Henry George: Moses,
Apostle of Freedom (1878 speech)
Moses saw that the real cause of
the enslavement of the masses of
Egypt was – what has everywhere produced enslavement – the
possession by a class of land upon which and from which the whole
people must live. He saw that to permit in land the same unqualified
private ownership that by natural right attaches to the things
produced by labour, would be inevitably to separate the people into
the very rich and the very poor, inevitably to enslave labour –
to make the few the masters of the many, no matter what the political
forms, to bring vice and degradation no matter what the religion.
And with the foresight of the philosophic statesman who legislates not
for the need of a day, but for all the future, he sought, in ways
suited to his times and conditions, to guard against this error.
Everywhere in the Mosaic
institutions is the land treated as the gift of the Creator to His
common creatures, which no one has the right to monopolise. Everywhere
it is, not your estate, or your property, not the land which you
bought, or the land which you conquered, but "the land which the Lord
thy God giveth thee" – "the land which the Lord lendeth thee". And by
practical legislation, by regulations to which he gave the highest
sanctions, he tried to guard against the wrong that converted ancient
civilisations into despotisms – the wrong that in after centuries ate
out the heart of Rome, that produced the imbruting serfdom of Poland
and the gaunt misery of Ireland, the wrong that is today filling
American cities with idle men, and our virgin states with tramps.
He not only provided for a redistribution of the land among the people, and for making it fallow and common every seventh year,
but by the institution of the Jubilee he provided for a redistribution
of the land every fifty years, and made monopoly impossible.
I do not say that these institutions were, for their ultimate
purpose, the best that might even then have been devised; but Moses had
to work, as all great constructive statesmen have to work, with the
tools that came to his hand, and upon materials as he found them. Still
less do I mean to say that forms suitable for that time and people are
suitable for every time and people. I
ask, not veneration of the form, but recognition of the spirit.
Yet how common it is to
venerate the form and to deny the spirit. There are many who
believe that the Mosaic institutions were literally dictated by the
Almighty, yet who would denounce as irreligious any application of
their spirit to the present day. And yet today how much we owe to these
institutions! This very day the only
thing that stands between our working classes and ceaseless toil is one
of these Mosaic institutions.
Let the mistakes of those who
think that "man was made for the
Sabbath," rather than "the Sabbath was
made for man," be what they
may; that there is one day in the
week that the working people may
call their own, one day in the week on which hammer is silent
and
loom stands idle, is due, through Christianity, to Judaism – to
the code promulgated in the Sinaitic wilderness. ... read the whole speech
Lindy Davies: Land
and Justice
We were talking about the tendency for landowners to use land as an investment — a
sensible thing to do — not to use it now if they don't need to, but to
think in terms of enjoying its increase in value over time. We even identified
that as the key to the problem of poverty. But — good heavens, what
can we do about that? Isn't that just how the economy works? Isn't the private
ownership of land a basic part of a modern economy? How can we do without
such
an important institution?
Or in other words — won't the poor always be with us?
Not necessarily. It has been plain, since very earliest days of civil society,
that the private ownership of land leads to exploitation and great extremes
of wealth and poverty. And, since the time of the Book of Leviticus, we have
had a pretty good idea of what to do about it. In that book were recorded
the words "The land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is Mine,
for ye are strangers and sojourners with me."
This ideal was codified into a remarkable three-stage program for economic
justice and social harmony: the land laws of Leviticus. The stages were:
1. The Sabbath. Every seventh day was the Lord's day;
people were enjoined to keep it holy and refrain from work. Now, we were
told in Sunday school that this was all about going to church, but, as so
often happens, our teachers missed the deeper significance. Kids who try
to get out of, say, taking out the garbage on the Sabbath realized that the
prohibition was really against gainful work; folks were still allowed to
weed the garden and stuff.
What the Sabbath did was to force people to focus on things that had
meaning beyond striving and striving to get ahead. Indeed, if one did
work on the
Sabbath, while one's neighbors did not, one could become wealthier, at
their expense — which was why the Sabbath was a very big deal:
one of the ten commandments.
2. The Sabbatical. Every seventh year, the fields
were to lie fallow — thus recognizing the right of the earth
itself to be protected against depletion and misuse. And, in the
sabbatical year, debts were to be forgiven. A debt that could not
be paid off
after six years was well on the way to becoming a usurious burden,
a guaranteed flow from the labors of one into the coffers of another.
The canceling of debts in the seventh year was designed to ensure
that nobody got too far ahead, or too far behind.
3. The Jubilee. Even seven times seven years (actually,
every 50th year), each family could return to its original allotment,
or heritage, of land — even if it had been sold in the meantime.
Under biblical law, then, land could not be sold for ever — never
for more than a single generation.
Now it is interesting to note that the economic vision presented in the
bible is not a precursor of communism. Two of the ten commandments explicitly
support
the institution of private property, and the prophets consistently railed
against landlords and rulers who robbed the people of the fruits of their
labor. The
laws of Leviticus, which Jesus said he "came not to destroy but to fulfill," envisioned
a community in which everyone was secure in his own home and property, "beneath
his vine and fig tree".
(Incidentally, the quote on the American Liberty Bell, from Leviticus,
chapter 25, was a direct reference to these principles : "Proclaim liberty throughout
the land and to all the people thereof." It was a reference to the Jubilee,
and the freedom it provided was from debt and servitude.)
The division is clear: there is to be a sacred right of private property
in the things that are made by people. But people were not to own the things
that were made by God. The 7th commandment sums up both principles in 4 words: Thou
shalt not steal.
Modern society has looked away from these principles, calling them quaint,
naive, inapplicable to the complexities of our time — yet, modern society
finds itself mired in chronic economic and social problems for which it can
find no solutions — and which threaten to pull down all the advances
of civilization into a dark age — occasioned by some combination of
war, financial implosion or ecological collapse.
If there is any way out of this dark future, it can only come by way of solving
the problem of land and justice.
Fortunately, there exists a plan for that.
This plan takes the shape of a "fiscal reform", because it applies
a definition of the relationship between the individual and the society that
is consistent with both economic efficiency and moral law. It calls for us
to respect the right of labor to create and to save wealth, and we acknowledge
that the value of land is created not by its “owners”, but by
the entire community.
Therefore, we will abolish all taxes on income, products and sales — and
collect the full rental value of land and other natural resources for public
revenue. ... read
the whole speech
James Kiefer: James Huntington and
the ideas of Henry George
Henry George, author of Progress and Poverty,
argued that, while some forms of wealth are produced by human activity, and
are rightly the property of the producers (or those who have obtained them
from the previous owners by voluntary gift or exchange), land and natural
resources are bestowed by God on the human race, and that every one of the
N inhabitants of the earth has a claim to 1/Nth of the coal beds, 1/Nth of
the oil wells, 1/Nth of the mines, and 1/Nth of the fertile soil. God wills
a society where everyone may sit in peace under his own vine and his own
fig tree.
The Law of Moses undertook to implement this by making the ownership of
land hereditary, with a man's land divided among his sons (or, in the absence
of sons, his daughters), and prohibiting the permanent sale of land. (See
Leviticus 25:13-17,23.) The most a man might do with his land is sell the
use of it until the next Jubilee year, an amnesty declared once every fifty
years, when all debts were cancelled and all land returned to its hereditary
owner.
Henry George's proposed implementation is to tax all land at about 99.99%
of its rental value, leaving the owner of record enough to cover his bookkeeping
expenses. The resulting revenues would be divided equally among the natural
owners of the land, viz. the people of the country, with everyone receiving
a dividend check regularly for the use of his share of the earth (here I
am anticipating what I think George would have suggested if he had written
in the 1990's rather than the 1870's).
This procedure would have the effect of making the sale price of a piece
of land, not including the price of buildings and other improvements on it,
practically zero. The cost of being a landholder would be, not the original
sale price, but the tax, equivalent to rent. A man who chose to hold his "fair
share," or 1/Nth of all the land, would pay a land tax about equal to
his dividend check, and so would break even. By 1/Nth of the land is meant
land with a value equal to 1/Nth of the value of all the land in the country.
Naturally, an acre in the business district of a great city would be worth
as much as many square miles in the open country. Some would prefer to hold
more than one N'th of the land and pay for the privilege. Some would prefer
to hold less land, or no land at all, and get a small annual check representing
the dividend on their inheritance from their father Adam.
Note that, at least for the able-bodied, this solves the problem of poverty
at a stroke. If the total land and total labor of the world are enough to
feed and clothe the existing population, then 1/Nth of the land and 1/Nth
of the labor are enough to feed and clothe 1/Nth of the population. A family
of 4 occupying 4/Nths of the land (which is what their dividend checks will
enable them to pay the tax on) will find that their labor applied to that
land is enough to enable them to feed and clothe themselves. Of course, they
may prefer to apply their labor elsewhere more profitably, but the situation
from which we start is one in which everyone has his own plot of ground from
which to wrest a living by the strength of his own back, and any deviation
from this is the result of voluntary exchanges agreed to by the parties directly
involved, who judge themselves to be better off as the result of the exchanges.
Some readers may think this a very radical proposal. In fact, it is extremely
conservative, in the sense of being in agreement with historic ideas about
land ownership as opposed to ownership of, say, tools or vehicles or gold
or domestic animals or other movables. The laws of English-speaking countries
uniformly distinguish between real property (land) and personal property
(everything else). In this context, "real" is not the opposite
of "imaginary." It is a form of the word "royal," and
means that the ultimate owner of the land is the king, as symbol of the people.
Note that English-derived law does not recognize "landowners." The
term is "landholders." The concept of eminent domain is that the
landholder may be forced to surrender his landholdings to the government
for a public purpose. Historically, eminent domain does not apply to property
other than land, although complications arise when there are buildings on
the land that is being seized.
I will mention in passing that the proposals of Henry George have attracted
support from persons as diverse as Felix Morley, Aldous
Huxley, Woodrow Wilson, Helen Keller, Winston
Churchill, Leo Tolstoy, William
F Buckley Jr, and Sun Yat-sen. To the Five Nobel Prizes authorized by
Alfred Nobel himself there has been added a sixth, in Economics, and the
Henry George Foundation claims eight of the
Economics Laureates as supporters, in whole or in part, of the proposals
of Henry George (Paul Samuelson, 1970; Milton Friedman,
1976; Herbert A Simon, 1978; James Tobin, 1981; Franco Modigliani, 1985;
James M Buchanan, 1986; Robert M Solow, 1987; William
S Vickrey, 1996).
The immediate concrete proposal favored by most Georgists today is that
cities shall tax land within their boundaries at a higher rate than they
tax buildings and other improvements on the land. (In case anyone is about
to ask, "How can we possibly distinguish between the value of the land
and the value of the buildings on it?" let me assure you that real estate
assessors do it all the time. It is standard practice to make the two assessments
separately, and a parcel of land in the business district of a large city
very often has a different owner from the building on it.) Many cities have
moved to a system of taxing land more heavily than improvements, and most
have been pleased with the results, finding that landholders are more likely
to use their land productively -- to their own benefit and that of the public
-- if their taxes do not automatically go up when they improve their land
by constructing or maintaining buildings on it.
An advantage of this proposal in the eyes of many is that it is a Fabian
proposal, "evolution, not revolution," that it is incremental and
reversible. If a city or other jurisdiction does not like the results of
a two-level tax system, it can repeal the arrangement or reduce the difference
in levels with no great upheaval. It is not like some other proposals of
the form, "Distribute all wealth justly, and make me absolute dictator
of the world so that I can supervise the distribution, and if it doesn't
work, I promise to resign." The problem is that absolute dictators seldom
resign. ... read the whole article
Fred E. Foldvary — The
Ultimate Tax Reform:
Public Revenue from Land Rent
The concept of taxing land values for public finance is ancient. The Bible
declares “the profit of the Earth is for all” (Ecclesiastes 5:9).
Land rent financed government in England during the Middle Ages.9 During
the 1700s, some French economists proposed an “impöt unique” or
single tax on land value. Calling their theory “physiocracy” (the
rule of natural law), they outlined a model of economic development that
used land value taxes to finance public works, which increased the value
of the land (and thus increased taxes paid to the treasury), resulting in
an upward spiral of development and prosperity. The principal physiocratic
economist, François Quesnay, wrote
Taxes ... should be laid directly on the net product of landed property,
and not on men’s wages, or on produce, where they would increase
the cost of collection, operate to the detriment of trade, and destroy
every year a portion of the nation’s wealth. [Emphasis in the original.]10
... read the whole document
Bill Batt: The
Compatibility of Georgist Economics and Ecological Economics
As with all nineteenth century
moral philosophers, Henry George
subscribed to a belief in natural law. The natural order of things as
he saw it required that land be held in usufruct and that rent from
such should be returned to society. The theory was inspired by his
deeply religious roots and grounded in his reading of the prominent
thinkers that predated him. The natural order was also a moral order,
and the failure to comply with the order of nature and society as he
saw it was a perversion of justice. The fruits of the land belonged to
everyone, just as the fruits of one’s own labor were uniquely one’s
own. Since one owned one’s body, one was entitled to keep the product
of one’s physical efforts. Society had no more right to confiscate the
earnings of one’s sweat and brow than it ought to leave in the hands of
rich landowners the rent that was everyone’s inherent birthright to be
shared. There were just and unjust
taxes, and the only just tax was that which grew out of rent, of the
unearned increment that visited certain land sites as windfall gains
because of the efforts and investments by the community. Income and
excise taxes were unjust and confiscatory — even theft, as especially
were tariffs. Taxing or collecting land rent alone was the means of
ending poverty and restoring progress. Indeed many Georgists reject use
of the word tax entirely, preferring instead to talk instead about rent
collection. There is even a lapel button Georgists use that says
“Abolish all taxes; collect ground rent instead.”
Georgist Economics:
Moral Premises
What distinguished Henry
George’s views from those of his
adversaries in the last decade of his life was his assertion that
economics was necessarily a moral science. Unlike those who became the
founders of the American Economics Association in 1885, most of whom
were transitional figures to what would become neoclassical economics,
the primary focus of George and his disciplines was economic justice.
This is not to say that explanation was cast aside; indeed the subtitle
of his magnum opus, Progress and Poverty,
was An Inquiry
into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with
Increase of Wealth . . . The Remedy. Why, he asked, in the midst
of such boundless plenty is there such abject poverty? He would
dedicate his book, first published in 1879, “to those who, seeing the vice and
misery that spring from the unequal distribution of wealth and
privilege, feel the possibility of a higher social state and would
strive for its attainment.” He had known poverty first hand when
he was struggling to support his young family and establish himself as
a printer, a journalist and a publisher. He could also see before him
the fruits of land and nature easily available to be harvested but for
its legal capture by monopoly titleholders. He wrote of all this in
some six books and countless other essays, the focus always on the
theme of economic justice.
Along with Robert Ingersoll, he was likely the most stimulating orator
of his age, a fiery moralist at a time during which there were many
others who might claim such a title. He traveled widely, was a champion
of labor, the landless, and the urban poor, particularly influential in
the struggle over the Irish land question and in the positions of the
Liberal party in the early 20th century. His admirers among the great
of the time were myriad: Sun Yat Sen, Leo Tolstoi, Winston
Churchill,
Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Beard, Samuel Clemens, Robert Maynard
Hutchins, and John Dewey to name a few. Forewarned in 1897 that running
for mayor of New York a second time and trying at the same time to
finish another authoritative statement of his philosophy would kill
him, the prophesy was fulfilled nonetheless with his death four days
before election day. In 1886 he lost a rigged election31 when
matched against a scion of banking wealth Abram S. Hewitt, who was
recruited by Seth Low, President of Columbia University, but he beat
the third place finisher, Teddy Roosevelt. His funeral on the streets
of New York drew the largest crowd of mourners ever assembled until
that time, and until much later. No one doubted Henry George’s
passionate commitment to justice.
31See “Capitalism by
Fraud,” in
Gustavus Myers, History of Great
American Fortunes, New York: Random House Modern Library Edition, 1936,
pp. 356-358, as well as biographies of George.
The heart of George’s economics was, in a way, Biblical. As
the son of
a religious book publisher born in Philadelphia, he had adequate
opportunity to witness the early growth of the American republic in a
unique way. On his own in San Francisco and responsible for a wife and
child at a young age, his first effort at resolving the puzzles of
injustice were a manuscript printed in 1871. But only after additional
exposure to Ricardian rent theory was he able to refine his ideas such
that they could form the basis of his Progress
and Poverty eight years
later. His Christian roots led him to a deep commitment to the basic
moral equality of all people; his challenge was to find a way to ensure
that this equality was manifest in economic fairness.
As noted earlier, the starting point of Georgist philosophy is
that
nature belongs to owners only in usufruct and not in freehold. Because
any monetary wealth that accrued to that nature stemmed directly from
the physical presence of people and was therefore social in character,
the resulting added increment of value that constituted rent belonged
in turn to the community that created it. Nature would have no economic
price without people. Hence rent was the community’s entitlement and
not that of individuals, and the land rent that accrued to parcels as a
result of social investment should be returned to — recaptured by — the
community. It was obvious to George
that the wealthiest people in the nation usually owed their fortune not
to the sweat of their brow or the inventiveness of their minds. Rather
their position was due to their success as land speculators, to an
increase in rent on land they had captured title to, land rightfully
belonging to all. The earth and all its product, he argued, was
the common heritage of humanity, a birthright of all people. ... read the whole article
I want to tell you the story of Charles Avilla. A while back I came across
a book called Ownership, Early Christian Teachings.
Avilla was a divinity student in the Phillipines. One of his professors
had a great concern about poverty conditions in the Phillipines, and was
taking students out to prisons where the cooks were the land rights revolutionaries
in the Phillipines. Because they kept pushing for land reform for the people,
they had ended up in jail. So they were political prisoners who were reading
the Bible and were asking the question, who did God give this earth to? Who does it belong
to? It isn't in the Bible
that so few should have so much and so many have so little. In the
theological world in this upscale seminary he was trying to put this together
about poverty and what the biblical teachings were. He had a thesis to
write and he was thinking he would do something about economic justice.
One of his professors thought there would be a wealth of information from
the church's early history, the first 300 years after Jesus. So he actually
went back to read the Latin and Greek about land ownership and found a
wealth of information about the prophetic railings of the people in that
early time on the rights of the land.
Let me give you a few quotes from that early period.
Nehemiah 5:11, "Restore, I pray you, to them
this day their lands, their vineyards, their olive yards, and their houses."
Ezekiel 33:24, "The land is given us as an inheritance."
Ecclesiastes 5:9, "The profit of the earth is for all."
And Isaiah 5:8, "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to
field til there be no place ..." Leviticus 25:23, "The land is mine, for
you are strangers and sojourners with me." ... read
the whole article
A University of Alabama School of Law Professor has asked God's forgiveness
for the years she lived in the sin of ignorance about tax injustice. Susan
Pace Hamill, a tax expert, business consultant, and dedicated United Methodist
church goer, thought there was a misprint when she first read that personal
incomes as low as $4,600 for a family of four were being taxed by the state,
while timber owners holding 71% of the land of Alabama were paying less than
$1 per acre in property taxes. Two hours later she found out there had been
no mistake and that Alabama has the most regressive tax code in the country.
Her righteous rage spawned a tax crusade that has reverberated onto the national
scene. ...
While resoundingly condemning the current system (she uses words like "horrific" and "monstrous
injustice") Hamill clearly articulates a tax reform approach which shifts
taxes off of low wage earners and onto large land owners. Through a combination
of her own reasoning, caring heart, and inherent sense of justice and a thorough
investigation of Judeo-Christian ethics, Hamill arrived at a tax policy approach
which bears remarkable similarities to the economic justice crusades of 19th
century reformer, Henry George.
Her appeal is to the 93 percent of Alabama residents who call themselves Christians.
Hamill challenges them to put their faith into practice. Her message fell on
many already listening ears. The state's two largest denominations, United Methodists
and Southern Baptists, had passed resolutions favoring tax reform in 2000. In
2001 the state's Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Catholics approved similar
calls. The Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama and the Business Council
of Alabama had long clamored for tax change. In fact, tax reform is now supported
by most of the state's religious organizations, according to Charles Durham,
pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Tuscaloosa.
What makes Hamill's work so compelling is her deep grasp of the Alabama tax code
combined with her thorough documentation of the scriptural bases for economic
justice. She quotes chapters and verses which proclaim that the poor should not
be oppressed and that society should create conditions for their advance. Among
her favorites are Jesus'
words in Matthew 25:45: "Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these,
you did not do for me." Luke 16:19-31 is a parable of a rich man sent to hell
because of his indifference to the disadvantaged and
in Jeremiah 22:15-16, "He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all
went well."
While Hamill suspected she would be opposed by special interest groups like the
Alabama Farmers Federation which represents big timber and agribusiness interests,
she was not prepared for the attacks and underhanded tactics of the Alabama Christian
Coalition under the leadership of President John Giles. While Giles agrees that
tax relief
to the less fortunate "is a noble thing" he says the care of the poor is the
duty of private charity not of government and staunchly opposes tax increases.
He tried to damage the Hamill campaign by smearing her personal integrity, pointing
to her signing of a pro-choice petition as evidence that she therefore could
not be a moral authority on tax
reform. Opposing forces also called her a "Yankee carpetbagger" detailing her
work history at two New York law firms. They said (wrongly so) that her tax proposals
would bring huge property increases
on the average home and business.
Bob Blalock, editorial page editor for The Birmingham News, says that
the "real question about legitimacy should be aimed at the Christian Coalition.
For whom does it speak when it attacks Hamill? Christians, many of whom would
benefit from a fairer tax system, even one that raised more money? Or powerful
special-interest groups (timber? agribusiness?) that want to protect their obscene
tax breaks?" Blalock says there is no way to know because the law does not require
the
Christian Coalition to disclose what individuals or groups fund it. "When an
organization places itself in the center of the debate over tax reform, citizens
deserve to know who's funding its point of view." (3/14/03)
Hamill's conservative theology school responded to the attacks by firmly backing
her stance. Faculty at Beeson Divinity School of Samford University in Birmingham
passed a unanimous resolution endorsing her
efforts. "We think what she has proposed is worthy support from the Christian
community and we think it is in keeping with the evangelical
community," said the school's dean, Timothy George (Anniston Star,
3/11/03).
Frank Thielman, Presbyterian Professor of Divinity at Beeson had this to say
about their resolution: "Personally, I hope it does encourage dramatic tax
reform that helps to relieve the burden of the poor. The reason I'm hopeful
is because
of my commitment as a Christian and my Christian vision. That is a vision that
the poor should be dealt with equitably and fairly and that is a very biblical
vision. It's because of my Christian commitment and the Bible and the word
of God that I
hope tax reform efforts succeed." (Anniston Star, 3/11/03) ... read
the whole article
Nic Tideman: The Political Economy of the Gospels
The grand question of economic ethics, the question of whether capitalism
or socialism is the more appropriate form of political economy, is another
non-question from the perspective of the Gospels. Everyone who wants to live
under socialism should be free to live under socialism, and everyone who
wants to live under capitalism should be free to live under capitalism. In
whichever group we fall, we will want to insure that those who want to organize
their lives by different principles of political economy have their share
of land
and natural resources with which to do so.
A political economy based on the Gospels is a political economy based on
love. As the First Epistle of John says, "There is no fear in love; but perfect
love casteth out fear."17 To construct
a political economy of the Gospels we must be free of fear: free of fear
that others may rob us; free of fear that others may not contribute to the
provision of public goods or to provision for those who might otherwise lack;
free of fear that our incomes will be too low or the prices we face too high;
free of fear that if we don't do something, someone will be exploited. Only
when love has replaced all fear in our hearts will we be able to construct
the political economy of the Gospels.read the whole article
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