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Wealth and Want | |||||||
... because democracy alone is not enough to produce widely shared prosperity. | |||||||
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Pension
Henry George: The
Crime of Poverty (1885 speech)
But I have not time to enter into further details. I can only ask you
to think upon this thing, and the more you will see its desirability.
As an English friend of mine puts it: "No taxes and a pension for
everybody;" and why should it not be? To take land values for public
purposes is not really to impose a tax, but to take for public purposes
a value created by the community. And
out of the fund which would thus accrue from the common property, we
might, without degradation to anybody, provide enough to actually
secure from want all who were deprived of their natural protectors or
met with accident, or any man who should grow so old that he could not
work. All prating that is heard from some quarters about its
hurting the common people to give them what they do not work for is
humbug. The truth is, that anything that injures self-respect,
degrades, does harm; but if you give it as a right, as something to
which every citizen is entitled to, it does not degrade. Charity
schools do degrade children that are sent to them, but public schools
do not. ... read the whole speech
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Wealth
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... because democracy
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prosper
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