Our most important documents say that ours is a nation dedicated to
the proposition that all of us are created equal.
When that assertion was
first
made, a large
number of us were enslaved, and their descendants would be enslaved for
another 80 years. But in some important ways, we have not yet created genuine
equality
of opportunity for all. Who one chooses for one's parents is the prime
determinant of one's opportunities.
Conservatives might say that it isn't
appropriate
for government to intervene in any way, that we as a society don't owe
children an equal shot if their parents can't provide it.
Liberals might
try
to apply patches to help at least some of those who are born in underprivileged
circumstances
to have some of what middle-class and upper-class children have, but
the number
of patches needed is increasingly large and expensive.
Is there another
answer? Georgists think so.
Henry George: Thy Kingdom Come
(1889 speech)
... The story goes on to
describe how the roads of heaven, the
streets of the New Jerusalem, were filled with disconsolate tramp
angels, who had pawned their wings, and were outcasts in Heaven
itself.
You laugh, and it is ridiculous.
But there is a moral in it that
is worth serious thought. Is it not ridiculous to imagine the
application to God’s heaven of the same rules of division that
we apply to God’s earth, even while we pray that His will may be
done on earth as it is done in Heaven?
Really, if we could imagine it,
it is impossible to think of
heaven treated as we treat this earth, without seeing that, no matter
how salubrious were its air, no matter how bright the light that
filled it, no matter how magnificent its vegetable growth, there
would be poverty, and suffering, and a division of classes in heaven
itself, if heaven were parcelled out as we have parceled out the
earth. And, conversely, if people were to act towards each other as
we must suppose the inhabitants of heaven to do, would not this earth
be a very heaven?
“Thy kingdom come.” No one can
think of the kingdom
for which the prayer asks without feeling that it must be a kingdom
of justice and equality — not necessarily of equality in
condition, but of equality in opportunity. And no one can think of it
without seeing that a very kingdom of God might be brought on this
earth if people would but seek to do justice — if people would
but acknowledge the essential principle of Christianity, that of
doing to others as we would have others do to us, and of recognising
that we are all here equally the children of the one Father, equally
entitled to share His bounty, equally entitled to live our lives and
develop our faculties, and to apply our labour to the raw material
that He has provided. ...
Nothing is clearer than that if
we are all children of the
universal Father, we are all entitled to the use of His bounty. No
one dare deny that proposition. But the people who set their faces
against its carrying out say, virtually: “Oh, yes! that is true;
but it is impracticable to carry it into effect!” Just think of
what this means. This is God’s world, and yet such people say
that it is a world in which God’s justice, God’s will,
cannot be carried into effect. What a monstrous absurdity, what a
monstrous blasphemy!
If the loving God does reign, if
His laws are the laws not
merely of the physical, but of the moral universe, there must be a
way of carrying His will into effect, there must be a way of doing
equal justice to all of His creatures.
There is. The people who deny
that there is any practical way of
carrying into effect the perception that all human beings are equally
children of the Creator shut their eyes to the plain and obvious way.
It is, of course, impossible in a civilisation like this of ours to
divide land up into equal pieces. Such a system might have done in a
primitive state of society. We have progressed in civilisation beyond
such rude devices, but we have not, nor can we, progress beyond
God’s providence.
There is a way of securing the
equal rights of all, not by
dividing land up into equal pieces, but by taking for the use of all
that value which attaches to land, not as the result of individual
labour upon it, but as the result of the increase in population, and
the improvement of society. In that way everyone would be equally
interested in the land of one’s native country. Here is the
simple way. It is a way that impresses the person who really sees its
beauty with a more vivid idea of the beneficence of the providence of
the All-Father than, it seems to me, does anything else.
... Read
the whole speech
Henry George: Ode to
Liberty (1877 speech)
WE HONOR LIBERTY in name and in
form. We set up her statues and sound
her praises. But we have not fully trusted her. And with our growth so
grow her demands. She will have no half service! Liberty! it is a word
to conjure with, not to vex the ear in empty boastings. For Liberty
means Justice, and Justice is the natural law — the law of health and
symmetry and strength, of fraternity and co-operation.
They who look upon Liberty as having
accomplished her mission when she has abolished hereditary privileges
and given men the ballot, who think of her as having no further
relations to the everyday affairs of life, have not seen her real
grandeur — to them the poets who have sung of her must seem
rhapsodists, and her martyrs fools! ...
In our time, as in times before, creep on the insidious forces
that, producing inequality, destroy Liberty. On the horizon the
clouds begin to lower. Liberty calls to us again. We must follow her
further; we must trust her fully. Either we must wholly accept her or
she will not stay. It is not enough
that men should vote; it is not
enough that they should be theoretically equal before the law. They
must have liberty to avail themselves of the opportunities and means
of life; they must stand on equal terms with reference to the bounty
of nature. Either this, or Liberty withdraws her light! Either
this,
or darkness comes on, and the very forces that progress has evolved
turn to powers that work destruction. This is the universal law. This
is the lesson of the centuries. Unless its foundations be laid in
justice the social structure cannot stand.
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 subtle 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. ...
In the very centers of our
civilization today are want and
suffering enough to make sick at heart whoever does not close his
eyes and steel his nerves. Dare we turn to the Creator and ask Him to
relieve it? Supposing the prayer were heard, and at the behest with
which the universe sprang into being there should glow in the sun a
greater power; new virtue fill the air; fresh vigor the soil; that
for every blade of grass that now grows two should spring up, and the
seed that now increases fifty-fold should increase a hundredfold!
Would poverty be abated or want relieved? Manifestly no! Whatever
benefit would accrue would be but temporary. The new powers
streaming
through the material universe could be utilized only through land.
And land, being private property, the classes that now
monopolize the
bounty of the Creator would monopolize all the new bounty. Land
owners would alone be benefited. Rents would
increase, but wages
would still tend to the starvation point!
This is not merely a deduction of
political economy; it is a
fact of experience. ...
But if, while there is
yet time, we turn to Justice and obey
her, if we trust Liberty and follow her, the dangers that now
threaten must disappear, the forces that now menace will turn to
agencies of elevation. Think of the powers now wasted; of the
infinite fields of knowledge yet to be explored; of the possibilities
of which the wondrous inventions of this century give us but a hint.
With want destroyed; with greed changed to noble passions; with the
fraternity that is born of equality taking the place of the jealousy
and fear that now array men against each other; with mental power
loosed by conditions that give to the humblest comfort and leisure;
and who shall measure the heights to which our civilization may soar?
Words fail the thought! It is the Golden Age of which poets have sung
and high-raised seers have told in metaphor! It is the glorious
vision which has always haunted man with gleams of fitful splendor.
It is what he saw whose eyes at Patmos were closed in a trance. It is
the culmination of Christianity — the City of God on earth, with
its walls of jasper and its gates of pearl! It is the reign of the
Prince of Peace! ... read the whole speech
Henry George: The Condition of
Labor — An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII in response to Rerum Novarum (1891)
For refusal to take for public purposes the increasing values that attach
to land with social growth is to necessitate the getting of public revenues
by taxes that lessen production, distort distribution and corrupt society.
It is to leave some to take what justly belongs to all; it is to forego the
only means by which it is possible in an advanced civilization to combine
the security of possession that is necessary to improvement with the equality
of natural opportunity that is the most important of all natural rights.
It is thus at the basis of all social life to set up an unjust inequality
between man and man, compelling some to pay others for the privilege of living,
for the chance of working, for the advantages of civilization, for the gifts
of their God. But it is even more than this. The very robbery that the masses
of men thus suffer gives rise in advancing communities to a new robbery.
For the value that with the increase of population and social advance attaches
to land being suffered to go to individuals who have secured ownership of
the land, it prompts to a forestalling of and speculation in land wherever
there is any prospect of advancing population or of coming improvement, thus
producing an artificial scarcity of the natural elements of life and labor,
and a strangulation of production that shows itself in recurring spasms of
industrial depression as disastrous to the world as destructive wars. It
is this that is driving men from the old countries to the new countries,
only to bring there the same curses. It is this that causes our material
advance not merely to fail to improve the condition of the mere worker, but
to make the condition of large classes positively worse. It is this that
in our richest Christian countries is giving us a large population whose
lives are harder, more hopeless, more degraded than those of the veriest
savages. It is this that leads so many men to think that God is a bungler
and is constantly bringing more people into his world than he has made provision
for; or that there is no God, and that belief in him is a superstition which
the facts of life and the advance of science are dispelling.
The darkness in light, the weakness in strength, the poverty amid wealth,
the seething discontent foreboding civil strife, that characterize our civilization
of today, are the natural, the inevitable results of our rejection of God’s
beneficence, of our ignoring of his intent. Were we on the other hand to
follow his clear, simple rule of right, leaving scrupulously to the individual
all that individual labor produces, and taking for the community the value
that attaches to land by the growth of the community itself, not merely could
evil modes of raising public revenues be dispensed with, but all
men would be placed on an equal level of opportunity with regard to the bounty
of their
Creator, on an equal level of opportunity to exert their labor and to enjoy
its fruits. And then, without drastic or restrictive measures the
forestalling of land would cease. For then the possession of land would mean
only security
for the permanence of its use, and there would be no object for any one to
get land or to keep land except for use; nor would his possession of better
land than others had confer any unjust advantage on him, or unjust deprivation
on them, since the equivalent of the advantage would be taken by the state
for the benefit of all. ...
Your use, in so many passages of your Encyclical, of the inclusive term “property” or “private” property,
of which in morals nothing can be either affirmed or denied, makes your meaning,
if we take isolated sentences, in many places ambiguous. But reading it as
a whole, there can be no doubt of your intention that private property in
land shall be understood when you speak merely of private property. With
this interpretation, I find that the reasons you urge for private property
in land are eight. Let us consider them in order of presentation. You urge:
1. That what is bought with rightful property is rightful property. (RN,
paragraph 5) ...
2. That private property in land proceeds from man’s gift of reason.
(RN, paragraphs 6-7.) ...
3. That private property in land deprives no one of the use of land. (RN,
paragraph 8.) ...
4. That Industry expended on land gives ownership in the land itself. (RN,
paragraphs 9-10.) ...
5. That private property in land has the support of the common opinion of
mankind, and has conduced to peace and tranquillity, and that it is sanctioned
by Divine Law. (RN, paragraph 11.) ...
6. That fathers should provide for their children and that private property
in land is necessary to enable them to do so. (RN, paragraphs 14-17.) ...
7. That the private ownership of land stimulates industry, increases wealth,
and attaches men to the soil and to their country. (RN, paragraph 51.) ...
8. That the right to possess private property in land is from nature, not
from man; that the state has no right to abolish it, and that to take the
value of landownership in taxation would be unjust and cruel to the private
owner. (RN, paragraph 51.) ...
2. That private property in land proceeds from man’s gift of reason.
(6-7.)
In the second place your Holiness argues that man possessing reason and
forethought may not only acquire ownership of the fruits of the earth, but
also of the earth itself, so that out of its products he may make provision
for the future.
Reason, with its attendant forethought, is indeed the distinguishing attribute
of man; that which raises him above the brute, and shows, as the Scriptures
declare, that he is created in the likeness of God. And this gift of reason
does, as your Holiness points out, involve the need and right of private
property in whatever is produced by the exertion of reason and its attendant
forethought, as well as in what is produced by physical labor. In truth,
these elements of man’s production are inseparable, and labor involves
the use of reason. It is by his reason that man differs from the animals
in being a producer, and in this sense a maker. Of themselves his physical
powers are slight, forming as it were but the connection by which the mind
takes hold of material things, so as to utilize to its will the matter and
forces of nature. It is mind, the intelligent reason, that is the prime mover
in labor, the essential agent in production.
The right of private ownership does therefore indisputably attach to things
provided by man’s reason and forethought. But it cannot attach to things
provided by the reason and forethought of God!
To illustrate: Let us suppose a company traveling through the desert as
the Israelites traveled from Egypt. Such of them as had the forethought to
provide themselves with vessels of water would acquire a just right of property
in the water so carried, and in the thirst of the waterless desert those
who had neglected to provide themselves, though they might ask water from
the provident in charity, could not demand it in right. For while water itself
is of the providence of God, the presence of this water in such vessels,
at such place, results from the providence of the men who carried it. Thus
they have to it an exclusive right.
But suppose others use their forethought in pushing ahead and appropriating
the springs, refusing when their fellows come up to let them drink of the
water save as they buy it of them. Would such forethought give any right?
Your Holiness, it is not the forethought of carrying water where it is needed,
but the forethought of seizing springs, that you seek to defend in defending
the private ownership of land!
Let me show this more fully, since it may be worth while to meet those who
say that if private property in land be not just, then private property in
the products of labor is not just, as the material of these products is taken
from land. It will be seen on consideration that all of man’s production
is analogous to such transportation of water as we have supposed. In growing
grain, or smelting metals, or building houses, or weaving cloth, or doing
any of the things that constitute producing, all that man does is to change
in place or form preexisting matter. As a producer man is merely a changer,
not a creator; God alone creates. And since the changes in which man’s
production consists inhere in matter so long as they persist, the right of
private ownership attaches the accident to the essence, and gives the right
of ownership in that natural material in which the labor of production is
embodied. Thus water, which in its original form and place is the common
gift of God to all men, when drawn from its natural reservoir and brought
into the desert, passes rightfully into the ownership of the individual who
by changing its place has produced it there.
But such right of ownership is in reality a mere right of temporary possession.
For though man may take material from the storehouse of nature and change
it in place or form to suit his desires, yet from the moment he takes it,
it tends back to that storehouse again. Wood decays, iron rusts, stone disintegrates
and is displaced, while of more perishable products, some will last for only
a few months, others for only a few days, and some disappear immediately
on use. Though, so far as we can see, matter is eternal and force forever
persists; though we can neither annihilate nor create the tiniest mote that
floats in a sunbeam or the faintest impulse that stirs a leaf, yet in the
ceaseless flux of nature, man’s work of moving and combining constantly
passes away. Thus the recognition of the ownership of what natural material
is embodied in the products of man never constitutes more than temporary
possession — never interferes with the reservoir provided for all.
As taking water from one place and carrying it to another place by no means
lessens the store of water, since whether it is drunk or spilled or left
to evaporate, it must return again to the natural reservoirs — so is
it with all things on which man in production can lay the impress of his
labor.
Hence, when you say that man’s reason puts it within his right to
have in stable and permanent possession not only things that perish in the
using, but also those that remain for use in the future, you are right in
so far as you may include such things as buildings, which with repair will
last for generations, with such things as food or fire-wood, which are destroyed
in the use. But when you infer that man can have private ownership in those
permanent things of nature that are the reservoirs from which all must draw,
you are clearly wrong. Man may indeed hold in private ownership the fruits
of the earth produced by his labor, since they lose in time the impress of
that labor, and pass again into the natural reservoirs from which they were
taken, and thus the ownership of them by one works no injury to others. But
he cannot so own the earth itself, for that is the reservoir from which must
constantly be drawn not only the material with which alone men can produce,
but even their very bodies.
The conclusive reason why man cannot claim ownership in the earth itself
as he can in the fruits that he by labor brings forth from it, is in the
facts stated by you in the very next paragraph (7), when you truly say:
Man’s needs do not die out, but recur; satisfied today, they demand
new supplies tomorrow. Nature, therefore, owes to man a storehouse that
shall never fail, the daily supply of his daily wants. And this he finds
only in
the inexhaustible fertility of the earth.
By man you mean all men. Can what nature owes to all men be made the private
property of some men, from which they may debar all other men?
Let me dwell on the words of your Holiness, “Nature, therefore, owes
to man a storehouse that shall never fail.” By Nature you mean God.
Thus your thought, that in creating us, God himself has incurred an obligation
to provide us with a storehouse that shall never fail, is the same as is
thus expressed and carried to its irresistible conclusion by the Bishop of
Meath:
God was perfectly free in the act by which He created us; but having created
us he bound himself by that act to provide us with the means necessary
for our subsistence. The land is the only source of this kind now known
to us.
The land, therefore, of every country is the common property of the people
of that country, because its real owner, the Creator who made it, has
transferred it as a voluntary gift to them. “Terram autem dedit
filiis hominum.” Now,
as every individual in that country is a creature and child of God, and
as all his creatures are equal in his sight, any settlement of the land
of a
country that would exclude the humblest man in that country from his
share of the common inheritance would be not only an injustice and a wrong
to that
man, but, moreover, be AN IMPIOUS RESISTANCE TO THE BENEVOLENT INTENTIONS
OF HIS CREATOR. ...
Men who are sure of getting food when they shall need it eat only what appetite
dictates. But with the sparse tribes who exist on the verge of the habitable
globe life is either a famine or a feast. Enduring hunger for days, the fear
of it prompts them to gorge like anacondas when successful in their quest
of game. And so, what gives wealth its curse is what drives men to seek it,
what makes it so envied and admired — the fear of want. As the unduly
rich are the corollary of the unduly poor, so is the soul-destroying quality
of riches but the reflex of the want that embrutes and degrades. The real
evil lies in the injustice from which unnatural possession and unnatural
deprivation both spring.
But this injustice can hardly be charged on individuals or classes. The
existence of private property in land is a great social wrong from which
society at large suffers, and of which the very rich and the very poor are
alike victims, though at the opposite extremes. Seeing this, it seems to
us like a violation of Christian charity to speak of the rich as though they
individually were responsible for the sufferings of the poor. Yet, while
you do this, you insist that the cause of monstrous wealth and degrading
poverty shall not be touched. Here is a man with a disfiguring and dangerous
excrescence. One physician would kindly, gently, but firmly remove it. Another
insists that it shall not be removed, but at the same time holds up the poor
victim to hatred and ridicule. Which is right?
In seeking to restore all men to their equal and natural rights we do not
seek the benefit of any class, but of all. For we both know by faith and
see by fact that injustice can profit no one and that justice must benefit
all. ... read the whole letter
Henry George: The Wages
of Labor
It cannot be, as is said by
some, that, in order to secure the
equal participation of men in the opportunities of life and labor, we
must ignore the right of private property. Nor yet can it be, as others
seem to argue, that, to secure the right of private property, we must
ignore the equality of right in the opportunities of life and labor.
To say the one thing or the other
is equally to deny the
harmony of God’s laws. But the private possession of land, subject to
the payment to the community of the value of any special advantage thus
given to the individual, satisfies both laws securing to all equal
participation in the bounties of the Creator, and to each the full
ownership of the products of his labor.
Nor do we hesitate to say that
this way of securing the equal
right to the bounty of the Creator, and the exclusive right to the
products of labor, is the way intended by God for raising Public
Revenue. ... read the whole article
Thomas Flavin, writing in The
Iconoclast, 1897
Now, it is quite true that all taxes of whatever nature are paid out of
the products of labor. But must they be for that reason a tax on labor products.
Let us see.
I suppose you won't deny that a unit of labor applies to different kinds
of land will give very different results. Suppose that a unit of labor produces
on A's land 4, on B's 3, on C's 2 and on D's 1. A's land is the most, and
D's is the least, productive land in use in the community to which they belong.
B's and C's represent intermediate grades. Suppose each occupies the best
land that was open to him when he entered into possession. Now, B, and C,
and D have just as good a right to the use of the best land as A had.
Manifestly then, if this be the whole story, there cannot be equality of
opportunity where a unit of labor produces such different results, all other
things being equal except the land.
How is this equality to be secured? There is but one possible way. Each
must surrender for the common use of all, himself included, whatever advantages
accrues to him from the possession of land superior to that which falls to
the lot of him who occupies the poorest.
In the case stated, what the unit of labor produces for D, is what it should
produce for A, B and C, if these are not to have an advantage of natural
opportunity over D.
Hence equity is secured when A pays 3, B, 2 and C, 1 into a common fund
for the common use of all — to be expended, say in digging a well,
making a road or bridge, building a school, or other public utility.
Is it not manifest that here the tax which A, B and C pay into a common
fund, and from which D is exempt, is not a tax on their labor products (though
paid out of them) but a tax on the superior advantage which they enjoy over
D, and to which D has just as good a right as any of them.
The result of this arrangement is that each takes up as much of the best
land open to him as he can put to gainful use, and what he cannot so use
he leaves open for the next. Moreover, he is at no disadvantage with the
rest who have come in ahead of him, for they provide for him, in proportion
to their respective advantages, those public utilities which invariably arise
wherever men live in communities. Of course he will in turn hold to those
who come later the same relation that those who came earlier held to him.
Suppose now that taxes had been levied on labor products instead of land;
all that any land-holder would have to do to avoid the tax is to produce
little or nothing. He could just squat on his land, neither using it himself
nor letting others use it, but he would not stop at this, for he would grab
to the last acre all that he could possibly get hold of. Each of the others
would do the same in turn, with the sure result that by and by, E, F and
G would find no land left for them on which they might make a living.
So they would have to hire their labor to those who had already monopolized
the land, or else buy or rent a piece of land from them. Behold now the devil
of landlordism getting his hoof on God's handiwork! Exit justice, freedom,
social peace and plenty. Enter robbery, slavery, social discontent, consuming
grief, riotous but unearned wealth, degrading pauperism, crime breeding,
want, the beggar's whine, and the tyrant's iron heel.
And how did it all come about? By the simple expedient of taxing labor products
in order that precious landlordism might laugh and grow fat on the bovine
stupidity of the community that contributes its own land values toward its
own enslavement!
And yet men vacuously ask, "What difference does it make?"
O tempora! O mores! To be as plain as is necessary, it makes this four-fold
difference.
- First, it robs the community of its land values;
- second, it robs labor of its wages in the name of taxation;
- third, it sustains and fosters landlordism, a most conspicuously damnable
difference;
- fourth, it exhibits willing workers in enforced idleness; beholding their
families in want on the one hand, and unused land that would yield them
abundance on the other.
This last is a difference that cries to heaven for vengeance, and if it
does not always cry in vain, will W. C. Brann be able to draw his robe close
around him and with a good conscience exclaim, "It's none of my fault;
I am not my brother's keeper."
Charles B. Fillebrown: A Catechism
of Natural Taxation, from Principles of
Natural Taxation (1917)
Q30. How would the single tax increase wages?
A. By gradually transferring to wages that portion of the current wealth that
now flows to privilege. In other words, it would widen and deepen the channel
of wages by enlarging opportunities for labor, and by increasing the purchasing
power of nominal wages through reduction of prices. On the other hand it would
narrow the channel of privilege by making the man who has a privilege pay for
it.
Q31. How can this transfer be effected?
A. By the taxation of privilege.
Q32. How much ultimately may wages be thus increased?
A. Fifty percent would be a low estimate.
Q33. What are fair prices and fair wages?
A. Prices unenhanced by privilege, and wages undiminished by taxation.
... read the whole article
Martin Luther King, Jr: Where
Do We Go From Here? (1967)
I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective
-- the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed
measure: the guaranteed income. ...
John Kenneth Galbraith has estimated that $20 billion a year would effect
a guaranteed income, which he describes as "not much more than we
will spend the next fiscal year to rescue freedom and democracy and religious
liberty
as these are defined by 'experts' in Vietnam."
The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity,
which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of
the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy
is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It
is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading
human life by clinging to archaic thinking. ... read
the book excerpt and whole speech
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