 to 80 years, writes as if there were only two factors -- labor and capital -- treating land as if it were a mere subset of capital, with no reason to recognize it as differentiated.

Land -- not only urban sites, but also the other things the classical economists would recognize as Land, such as water rights, oil, electromagnetic spectrum (our airwaves which we all say belong to the American people, but which are in reality owned by corporations), landing rights at busy landlocked airports, geosynchronous orbits, urban street parking, the value of dozens of other non-renewable natural resources -- is completely different in character from that which is created by labor. To fail to recognize that difference lies at the bottom of our inequality problem.

That which individuals and corporations produce is rightly individual property. That which the community and nature produce is rightly common property, belonging to all of us. Conflating Capital and Land leads us to permit the privatization of that which is rightly our common treasure.

You might be interested to know that the Landlord Game, invented by 1902, was intended to teach this concept. You have probably played Monopoly, which was based on this game, played with very different rules.

Explore the ideas of Henry George. Between 1885 and 1900 or so, everyone knew the name and many well understood his ideas. You might start with "Social Problems" or the more analytical "Progress and Poverty," or his speeches, "The Crime of Poverty," "Thou Shalt Not Steal," among others, online at http://www.wealthandwant.com. See also http://lvtfan.typepad.com.

Dr. Piketty and others whose education in economics has omitted George's ideas should not be treated as experts; they've mixed apples and oranges and not noticed that what they've created impoverishes the vast majority of us -- and enriches a few. (Parenthetically, consider who donates heavily to our universities.)