Sounds good to me.
About 8% of Federal Budget goes to debt service. Retiring debt would mean Federal Budget would be immediately balanced.
Sell it. Sell the Post Office to private investors. Its real estate alone is over $1 Trillion in value.
Fedgov would simply rack up the debt again.
1. I suspect you are over estimating the average value per acre.
2. Utah is suing (or is expecting to sue) the Federal government to get the feds to transfer the land to the states.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/3984279-155/utahs-lawsuit-over-federal-lands-nearly
http://fox13now.com/2016/06/15/lawsuit-over-control-of-federal-lands-may-be-filed-in-2017/
Rather than selling the land(s), should they not go back to their respective states instead?
Uh, $50,000 per acre would mean the bulk of the land was high value. I don’t know where you live but even prime Midwest farm ground only goes for an average of about $8-10,000 per acre. Unless a lot of this land is in high value settings, and I suspect it’s not, the average value per acre would be far less than $5,000 per acre. Probably more like $1-2,000 or less.
Do It! Or sell 100 yr leases for half that.
That or the States should simply confiscate it. The Federal Government has no Constitutional right to the land beyond DC and military reservations.
The Fed is not supposed to own land.
Pray America woke
As long as the land ends up belonging to the state it’s in or American corporate or private interests.
Feds should never have confiscated a States land in the first place. All states should be able to control and use the resources within their boundaries....or do they still have borders?
I think 50,000 /acre does sound a little high but it’s still a wonderful idea to knock down the debt
Sale should be limited to individual US citizens. In perpetuity.
$50,000/acre?
Much of it currently runs about $640/acre. It’s “public” because nobody wants it.
Go look up “cheap land in (insert state here)”. You’ll find the big tracts are checkerboarded with BLM land, runs dirt cheap, and is covanented “no personal dwellings” - likely because there’s no water, no utilities, bad for farming, lousy views, lousy mineral content.
I think the land should be for sale, gov’t has some ulterior motive for not selling. Understand that most of it really is undesirable, and worth very little.
$50,000 and acre for undeveloped land????????? Won't be going to any of your garage sales ;-)
Once upon a time there was a kingdom in which the king promised to provide a trust for the elderly if they gave him a share of the money they earned all their lives. It seemed a pretty good idea at the time and, since the king demanded it, the people went along.
The people were industrious and flourished in spite of the confiscated money. Meanwhile, the king spent every penny that came into the trust. Some was spent on providing for the elderly that had not had time to chip into the trust but this showed good faith and what life would be like for the others when they retired. Most, however, was squandered by the king on a lavish life style.
Eventually the people grew old and wished to receive the benefits they had been purchasing all of their lives. They approached the king and asked for their just rewards. The king told them “There is no money. I spent it on more important things.” “Besides, you have been warned that we had already spent the money – why did you not provide for your own retirement? I cannot be bothered with your poverty. Go! Go and live on turnips and cat food for all I care.”
So, the people left, grumbling. “The king lives large, he has vast holdings of land and other things of untold value, more than enough to make us whole.” “Yes, and most of that stuff he neither needs nor should be allowed to own.” “You’re right!” “I think the king needs to hold a garage sale and give me my money.”
So the good people stormed the castle and sold or took what was rightly theirs. They also forced the king to stop robbing their children as he had robbed them and they all lived happily ever after except for the king who, having been used to arugula and Wagyu beef, didn’t like living on turnips and cat food. The end.
I'm for it if they sell the land I'm on, to Switzerland.
While I don't trust the individual states to be intelligent to find an actual use for land (I live in Illinois, so I have no real-world role model for an actual functional state government to draw from) I do trust that the states could find better use than the feds.
Sounds like robbing the balance sheet to pad the income statement.
maybe $50,000 a hectare, sold by the acre.
We don’t want it sold to the Chinese, we want plain old Americans (or fancy young Americans) to buy it.
Almost ALL federal land should be sold to US citizens.