By selling off empty buildings and land, the US government could raise hundreds of billions of dollars. What’s keeping us?

If you’re a nation tightly squeezed by deficits and spending commitments, The Economist has a smart solution: sell your property. In a pair of pieces, The Economist’s latest lays out the extent of national land and building holdings and argues forcefully for a new wave of privatization. If there were any time when a one-time revenue generating policy like this might make sense it is now. As the Boomers age while birth rates decline in many Western nations, governments are going to be faced with large bills and not a big enough tax base to pay for them.