Coasians and other defenders of “property rights” have captured mainstream economics to the detriment of public interest in our shared environment.. A personal story:
Sleeping with the Enemy
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Most economists today live in a two-factor world: There is just labor and capital. Land, so central to classical political economy, has been swallowed into capital and “disappeared.” This paper surveys some of the better historical treatments of land and capital, their interrelations, and how they support modern Georgists and Greens who want land to reappear. . . . → Read More: Keeping Land in Capital Theory: Ricardo, Faustmann, Wicksell, and George  Comments are closed  Publication  Capital theory, Economic History, Forest economics, Georgist history, Land economics -- Environment Neoclassical economics is the idiom of most economic discourse today. It is the paradigm that bends the twigs of young minds. Then it confines the florescence of older ones, like chicken-wire shaping a topiary. It took form about a hundred years ago, when Henry George and his reform proposals were a clear and present . . . → Read More: Neo-classical Economics as a Stratagem Against Henry George Comments are closed Publication Economic History, Economic Science, Georgist history, Neoclassical economics, Politics Commercial-capitalist civilization has progressed in step with people’s success in fending off sales taxes in their various guises. We might begin with The Enlightenment, late 18th Century, with its epicenter in Versailles. At the core were the philosophes; at their core were les économistes, or Physiocrats; and at their core was the . . . → Read More: The Sales Tax: History of a Dumb Idea Comments are closed Essay, Publication Economic History, Land Economics -- General, Public finance, Sales Tax, Tax policy, welfare economics Constructive problem-solving is when one takes problems and dilemmas and composes them into solutions. A simple example is when two lonely, longing people meet and marry. Another, more prosaic, is when a producer converts wastes into useful by-products. Another, more general, is whenever demand meets supply. An address by Mason Gaffney at . . . → Read More: Answer to Futilitarians THE TREATMENT of rent as public revenue is part and parcel of an organic theory of the State. In the contractual theory, government is a kind of business which extends services to landowners. They only need pay for benefits received, which are construed in the narrowest possible terms. In the organic theory, landowners hold . . . → Read More: The Philosophy of Public Finance Comments are closed Publication Economic History, Economic Science, Political Theory, Public finance, Tax policy IT WAS A DIFFERENT TIME, but often the same place (Cooper Union) in American life. No, it wasn’t radio, but the age of orators. One of the most spellbinding was Dr. Edward McGlynn; another good one was Henry George, who also wrote great books. They came together in 1886 to roil the waters of . . . → Read More: Henry George, Dr. Edward McGlynn & Pope Leo XIII Alfred Russel Wallace rose to fame with Charles Darwin: They independently found the principle of natural selection. Wallace later focused on reforming Great Britain’s land tenure system, under which a few owners had come to control most of the land, while most citizens had little or none of their own. In Land Nationalization (1882) Wallace . . . → Read More: Alfred Russel Wallace’s Campaign to Nationalize Land: How Darwin’s Peer Learned from John Stuart Mill and Became Henry George’s Ally The Harvard Registrar reports the most popular undergraduate courses now are “Justice,” “Principles of Economics,” “The Concept of the Hero,” and “Literature of Social Reflection.” The “Me Generation” is passing; Justice, Heroism and Social Thought are “In.” Are economists ready for this future? I think not: changes must be made. Classical political-economists were moral . . . → Read More: Equity Premises and the Case for Socializing Rent Comments are closed Publication Economic History, Economic Science, Land Rent, land value tax, Politics, progressive, Public finance, Tax policy, tax reform, Tax Shift, welfare economics The classical political-economists made distribution of wealth and income the centerpiece of their discipline. This led smoothly, if unintentionally, into the socialist slogan, “The problem is not production, but distribution.” From about 1890, “neoclassical” economists preferred to downplay distribution. Distribution is troublesome, they said, because beliefs about it are often subjective and . . . → Read More: Justice in Distribution |