Chapter-by-Chapter Summary

Ch2. Land Ownership and Property: land ownership has benefits eg through enabling lending to owners, but it diminishes productivity (by reducing mobility) and tends to consolidate political power in ultimately destructive ways.

Ch3 The missing factor: land in production and distribution: Details classical & enlightenment consensus that land produces rents that should not be privatised, and how the neoclassical (possibly deliberate) conflation of land with capital along with the failure to ally with socialists, led to the Single Tax movement dying.

Ch4 Land for Housing - land economics for the modern era: reviews history of land policy in Britain, with the recent property owning democratic majority seeking policies that will protect their wealth, larger shares of public money spent on renters, and volatility for developers.

Ch5 The financialisation of land: elastic credit markets have met fixed land and speculation, massively driving up the amount of loans against property (sucking aggregate demand dry), increasing volatility and reducing real growth.

Ch6 Land, wealth and Inequality: land ownership is driving wealth Inequality, and the biggest class divide is

Ch7 Conclusions: Policy Recommendations ranked

Excerpts from the book follow, with my additional comments at the end in (brackets)

• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Landownership and property
• Chapter 3 The missing factor: land in production and distribution
• Chapter 4 Land for housing: land economics in the modern era
• Chapter 5 The financialisation of land and housing
• Chapter 6 Land, wealth and inequality
• Chapter 7 Putting land back into economics and policy
• Bibliography