It isn't news that the process of living up to the truths America's founding fathers held to be self-evident is not yet complete. But some people appear to think we're getting pretty close, and seek to conserve the system we've got, unwilling to consider the possibility that we are falling short on some vital dimensions.

Georgists, however, see a major remaining distortion — and they know how to remedy that distortion.

Our founding fathers were all large landowners, and it would not have occurred to them to limit the rights of landholders in any way. But at a time when there was still an open — seemingly limitless— frontier, their perceptions might have been affected by that. But they should have known enough about conditions in Europe to anticipate what America would be like as population increased.

Only 100 years later, with changes in technology and the closing of the frontier, Henry George saw significant poverty in America's cities. He sought the explanation for what he saw, and recorded his search — and the remedy — in Progress & Poverty.

Henry George: The Common Sense of Taxation (1881 article)

Evidently this regard for the general good is the true principle of taxation. The more it is examined the more clearly it will be seen that there is no valid reason why we should, in any case, attempt to tax all property. That equality should be the rule and aim of taxation is true, and this for the reason given in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal. But equality does not require that all men should be taxed alike, or that all things should be taxed alike. It merely requires that whatever taxes are imposed shall be equally imposed upon the persons or things in like conditions or situations; it merely requires that no citizen shall be given an advantage, or put at a disadvantage, as compared with other citizens.

The true purposes of government are well stated in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States, as they are in the Declaration of Independence. To insure the general peace, to promote the general welfare, to secure to each individual the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — these are the proper ends of government, and are therefore the ends which in every scheme of taxation should be kept in mind.

As to amount of taxation, there is no principle which imposes any arbitrary limit. Heavy taxation is better for any community than light taxation, if the increased revenue be used in doing by public agencies things which could not be done, or could not be as well and economically done, by private agencies. Taxes could be lightened in the city of New York by dispensing with street-lamps and disbanding the police force. But would a reduction in taxation gained in this way be for the benefit of the people of New York and make New York a more desirable place to live in? Or if it should be found that heat and light could be conducted through the streets at public expense and supplied to each house at but a small fraction of the cost of supplying them by individual effort, or that the city railroads could be run at public expense so as to give every one transportation at very much less than it now costs the average resident, the increased taxation necessary for these purposes would not be increased burden, and in spite of the larger taxation required, New York would become a more desirable place to live in. It is a mistake to condemn taxation as bad merely because it is high; it is a mistake to impose by constitutional provision, as in many of our States has been advocated, and in some of our States has been done, any restriction upon the amount of taxation. A restriction upon the incurring of public indebtedness is another matter. In nothing is the far-reaching statesmanship of Jefferson more clearly shown than in his proposition that all public obligations should be deemed void after a certain brief term — a proposition which he grounds upon the self-evident truth that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living, and that the dead have no control over it, and can give no title to any part of it. But restriction upon public debts is a very different thing from restriction upon the power of taxation, and reasons which urge the one do not apply to the other. Nor is increased taxation necessarily proof of governmental extravagance. Increase in taxation is in the order of social development, for the reason that social development tends to the doing of things collectively that in a ruder state are done individually, to the giving to government of new functions and the imposing of new duties. Our public schools and libraries and parks, our signal service and fish commissions and agricultural bureaus and grasshopper investigations, are evidences of this.

But while no limit can be properly fixed for the amount of taxation, the method of taxation is of supreme importance. A horse may be anchored by fastening to his bridle a weight which he will not feel when carried in a buggy behind him. The best ship may be made utterly unseaworthy by the bad stowage of a cargo which properly placed would make her the stiffer and more weatherly. So enterprise may be palsied, industry crushed, accumulation prevented, and a prosperous country turned into a desert, by taxation which rightly levied would hardly be felt.

Now discarding all idea that there rests upon us any obligation to equally tax all kinds of property, and assuming for our guidance the true rule, that taxation should be levied with a view to the promotion of the general prosperity, the securing of substantial equality, and the recognition of inalienable rights, let us consider upon what species of property it may be best laid. ...

... The possession of wealth is the inducement to the exertion necessary to the production and maintenance of wealth. Men do not work for the pleasure of working, but to get the things their work will give them. And to tax the things that are produced by exertion is to lessen the inducement to exertion. But over and above the benefit to the possessor, which is the stimulating motive to the production of wealth, there is a benefit to the community, for no matter how selfish he may be, it is utterly impossible for any one to entirely keep to himself the benefit of any desirable thing he may possess. These diffused benefits when localized give value to land, and this may be taxed without in any wise diminishing the incentive to production.

To illustrate: A man builds a fine house or large factory in a poorly improved neighborhood. To tax this building and its adjuncts is to make him pay for his enterprise and expenditure — to take from him part of his natural reward. But the improvement thus made has given new beauty or life to the neighborhood, making it a more desirable place than before for the erection of other houses or factories, and additional value is given to land all about. Now to tax improvements is not only to deprive of his proper reward the man who has made the improvement, but it is to deter others from making similar improvements. But, instead of taxing improvements, to tax these land values is to leave the natural inducement to further improvement in full force, and at the same time to keep down an obstacle to further improvement, which, under the present system, improvement itself tends to raise. For the advance of land values which follows improvement, and even the expectation of improvement, makes further improvement more costly.

See how unjust and short-sighted is this system. Here is a man who, gathering what little capital he can, and taking his family, starts West to find a place where he can make himself a home. He must travel long distances; for, though he will pass plenty of land nobody is using, it is held at prices too high for him. Finally he will go no further, and selects a place where, since the creation of the world, the soil, so far as we know, has never felt a plowshare. But here, too, in nine cases out of ten, he will find the speculator has been ahead of him, for the speculator moves quicker, and has superior means of information to the emigrant. Before he can put this land to the use for which nature intended it, and to which it is for the general good that it should be put, he must make terms with some man who in all probability never saw the land, and never dreamed of using it, and who, it may be, resides in some city, thousands of miles away. In order to get permission to use this land, he must give up a large part of the little capital which is seed-wheat to him, and perhaps in addition mortgage his future labor for years. Still he goes to work: he works himself, and his wife works, and his children work — work like horses, and live in the hardest and dreariest manner. Such a man deserves encouragement, not discouragement; but on him taxation falls with peculiar severity. Almost everything that he has to buy — groceries, clothing, tools — is largely raised in price by a system of tariff taxation which cannot add to the price of the grain or hogs or cattle that he has to sell. And when the assessor comes around he is taxed on the improvements he has made, although these improvements have added not only to the value of surrounding land, but even to the value of land in distant commercial centers. Not merely this, but, as a general rule, his land, irrespective of the improvements, will be assessed at a higher rate than unimproved land around it, on the ground that "productive property" ought to pay more than "unproductive property" — a principle just the reverse of the correct one, for the man who makes land productive adds to the general prosperity, while the man who keeps land unproductive stands in the way of the general prosperity, is but a dog-in-the-manger, who prevents others from using what he will not use himself.

Or, take the case of the railroads. That railroads are a public benefit no one will dispute. We want more railroads, and want them to reduce their fares and freight. Why then should we tax them? for taxes upon railroads deter from railroad building, and compel higher charges. Instead of taxing the railroads, is it not clear that we should rather tax the increased value which they give to land? To tax railroads is to check railroad building, to reduce profits, and compel higher rates; to tax the value they give to land is to increase railroad business and permit lower rates. The elevated railroads, for instance, have opened to the overcrowded population of New York the wide, vacant spaces of the upper part of the island. But this great public benefit is neutralized by the rise in land values. Because these vacant lots can be reached more cheaply and quickly, their owners demand more for them, and so the public gain in one way is offset in another, while the roads lose the business they would get were not building checked by the high prices demanded for lots. The increase of land values, which the elevated roads have caused, is not merely no advantage to them — it is an injury; and it is clearly a public injury. The elevated railroads ought not to be taxed. The more profit they make, with the better conscience can they be asked to still further reduce fares. It is the increased land values which they have created that ought to be taxed, for taxing them will give the public the full benefit of cheap fares.

So with railroads everywhere. And so not alone with railroads, but with all industrial enterprises. So long as we consider that community most prosperous which increases most rapidly in wealth, so long is it the height of absurdity for us to tax wealth in any of its beneficial forms. We should tax what we want to repress, not what we want to encourage. We should tax that which results from the general prosperity, not that which conduces to it. It is the increase of population, the extension of cultivation, the manufacture of goods, the building of houses and ships and railroads, the accumulation of capital, and the growth of commerce that add to the value of land — not the increase in the value of land that induces the increase of population and increase of wealth. It is not that the land of Manhattan Island is now worth hundreds of millions where, in the time of the early Dutch settlers, it was only worth dollars, that there are on it now so many more people, and so much more wealth. It is because of the increase of population and the increase of wealth that the value of the land has so much increased. Increase of land values tends of itself to repel population and prevent improvement. And thus the taxation of land values, unlike taxation of other property, does not tend to prevent the increase of wealth, but rather to stimulate it. It is the taking of the golden egg, not the choking of the goose that lays it.

Every consideration of policy and ethics squares with this conclusion. The tax upon land values is the most economically perfect of all taxes. It does not raise prices; it maybe collected at least cost, and with the utmost ease and certainty; it leaves in full strength all the springs of production; and, above all, it consorts with the truest equality and the highest justice. For, to take for the common purposes of the community that value which results from the growth of the community, and to free industry and enterprise and thrift from burden and restraint, is to leave to each that which he fairly earns, and to assert the first and most comprehensive of equal rights — the equal right of all to the land on which, and from which, all must live.

Thus it is that the scheme of taxation which conduces to the greatest production is also that which conduces to the fairest distribution, and that in the proper adjustment of taxation lies not merely the possibility of enormously increasing the general wealth, but the solution of these pressing social and political problems which spring from unnatural inequality in the distribution of wealth.

"There is," says M. de Laveleye, in concluding that work in which he shows that the first perceptions of mankind have everywhere recognized a most vital distinction between property in land and property which results from labor, — "there is in human affairs one system which is the best; it is not that system which always exists, otherwise why should we desire to change it; but it is that system which should exist for the greatest good of humanity. God knows it, and wills it; man's duty it is to discover and establish it." read the whole article

H.G. Brown: Significant Paragraphs from Henry George's Progress & Poverty: 14 Liberty, and Equality of Opportunity (in the unabridged P&P: Part X: The Law of Human Progress — Chapter 5: The Central Truth)

... The reform I have proposed accords with all that is politically, socially, or morally desirable. It has the qualities of a true reform, for it will make all other reforms easier. What is it but the carrying out in letter and spirit of the truth enunciated in the Declaration of Independence — the "self-evident" truth that is the heart and soul of the Declaration —"That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!"

These rights are denied when the equal right to land — on which and by which men alone can live — is denied. Equality of political rights will not compensate for the denial of the equal right to the bounty of nature. Political liberty, when the equal right to land is denied, becomes, as population increases and invention goes on, merely the liberty to compete for employment at starvation wages. This is the truth that we have ignored. ...

Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. In allowing one man to own the land on which and from which other men must live, we have made them his bondsmen in a degree which increases as material progress goes on. This is the subtile alchemy that in ways they do not realize is extracting from the masses in every civilized country the fruits of their weary toil; that is instituting a harder and more hopeless slavery in place of that which has been destroyed; that is bringing political despotism out of political freedom, and must soon transmute democratic institutions into anarchy.

It is this that turns the blessings of material progress into a curse. It is this that crowds human beings into noisome cellars and squalid tenement houses; that fills prisons and brothels; that goads men with want and consumes them with greed; that robs women of the grace and beauty of perfect womanhood; that takes from little children the joy and innocence of life's morning.

Civilization so based cannot continue. The eternal laws of the universe forbid it. Ruins of dead empires testify, and the witness that is in every soul answers, that it cannot be. It is something grander than Benevolence, something more august than Charity — it is Justice herself that demands of us to right this wrong. Justice that will not be denied; that cannot be put off — Justice that with the scales carries the sword. Shall we ward the stroke with liturgies and prayers? Shall we avert the decrees of immutable law by raising churches when hungry infants moan and weary mothers weep?

Though it may take the language of prayer, it is blasphemy that attributes to the inscrutable decrees of Providence the suffering and brutishness that come of poverty; that turns with folded hands to the All-Father and lays on Him the responsibility for the want and crime of our great cities. ...

Between democratic ideas and the aristocratic adjustments of society there is an irreconcilable conflict. Here in the United States, as there in Europe, it may be seen arising.

• We cannot go on permitting men to vote and forcing them to tramp.
• We cannot go on educating boys and girls in our public schools and then refusing them the right to earn an honest living.
• We cannot go on prating of the inalienable rights of man and then denying the inalienable right to the bounty of the Creator. ... read the whole chapter

Henry George: Salutatory, from the first issue of The Standard (1887)

I begin the publication of this paper in response to many urgent requests, and because I believe that there is a field for a journal that shall serve as a focus for news and opinions relating to the great movement, now beginning, for the emancipation of labor by the restoration of natural rights.

The generation that abolished chattel slavery is passing away, and the political distinctions that grew out of that contest are becoming meaningless. The work now before us is the abolition of industrial slavery.

What God created for the use of all should be utilized for the benefit of all; what is produced by the individual belongs rightfully to the individual. The neglect of these simple principles has brought upon us the curse of widespread poverty and all the evils that flow from it. Their recognition will abolish poverty, will secure to the humblest independence and leisure, and will lay abroad and strong foundation on which all other reforms may be based. To secure the full recognition of these principles is the most important task to which any man can address himself today. It is in the hope of aiding in this work that I establish this paper.

I believe that the Declaration of Independence is not a mere string of glittering generalities. I believe that all men are really created equal, and that the securing of those equal natural rights is the true purpose and test of government. And against whatever law, custom or device that restrains men in the exercise of their natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness I shall raise my voice. ... read the whole column

Henry George:  The Land Question (1881)

What is the slave-trade but piracy of the worst kind? Yet it is not long since the slave-trade was looked upon as a perfectly respectable business, affording as legitimate an opening for the investment of capital and the display of enterprise as any other. The proposition to prohibit it was first looked upon as ridiculous, then as fanatical, then as wicked. It was only slowly and by hard fighting that the truth in regard to it gained ground. Does not our very Constitution bear witness to what I say? Does not the fundamental law of the nation, adopted twelve years after the enunciation of the Declaration of Independence, declare that for twenty years the slave-trade shall not be prohibited nor restricted? Such dominion had the idea of vested interests over the minds of those who had already proclaimed the inalienable right of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! ... read the whole article

Henry George: The Wages of Labor

Take the case of the rich man today who is honestly desirous of devoting his wealth to the improvement of the condition of labor. What can he do?

• Bestow his wealth on those who need it?   He may help some who deserve it, but he will not improve general conditions. And against the good he may do will be the danger of doing harm.
• Build churches?  Under the shadow of churches poverty festers and the vice that is born of it breeds!
• Build schools and colleges?  Save as it may lead men to see the iniquity of private property in land, increased education can effect nothing for mere laborers, for as education is diffused the wages of education sink!
• Establish hospitals?  Why, already it seems to laborers that there are too many seeking work, and to save and prolong life is to add to the pressure!
• Build model tenements?  Unless he cheapens house accommodation he but drives further the class he would benefit, and as he cheapens house accommodation he brings more to seek employment, and cheapens wages!
• Institute laboratories, scientific schools, workshops far physical experiments?   He but stimulates invention and discovery, the very forces that, acting on a society based on private property in land, are crushing labor as between the upper and the nether millstone!
• Promote emigration from places where wages are low to places where they are somewhat higher?  If he does, even those whom he at first helps to emigrate will soon turn on him and demand that such emigration shall be stopped as reducing their wages!
• Give away what land he may have, or refuse to take rent for it, or let it at lower rents than the market price?  He will simply make new landowners or partial landowners; he may make some individuals the richer, but he will do nothing to improve the general condition of labor.
• Or, bethinking himself of those public-spirited citizens of classic times who spent great sums in improving their native cities, shall he try to beautify the city of his birth or adoption?  Let him widen and straighten narrow and crooked streets, let him build parks and erect fountains, let him open tramways and bring in railways, or in any way make beautiful and attractive his chosen city, and what will be the result? Must it not be that those who appropriate God’s bounty will take his also? Will it not be that the value of land will go up, and that the net result of his benefactions will be an increase of rents and a bounty to landowners?   Why, even the mere announcement that he is going to do such things will start speculation and send up the value of land by leaps and bounds.

In speaking of measures for improving social conditions, it seems to us that in the teachings of morality is to be found the highest practicality, and that the question, What is wise may always safely be subordinated to the question, what is right?

But expressed moral truths are deprived of all practical meaning when accompanied by unjust sanctions as when the American people, while they legalised chattel slavery, were accustomed to read solemnly on every national anniversary the declaration which asserts: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

What did this truth mean on the lips of men who asserted that one man was the rightful property of another man who had bought him, who asserted that the slave was robbing the master in running away, and that the man or the woman who helped the fugitive to escape, or even gave him a cup of cold water in Christ’s name, was an accessory to theft, on whose head the penalties of the State should be visited? ...  read the whole article

Lindy Davies: Land and Justice

I'm here today as a "Single Taxer". If you don't recall quite what that is, let me first say that it’s NOT Steve Forbes’s “flat tax!” No. The Single Tax is actually a comprehensive program for economic justice and environmental sustainability. It was stated most memorably by the American economist Henry George in his 1879 book Progress and Poverty — and affirmed by a great many important thinkers, before and since. The idea is for society to collect the rental value of land for public revenue — and to abolish all other taxes on the production and exchange of wealth. It came to be known at the “Single Tax” because of this proposal that the rent of land should be the sole source of public revenue.

Single Taxers have been ridiculed somewhat, over the years, for peddling a panacea, offering a cure for poverty, depressions, urban blight, potholes, the common cold and the heartbreak of psoriasis. Well, I don’t claim to have a cure for every bad thing. But I do want to talk to you making the necessary economic arrangements to create a just society, in which there would be equal opportunity for all, and in which we could confidently look ahead to all our children’s futures.

Single taxers have also caught some grief for always saying “It’s all about the land!”

But I’m not going to apologize for that! I want to explain to you why the issues of economic justice and sustainability actually ARE all about the land.

The theme of this week’s program is Land and Justice. Those are two words that we use so often that we tend to take their meanings for granted. It might be helpful to stop and think about what they truly mean.

Justice is often seen as the fair retribution for something done wrong, as in "justice was done" when a criminal is sent to jail. George W. Bush vowed, for example, to bring the 9-11 terrorists to justice.

However, that conception of justice — in which one does good, in order to avoid the consequences of not doing good — is actually an immature one. In the stages of moral development identified by psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, this is called the "conventional" stage. Maturity comes in the "post-conventional" stage, when we come to value doing good so as to contribute to our community, or, even, doing good for its own sake.

Jesus was hip to that, in his scorn for the loudly-praying pharisees on the street corners. They already have their reward, he said. He set much greater store by good deeds done without thought of reward: "whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you to do me also." And, even more to the point, the prophet Micah enjoins us to "Do justice and love mercy."

So, what is "doing justice," in this positive sense? If I do something nice for the least of my brothers and sisters, have I done justice? If I send them a handmade quilt?

Not really. I think the least of my brothers and sisters, cold though they might be, would resent my presuming to know exactly how to handle their problem; perhaps they'd rather make their own quilt, or build a fireplace, or move to a warmer place.

Justice must have to do with freedom. To do justice, then, is to secure, in Thomas Jefferson's words, people's inalienable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The most basic of those rights is life. (In this day and age, though, even that is controversial... There's a great deal of passionate contention about the troubling special cases of the very beginning, or the very end of life — but it seems to me that we ought to pay more attention to every single human being's right to live!)

Be that as it may: we all pretty much understand basically what human life is, and what its basic requirements are: food, clothing and shelter. ...

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. ...

Eventually, I believe that human society will adopt the biblical and georgist wisdom, and organize itself as it must, to achieve justice, efficiency and sustainability.

Eventually we will have tried everything else. That's how Clarence Darrow — one of the reform's many prominent supporters — saw things. He said this: “The “single tax” is so simple, so fundamental, and so easy to carry into effect that I have no doubt that it will be about the last reform the world will ever get. People in this world are not often logical.”

True enough. Yet I have to believe that eventually the obvious truth will start to dawn on us. ... read the whole speech

Henry George:  The Land Question (1881)

• Liberty–the full freedom of each bounded only by the equal freedom of every other!
• Equality–the equal right of each to the use and enjoyment of all natural opportunities, to all the essentials of happy, healthful, human life!
• Fraternity–that sympathy which links together those who struggle in a noble cause; that would live and let live; that would help as well as be helped; that, in seeking the good of all, finds the highest good of each!

Peter Barnes: Capitalism 3.0 — Chapter 7: Universal Birthrights (pages 101-116)

The Idea of Birthrights

John Locke’s response to royalty’s claim of divine right was the idea of everyone’s inherent right to life, liberty, and property. Thomas Jefferson, in drafting America’s Declaration of Independence, changed Locke’s trinity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These, Jefferson and his collaborators agreed, are gifts from the creator that can’t be taken away. Put slightly differently, they’re universal birthrights.

The Constitution and its amendments added meat to these elegant bones. They guaranteed such birthrights as free speech, due process, habeas corpus, speedy public trials, and secure homes and property. Wisely, the Ninth Amendment affirmed that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” In that spirit, others have since been added.

If we were to analyze the expansion of American birthrights, we’d see a series of waves. The first wave consisted of rights against the state. The second included rights against unequal treatment based on race, nationality, gender, or sexual orientation. The third wave — which, historically speaking, is just beginning — consists of rights not against things, but for things — free public education, collective bargaining for wages, security in old age. They can be thought of as rights necessary for the pursuit of happiness.

What makes this latest wave of birthrights strengthen community is their universality. If some Americans could enjoy free public education while others couldn’t, the resulting inequities would divide rather than unite us as a nation. The universality of these rights puts everyone in the same boat. It spreads risk, responsibility, opportunity, and reward across race, gender, economic classes, and generations. It makes us a nation rather than a collection of isolated individuals.

Universality is also what distinguishes the commons sector from the corporate sector. The starting condition for the corporate sector, as we’ve seen, is that the top 5 percent owns more shares than everyone else. The starting condition for the commons sector, by contrast, is one person, one share.

The standard argument against third wave universal birthrights is that, while they might be nice in theory, in practice they are too expensive. They impose an unbearable burden on “the economy” — that is, on the winners in unfettered markets. Much better, therefore, to let everyone — including poor children and the sick — fend for themselves. In fact, the opposite is often true: universal birthrights, as we’ll see, can be cheaper and more efficient than individual acquisition. Moreover, they are always fairer.

How far we might go down the path of extending universal birthrights is anyone’s guess, but we’re now at the point where, economically speaking, we can afford to go farther. Without great difficulty, we could add three birthrights to our economic operating system: one would pay everyone a regular dividend, the second would give every child a start-up stake, and the third would reduce and share medical costs. Whether we add these birthrights or not isn’t a matter of economic ability, but of attitude and politics.

Why attitude? Americans suffer from a number of confusions. We think it’s “wrong” to give people “something for nothing,” despite the fact that corporations take common wealth for nothing all the time. We believe the poor are poor and the rich are rich because they deserve to be, but don’t consider that millions of Americans work two or three jobs and still can’t make ends meet. Plus, we think tinkering with the “natural” distribution of income is “socialism,” or “big government,” or some other manifestation of evil, despite the fact that our current distribution of income isn’t “natural” at all, but rigged from the get-go by maldistributed property.

The late John Rawls, one of America’s leading philosophers, distinguished between pre distribution of property and re distribution of income. Under income re distribution, money is taken from “winners” and transferred to “losers.” Understandably, this isn’t popular with winners, who tend to control government and the media. Under property pre distribution, by contrast, the playing field is leveled by spreading property ownership before income is generated. After that, there’s no need for income redistribution; property itself distributes income to all. According to Rawls, while income re distribution creates dependency, property predistribution empowers.

But how can we spread property ownership without taking property from some and giving it to others? The answer lies in the commons — wealth that already belongs to everyone. By propertizing (without privatizing) some of that wealth, we can make everyone a property owner.

What’s interesting is that, for purely ecological reasons, we need to propertize (without privatizing) some natural wealth now. This twenty-first century necessity means we have a chance to save the planet, and as a bonus, add a universal birthright. ... read the whole chapter

Nic Tideman: A Bill of Economic Rights and Obligations

Our nation was founded on the idea that we are all created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In living, expressing our liberty, and pursuing happiness we sometimes conflict with one another, so we need a shared understanding of the extent of the sphere of equal rights given to every person, and beyond that sphere our obligation to respect the rights of others. This Bill is concerned with the economic aspects of these rights and obligations. ... read the whole article