Henry George on Property Rights: Reply to John Pullen

John Pullen argues that Henry George's proposal to "make land common property" is inconsistent with his proposal to tax rent. This reply argues that George's two formulations are consistent, and that Pullen has confused common property with state property. On the other hand, Pullen's conception of property as composed of a "basket of rights" focuses attention on the question of whether, as trustee of the common property, a Georgist regime should be understood to have certain rights (and obligations) to constrain private land use decisions.     

Why the Georgist Movement Has Not Succeeded:

A BSTRACT . The article surveys factors external and internal to the Georgist movement that account for its relative lack of success. Key factors are the identification of income with productivity and the belief in a right to privatize economic rent. The Georgist defense of productive property thus was seen as an attack on property.     

Henry George and Europe:

A bstract Henry George played a tremendous role in the development and growth of the British Liberal party and of British Liberalism, one no less significant than his role in that of British non-Marxian socialism One of the Liberal leaders who gained a place in history, Joseph Chamberlain, had already been a land reformer before he learned about Georgism Chamberlain used the Georgist analysis, but he and the other 19th century Radical Liberals worked up a program for a broader distribution of landed property, not for the abolition of the private land monopoly. The same tactic in Ireland entrenched private land monopoly thereby making many renters small holders But George also supplied the analysis and the context of the Liberal campaign And later Liberal leaders–notably David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill (as well as Liberals in the Labour Party. Philip Snowden, Herbert Morrison, Ramsay MacDonald and Josiah Wedgwood) –came close to making the taxation of land values the law of the kingdom     

On Separating the Landowner's Earned and Unearned Increment: A Georgist Rejoinder to F. A. Hayek

On a given site, some increments of rent or land value may reflect improvements by the owner, either to it or to adjacent sites he or she also owns. Because these increments cannot always be distinguished with precision from the value arising from natural features and/or from improvements due to communal efforts, F. A. Hayek dismissed the Georgist paradigm as fatally flawed. This paper disputes Hayek's criticism on the following grounds: 1. As Professor Backhaus observed, the degree of certainty in measurement demanded by Hayek is more rigorous than that required in practice for enforceable tax assessment. 2. Under a Georgist-style system, landowners who improve their land would, in any case, get to keep much more of the fruits of their efforts than under any alternative public revenue system. 3. The distinction between value produced by the owner, on the one hand, and that produced by nature and society, on the other, remains authoritative as an ideal even if not perfectly realizable in practice; hence, there is a sense in which even the theoretical elegance of Georgism is not undercut by Hayek's criticism.     

Groundwater and the Land Value Tax

Abstract . Application of the land value tax has been described for many natural resources. However, the problems encountered with flowing underground resources have not been fully discussed. Groundwater is one such flowing resource that affects the value of surface land. The underground water is also subject to its own market forces. If a Georgist tax is to be applied to groundwater or to land affected by it, the administrator of the tax must consider the interplay that occurs between the two resource markets. A system of separable property rights to the two resources offers the prospect for efficient use. But the monitoring of ground water use must accompany such a separation.     

Development and Wealth: A Georgist Perspective

This essay addresses concerns of economic and wealth distribution, especially as they challenge the developing world. The foundation for any new framework of economic thought must embody a structure that allows for a sustainable future, not only for individuals but also for whole societies and economic units, and the assurance of minimal standards of living for the entire world's people. The Georgist position is that all the natural resources of the earth and sky should require payment back to society for the privilege of their use. Hence the recovery of rent is the proper source of finance for government services, restoring what is otherwise an imbalance between the public and the private realms of society. The Georgist philosophy offers economic justice and clarity of vision, restoration of and protection for the commons, and protection for the environment of the earth in a deft and gentle way that is within the capacity of governments to implement.     

Henry George and Europe

A bstract . The basic ideas of Henry George , 19th century American economist and social philosopher, were not novel in Denmark , which had a tradition of land value taxation and free trade. But they had special appeal for its smallholder farmers. They demanded that George's principles be applied more fully, getting all tax revenues from the land 's unimproved value, so that taxes on buildings, personal property and wages could be abolished. Viggo Ullman 's Danish-Norwegian translation of Progress and Poverty won the commitment of folk school movement leaders and the intelligentsia. In 1903 large landowners gained control of the Liberal Party and proceeded to abolish the traditional land tax, producer of up to 50 percent of State revenues. The Radical Liberals split and took over, to some extent carrying out George's taxation principles. In 1919 a Georgist party, the "Retsforbundet" was founded; it won the balance of power in 1957. But lack of finances and organizing ability and growing voter apathy ended its progress.     

Natural Law and the Roman Catholic Tradition: The Importance of Philosophical Realism

The intellectual tradition of Roman Catholicism considers natural‐law theory as providing the philosophical machinery for articulating concepts central to thinking about moral theory, legal theory, and the social order. The thrust of this essay is to explicate the positions rooted in the writings of Aquinas on natural‐law theory, a theory with which a Georgist might find some stimulating similarities. Conditions necessary for natural‐law moral and legal theory are considered through an analysis of the central metaphysical concepts together with their historical development and contemporary significance.     

Nonrenewable Exhaustible Resources and Property Taxation

A bstract .   In this paper, Professor Harriss connects the historic debate about using up nonrenewable resources and its impacts on future generations with the need to help finance government in less disruptive ways. He explains the Georgist program of taxing "economic rents" either directly by a rent tax or indirectly by a severance tax.     

Comments on Warren Samuels's "Why the Georgist Movement Has Not Succeeded"

A BSTRACT . The 16^th Amendment and the formation of the European Union were major political/economic reforms that should be seen as affirmations of the fundamental principles and teachings of Henry George. That these are not matters of interest to the self-defined Georgist movement reveals an excessively narrow focus of that movement and suggests its members' unfamiliarity with much of George's teachings.     

Frank H. Knight's Criticism of Henry George

A bstract .   The ferocity of Knight's comments on Henry George may come as a surprise to those who are not familiar with his criticisms of other economists and philosophers. But, in fact, his criticisms of George are not due to specifically Knightian insights on George's approach, but rather reflect the different philosophical framework from which neoclassical economists like Knight think. At the core of Knight's disagreements with George is his neoclassical theory of rent, as the Georgist critics of Knight understand. The article reviews the philosophical, economic, and ethical ideas that underlay Knight's neoclassicism, and hence inform his criticism of George.     

The Business Cycle

A bstract . Conventional macroeconomics lacks a warranted explanation of the major business cycle, while the Austrian and geo-economic Georgist) schools have incomplete theories. A geo-Austrian synthesis, in contrast, provides a potent theory consistent with historical cycles and with explanations about the root causes. The geo-economic and Austrian schools have had little interaction in the past, despite many similarities (Yeager, 1954 and 1984). Though the theories of the schools are largely complementary, each providing content the other lacks, so far a synthesis has not been forthcoming; although some geo-economists have incorporated elements of Austrian capital theory (e.g., Gaffney, 1994).     

Efficiency,productivity and technology comparison for farms in Central and Western Europe: The case of field crop and dairy farming in Hungary and France

This paper investigates the differences in technical efficiency and productivity change, and the technology gaps, between French and Hungarian farms in the dairy and cereal, oilseed and protein crops (COP) sectors during the period 2001–2007. The analyses were performed with national Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) data and the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach under each country's respective frontier and under a metafrontier.Results reveal that French COP farms were on average more efficient under their own technology than Hungarian farms under theirs, but there was no difference between the two countries for dairy farms. However, metatechnology ratios calculated with the construction of the metafrontier indicate that Hungarian technology was the more productive in both the dairy and the COP sectors, but more noticeably in COP production.     

The Commercial Valuation of Danubius A Study of the Privatization Process in Hungary

As former East Bloc countries attempt to move from state-controlled to market economies they are privatizing their economic enterprises in large numbers. Privatization generally requires the valuation of erstwhile government-owned assets. This has definite accounting and financial reporting implications particularly if the business entity hopes to attract capital from abroad. Foreign investors are likely to insist on financial information in a form that meets internationally acceptable norms before they provide capital to these businesses. This article looks at the case of a Hungarian company that has privatized recently. It describes the process from the managers' initial decision to 'go public' to the final issuance of the shares. It highlights certain practices that, while unusual by Western standards, are important components of the privatization process in Hungary. The Hungarian experience is of particular interest to other former East Bloc countries since Hungary is several years ahead of them on the road to privatization. Lessons learned from the Hungarian experience could assist them better manage their privatization programs. It provides financial managers and academics useful insights into the innovative vehicles for going public that are being developed by countries that have traditionally been perceived as being backward in their accounting and finance practices.     

Tolstoy's Georgist spiritual Political Economy (1897–1910): Anarchism and Land Reform

A bstract . Following Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy's spiritual crisis in the late 1870s many had come to regard him as a "crackpot anarchist" espousing odd ideas such as vegetarianism, nonresistance, and a doctrine of love. The death of his friend Henry George in 1897 spurred him on to renewed endeavors. Tolstoy became the world's most noteworthy exponent of the American's ideology, which integrated his previously diffuse commitments. Armed with his universal moral and religious beliefs harmoniously and gently forged with Georgist philosophy, he became the conscience of the world. It was a monumental effort to ground justice in a rational economics and spread enlightenment for the benefit of suffering people.¹     

Macro Features of the Hungarian Economy since 1970

With the introduction in 1968 of the New Economic Mechanism, the reformers of the Hungarian economy hoped to solve the eficiency problem of the socialist economy. It is shown that the survival of the previous structure of prices and accumulation and their interrelationships hindered the necessary transformation of the economic structure. Quantitative aspects of this process are analysed using a closed input–output model. The computed price and production structures are in correlation, which is the consequence of such a development policy where industry's share in investments is high when the investment growth rate is high and vice versa. The ratio of the computed disaggregated and aggregated growth rate is defined as a certain efficiency measure, and this coefficient shows that the Hungarian economy could only absorb the import surplus at a decreasing rate of efficiency. Despite the improvement in the early 1980s the question remains whether the Hungarian economy is able to growth both faster and efficiently at the same time.     

Henry George Under the Microscope: Comments on "Henry George's Political Critics"

The annual supplement of the AJES for 2008 titled Henry George: Political Ideologue, Social Philosopher, and Economic Theorist had as its first and longest essay "Henry George's Political Critics" by Professor Michael Hudson. It offered a multitude of criticisms, most of which Prof. Hudson seemed to agree with. All purported to be criticisms of George as a political strategist, though some seem more to originate from Hudson's disagreement with theoretical positions George was bound to take. The purpose of this short paper is to show that Professor Hudson's long article fails to do what it seems intended to do. That is, it fails to show that trade unionists and especially socialists were "natural allies" of the Georgist movement, that it was George's fault that that they were not, and that George "allied" his movement irrevocably to "capital," rejecting its "natural allies."     

The microallocative impact of the Hungarian economic reform of 1968: Some evidence from the export sector

Summary We have investigated the allocative efficiency of the Hungarian export sector in both pre-reform and post-reform years. The results indicate that, although misallocation due to bilateral currency constraints was reduced by the reform, the overall efficiency of the export sector declined significantly. While the failure of the reform in a single, although from the Hungarian viewpoint, critical sector of the economy is not direct evidence of the failure of the entire reform, it does indicate that successful reforms may be more difficult to achieve than either western or socialist economists have anticipated.     

Trade Boards and minimum wages, 1909-39

Trade Boards were first established in 1909 principally to protect workers in the sweated trades'but were vastly extended under new criteria in 1918. Although the interwar Trade Boards set wage minima which were'tough'by modern standards there has been little analysis of their effects on employment. But in one sector, agriculture, there is clear evidence that minimum wage setting cost jobs. If similar effects occurred in other sectors covered by minimum wages then this could have added significantly to the burden of unemployment during the interwar years.     

广义分配模型及其解法

文章从分配模型的经济意义出发,提出了分配问题的三类数学模型,阐述并且拓展了匈牙利法的解法步骤.