The book is about nostalgia, but it is also about the economics of rent seeking. And if the city had a property tax or sales tax instead of a land tax – which they must have had for the situation to persist as long as it did – how all that financial gain came through the investment of others. As the movers were bringing the Little House to its new home in the country, I couldn’t help but think about the massive payoff the great-great-granddaughter of the original owner was getting for that land. This is a nice little tale about the value of a slow and simple life, but it’s also – probably unwittingly – a lesson in development economics. The tenements are replaced with skyscrapers and development became so intense that the Little House, “only saw the sun at noon, and didn’t see the moon or stars at night at all because the lights of the city were too bright.” The happy ending comes when the little house is moved out of town to an idyllic setting in the country (some justice occurs when traffic is held up for the movers). A trolley car is built and then, later, an elevated train. In a couple pages, those homes become apartments and tenement houses. After a while, a road is built nearby and homes that look a lot like the Little House start to show up. At the start of the book, the lights of the big city are way off in the distance.
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