Happy birthday to Henry George, who may have been the last best hope for US to be what the Patriots dreamed of, rather than what moneymen made! George began as a Lincoln Republican, but then became a Democrat. He was a strong critic of railroad and mining interests, corrupt politicians, land speculators, and labor contractors. He first articulated his views in an 1868 article entitled What the Railroad Will Bring Us. George argued that the boom in railroad construction would benefit only the lucky few who owned interests in the railroads and other related enterprises, while throwing the greater part of the population into abject poverty. This had led to him earning the enmity of the Central Pacific Railroads executives. One day in 1871 George went for a horseback ride and stopped to rest while overlooking San Francisco Bay. He later wrote of the revelation that he had: I asked a passing teamster, for want of something better to say, what land was worth there. He pointed to some cows grazing so far off that they looked like mice, and said, I dont know exactly, but there is a man over there who will sell some land for a thousand dollars an acre. Like a flash it came over me that there was the reason of advancing poverty with advancing wealth. With the growth of population, land grows in value, and the men who work it must pay more for the privilege. Furthermore, on a visit to New York City, he was struck by the apparent paradox that the poor in that long-established city were much worse off than the poor in less developed California. These observations supplied the theme and title for his 1879 book Progress and Poverty, which was a great success, selling over 3 million copies. In it George made the argument that a sizeable portion of the wealth created by social and technological advances in a free market economy is possessed by land owners and monopolists via economic rents, and that this concentration of unearned wealth is the main cause of poverty. George considered it a great injustice that private profit was being earned from restricting access to natural resources while productive activity was burdened with heavy taxes, and indicated that such a system was equivalent to slavery – a concept somewhat similar to wage slavery. This is also the work in which he made the case for a land tax in which governments would tax the value of the land itself, thus preventing private interests from profiting upon its mere possession, but allowing the value of all improvements made to that land to remain with investors. George was in a position to discover this pattern, having experienced poverty himself, knowing many different societies from his travels, and living in California at a time of rapid growth. In particular he had noticed that the construction of railroads in California was increasing land values and rents as fast as or faster than wages were rising. In 1880, now a popular writer and speaker, George moved to New York City, becoming closely allied with the Irish nationalist community despite being of English ancestry. From there he made several speaking journeys abroad to places such as Ireland and Scotland where access to land was (and still is) a major political issue. In 1886 George campaigned for mayor of New York City as the candidate of the United Labor Party, the short-lived political society of the Central Labor Union. He polled second, more than the Republican candidate Theodore Roosevelt. United Labor Party was soon weakened by internal divisions: the management was essentially Georgist, but as a party of organized labor it also included some Marxist members who did not want to distinguish between land and capital, many Catholic members who were discouraged by the excommunication of Father Edward McGlynn, and many who disagreed with Georges free trade policy. Among Georges other contributions, George was one of the earliest, strongest and most prominent advocates for adoption of the secret ballot in the United States. Georges first article in support of the secret ballot was entitled Bribery in Elections. George supported the use of government issued paper currency such as the greenback. He opposed the use of metallic currency (such as gold or silver), and money issued by private commercial banks. Although both advocated workers rights, Henry George and Karl Marx were antagonists. Marx saw the Single Tax platform as a step backwards from the transition to communism. On his part, Henry George predicted that if Marxs ideas were tried, the likely result would be a dictatorship. In 1977, Joseph Stiglitz showed that under certain conditions, spending by the government on public goods will increase aggregate land rents by an equal amount. This result has been dubbed by economists the Henry George Theorem, as it characterizes a situation where Henry Georges single tax is not only efficient, it is also the only tax necessary to finance public expenditures. A follower of George, Lizzie Magie, created a board game called The Landlords Game in 1904 to demonstrate his theories. After a reversal that made kleptomania the winning strategy, this game led to the modern board game Monopoly. He died in 1897 at age fifty -eight. https://youtube/watch?v=MzrNAs5Cysw
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 02:51:04 +0000
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