Yesterday we looked at what Thomas Skidmore had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part XI
Henry George likes only one kind of tax
       Another nineteenth century philosopher of political economy, Henry George, (1839 – 1897) wrote Progress and Poverty, in which he says almost exactly the same things that Tom Paine was saying about the relationship between wealth and poverty, although he has different remedies for the evils of modern society. Like Thomas Paine, Henry George saw that wealth created poverty and, also in agreement with Paine, that people living in other than industrial societies may seem poorer compared to the wealthy, but are still much better off than the poor in those more technologically “advanced” societies.
       Henry George’s “purple prose” style is so bad that it is good, especially if you are writing for National Lampoon, or some such periodical, and I wonder if that might not have been the reason for his not being taken seriously in his own time. He writes gushingly of the hoped-for utopian paradise that was promised by the industrial revolution, and then brings us down with a jolting thud. After noting that poverty and wealth exist side by side in all civilized societies, he explains that the common cause is industrial depressions which always accompanies material progress, that “where material progress everywhere tends are the most fully realized – that is to say, where populations is densest, wealth greatest, and the machinery of production and exchange most highly developed – we find the deepest poverty, the sharpest struggle for existence, and the most enforced idleness“ (George [1879], 6).
       Unlike Thomas Paine’s rent on land, Henry George’s remedy is a single tax on land. But, like Paine, he was not threatening to rob anyone of their land. “I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate private property in land. The first would be unjust; the second, needless. Let the individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to call it their land. Let them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we take the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate rent.” (George [1879], 405).
       I noticed that George has confused the terms “rent” and “tax,” but I will show, in my conclusion that that is not really a problem. Whether one calls it a “tax “or a “rent” will only make a difference as to how the idea is presented, and to whom it is presented. As David Hume might have said, if he was living in our day, it is no big deal to consider a tax as just a rent. It is just another artifice of the mind.
       Henry George was not just some deductive theorist wondering “what if….” He was an inductive, empirical economist, and he did his homework. Progress and Poverty is a long book, and it is full of good economic data. What is more, he does not blame capitalists for poverty; he considers them victims as well, of the injustices brought about by landowners. His economic arguments show how his single tax on land is good for Capitalism.
       George argues that “…Taxes on the value of land not only do not check production as do most other taxes, but they tend to increase production, by destroying speculative rent.“ Then he cites speculative rent as a cause of industrial depressions all over the world. “causing more waste and probably more suffering than would a general war. “ Taxes on the land, he argues would keep the land from being left idle. “The dog in the manger who, in this country especially, so wastes productive power, would be choked off“ (George [1879], 413).
       Gathering up all those thoughts from previous ages, let us now compare them to the moderns.
      Thursday: Karl Polanyi, the “not quite Karl Marx” guy
Alert all your friends who won't give up their racial identities and/or who make money from owning private property that this blog challenges their personal and social constructs.
For those of you who have only recently joined us, my rants began on January 1, 2011. Scroll down to that date to begin.
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th.
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