Posted on 03/12/2017 5:06:16 AM PDT by vooch
Federal Gov't owns about 750 million acres of land ( excluding Alaska ). Much of this land is low value, but a surprising amount is in high value areas.
If the Feds sold off 1/2 their property at average price of $50,000 per acre that would generate about $20 trillion. This would be enough to retire the entire national debt.
What are Freepers thoughts' ?
PO is mandated bythe Constitution. Much of it is already contracted out (packages). Land sell of is also not Constitutionally viable. Most would require to be returned to the states from which it was garnished before any private sector sale was possible.
turn them into Chinese colonies, right?
Thank you. That was most enlightening and helpful.
50,000/acre? no way. 500/acre is a more realistic figure. i agree that the government should sell most of the land it owns, but at market prices, not artificially inflated ones
Selling is fine, but only to citizens.
I don’t want China coming in and buying half of Utah, Nevada or some other state.
Having traveled the country from coast to coast and border to border several times, on the ground, I know that most of the government land is actually worthless. The fact it is government land is testimony to the fact it is without value.
When recounting American history, the tales are of people. The truth of American history is all about land. The desire, consuming desire, even obsession of 19th century Americans to acquire land populated the continent is very short order.
The old Cowboy movies are mostly about the land and the obsession to take it from the good guys. The founding fathers were all about the land and schemes to acquire it. The current President is a master at acquiring land, So was Thomas Jefferson and other Virginians of the time.
The old military bases that exist might be sold. Many is not most already have. Those in cities were gobbled up by the politicos and recycled. There are other properties, old post offices for instance that might be sold. An old post office in Alexandria Virginia will be snapped up while thousands of slick rock acres in Utah will stay falow.
For an insight into the real estate schemes of our founders read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Grant_Deed and it’s Watauga Treaty of 1775 companions
That said, IMHO, at least a portion (and probably a substantial portion) of federal asset sales in the West should be used for National Park expansion in the East. The east was largely settled, and most of the land sold off, long before the modern parks movement began. While a few larger holdings have been pieced together, mostly in mountain areas, the east is underserved by the NPS. This leads to some of the political asymmetry on the broader federal lands issue. If it were my call, I'd sell off selected lands in the west and use the proceeds to expand parks in the east, starting particularly with historical and cultural sites, and vulnerable seashores that we really ought to stop rebuilding after each hurricane. (Not one more penny for the Outer Banks, or for the Ninth Ward in New Orleans ....)
That said, the idea that federal land sales could contribute to solving our deficit and debt problems is pure snake oil. It is boob bait for the innumerate. We have a massive structural deficit. This is driven by entitlement spending. This in turn drives the cumulative debt, which will eventually bankrupt us if we don't change course. But asset sales are one-time quick fixes. Even large asset sales would make only a very small and very temporary debt in the problem. The idea that asset sales are a solution ranks right up with the idea that we can balance the federal government by cutting fraud, waste, and abuse, or by slashing defense spending, or by application of magical pixie dust to the economy so that it grows at a sustained rate never before experienced. All of these things are nonsense, but they become excuses for not dealing with the underlying problems.
If you can't pay this month's mortgage, you can cash out your 401(k), sell the family silver, auction off your dad's old baseball card collection on eBay, etc. But once the 401(k) is gone, what do you do? Unlike a mortgage, which you can pay off in X years, the federal structural deficit is ongoing income transfers that will only grow with time. Sell off the federal estate and buy a year or two or three. Then what?
Either we fix -- i.e., sharply reduce the growth rate of -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and public employee pay and pensions, or we will go bankrupt. You could sell off the entire federal estate including Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, and Gettysburg National Battlefield, and all you would buy is a (very) little time.
This is no different from President Obama proposing CO2 controls that would cripple the U.S. economy but, even if all the rigged models turned out to be correct, have virtually no impact on global temperatures by the end of the century.
People need to keep their eyes on the ball. Either we fix entitlements, or we go bankrupt. (Someone tell President Trump, who still does not seem to have figured this out.) The good news is that we can fix entitlements in ways that make good public policy, and that will leave most Americans most better off once we are over the hump on the transition. The bad news is that it will be a long, hard political battle, with reformers pitted against the liars leading the ignorant, who are a clear majority of the electorate.
The national debt is not caused by lack of money, but by theft. Just like the surplus of land in Government hands.
Two wrongs don’t make rights.
Because of all the environmental damage and such, like lead on the firing ranges. Now maybe Trump can fix that and make it profitable, but until then be careful what you ask for.
Better bar foreign entities or individuals from purchase. Only American citizens.
Too late - it has already been pledged to China to cover future Treasury defaults.
the 50,000/acre figure is a educated guess based on a surprising amount of federal real estate is worth a few million an acre.
Agreed with many freepers posting here that
1) concerns are the Feds would simply wack up debt again, but perhaps there could be some balanced budget provision included
2) Interesting idea that state governments should be gifted the real estate. Wondering if simply moving from one gov’t entity to another helps free markets. It sure doesn’t pay off the federal debt.
3) I’m not too concerned about foreigners paying off our debt via Federal land sales. We should all recall the hysteria regarding Japanese property purchases in the 1980s. It’s a yawn today.
4) Agreed that federal real estate sales would need to be staged over 5-10 years at least to manage prices & inventory.
5) Intriguing Idea selling naming rights ( Exxon-Mobile Yellowstone ). Utterly crass of course, but the Feds are dead broke and I’m tired of paying for it.
Everyone knows that Federal Gov’t sold hundreds of millions of acres from circa 1850 until FDRs time ? It was a standard operation of the feds - to get rid of its landholdings. It’s actually a aberration for the Feds to not be selling its real estate.
Not just NO, but HELL NO.
What you said x 10!
Any planning should be done in local regions.
Do you mean the land that was stolen from the States? Hell no!
I live in an Ohio suburb. Extrapolating from my property tax statement, my land value is about $50,000 per acre. There is no way that some Nevada desert 5 miles from a paved road is worth that much.
I would take it a step further, that would really drive the Democrats bonkers.
As part of the enabling acts for a constitutional balanced budget amendment (BBA), make a requirement that any “off budget” federal debts must either be paid off by the current congress, or be paid off through the *automatic* sale of federal lands to the individual states to the amount of the debt.
This works in several very important ways. First of all, the weakness of the BBA is that congress and the POTUS can make expenditures “off budget”, spending money they do not have. With no intent, of course, of ever paying it back.
But this provision would be the “Repo Man” provision: you wanted to spend money “off budget”, so you get your federal property “repossessed” by the states you took it from. The states wouldn’t like it either, as they would have to pay to get their lands back. But with a provision that the land could never again be taken over or have its use limited by the feds. Endangered plants and animals? Not our problem. If the feds want them, they can transplant them.
So the states would strongly pressure the feds not to spend money “off budget”.
Importantly, federal lands must *never* be sold directly to individuals, corporations, or especially foreign entities. If the states wish to sell those lands to them, no problem. But the feds cannot.
Paying $50,000 per acre for desert wasteland or inaccessible wilderness sounds like something only the government would do.
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