How much is America’s land worth? <- $14.488 trillion, according to this piece.
According to the World Bank, the USA’s GDP at 2012 was 10.6 times Australia’s.
Table 61 in Australian Bureau of Statistics Catalogue 5204.0 shows our total land prices to be 3.6841 billion.
Could that suggest, all things being equal, maybe US land values could be as high as 3.6841 x 10.6 = 39 billion?
Oh, wait on, all things aren’t equal: the US has had its real estate bust, and Australia hasn’t – yet. However, I don’t think the US decline would have averaged 63%.
Maybe Australians are simply better land speculators that US citizens? Maybe the US could learn a few things from the Australian tax system about to assist their rent-seekers even further?
Thanks Jeff.
Fred Harrison recently said: “In Australia, researchers – armed with one of the best official data sets in the world – calculated that rent in private hands in 2012 was about 24% of GDP (Putland 2013; Fitzgerald 2013). Rents in that year were inflated by abnormally high urban and commodity prices (this was one of the ripple effects of trade with China).”
That’s total resource rents, not just land, Jeff. From memory, land rent in Australia was 14% of GDP and other rents 10%. Greater detail in those reports. Oh, and the Harrison article goes much further than these figures and explains why.
We’re here to help. 🙂
My friend, value is not only price. Indeed, land could not fetch those prices if all were sold at once, so that total can’t exist. Value is also rent (which gets capitalized into price), a far more accurate descriptor of value. Further, equating value and price reinforces land as only property and object of speculation. So, how is the US worth to its rentors and rentees? A tenth of that? A 15th? A 20th? Any good guesses? Big thanks.