Land Values.

Headline on the front page of The News & Observer in Raleigh: "Legal mess lies beneath homes."

The article details the difficulties faced by some homeowners when they try to sell a home that stands on land where the title to mineral rights has been retained by someone else. Timber companies in North Carolina have sold hundreds of thousands of acres of land but "retained the right to mine and drill hundreds of feet below the surface of the land". Banks are reluctant to issue mortgages on such land and not without good reason. Legal wrangles could easily eat up any profits from the sale of the mortgage.

Some economists believe that land values are the bedrock of all economic value. A friend of mine argues that a single tax on land values or land usage could and should replace all other forms of taxation. If land ownership can be divided into strata, however, these ideas about value and usage require modification. Can land have two or more sources of value? Should both the owner of surface rights and the owner of mineral rights be taxed? Might underground rights be defined and sold for different levels or different minerals, such as for natural gas and for water? Might air rights also be defined and sold separately?

Is it possible to divide the earth into legal strata? Governments have tried to do that, for instance, in order to regulate air and water pollution by power companies. Courts have struggled to deal with loss of land value caused by subsidence of land over coal mines. We are now embroiled in the issue of fracking for natural gas and its potential effects on other resources such as clean drinking water. The sloughing of chemical fertilizers from the land surface into our streams and rivers and the resultant effects on other resources such as fish has also become an economic issue. And land under water has taken on new economic value as we explore its use for wind farms, tidal power, and oil drilling platforms.

If land ownership is the base on which our economy stands it is obvious that we need to clarify such ownership as to both the rights and the responsibilities of land owners, including governments.