Mason Gaffney

Mason Gaffney (born October 18, 1923) is an American economist and a major critic of Neoclassical economics from a Georgist point of view.^[1] He earned his B.A. in 1948 from Reed College in Portland, Oregon.^[2] Gaffney first read Henry George's masterwork Progress and Poverty as a high school junior. After serving in the southwest Pacific during World War II, this interest led him in 1955 to get a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.^[3] There he addressed his teachers' skepticism about Georgism with a dissertation entitled "Land Speculation as an Obstacle to Ideal Allocation of Land." Gaffney has been Professor of Economics at the University of California, Riverside since 1976.

Career

Gaffney has been a Professor of Economics at several universities; a journalist with TIME, Inc.; a researcher with Resources for the Future; the head of the British Columbia Institute for Economic Policy Analysis,^[4] which he founded; an economic consultant to several businesses and government agencies; and a frequent speaker on economic topics, domestic and foreign, and in political campaigns. He has been a Director of R.S.F. since 1988.

Publications

Gaffney has published many books and articles on public finance, land use, economics, taxation, and public policy. These include:

• Gaffney, M. Mason. Concepts of financial maturity of timber and other assets. (Raleigh: North Carolina State College, 1957).
• LAND: A Special Issue (of House and Home Magazine)
• Gaffney, Mason. Extractive Resources and Taxation: Proceedings (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967) (some pages available on Dr. Gaffney's personal site)
• Gaffney, Mason; Alaska Dept. of Natural Resources.; Alaska Legislature Interim Committee on Oil and Gas Taxation and Leasing Policy. Oil and gas leasing policy: alternatives for Alaska in 1977: a report. (1977)
• Gaffney, Mason (1994). Tideman, Nicholas, ed. "Land as a Distinctive Factor of Production" (PDF). Land and Taxation (London: Shepheard-Walwyn).
• Gaffney, M. (1997). What price water marketing?: California's new frontier. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 56, 475-520.
• Gaffney, M., Harrison, F., & Feder, K. The Corruption of Economics. (London: Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers) Ltd., 1994) ISBN 0-85683-160-3 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-85683-244-4 (paperback). In this book, Gaffney shows how Neoclassical economics was designed and promoted by landowners and their hired economists to divert attention from George's extremely popular insight that since land and resources are provided by nature, and their value is given by society, they - rather than labor or capital - should provide the tax base to fund government and its expenditures.

References

1. "Neo-classical Economics as a Strategem against Henry George" (PDF).
2. UC Riverside, Department of Economics
3. UC Riverside, Academic Biographies
4. M. Mason Gaffney, 1976. Interviewed by Derek Reimer. Aural History Programme, Provincial Archives of British Columbia, Victoria, B.C. V8V IX4

External links

• Dr. Gaffney's personal site. Contains a biography, bibliography and many essays, articles and chapters for free download.
• The Progress Report has an interview with Dr. Gaffney and more articles.
• Mason Gaffney biography at the School of Cooperative Individualism