LVTFan's Blog

Gems from George: Social Progress, and Christian Ethics

SOCIAL progress makes the well-being of all more and more the business of each; it binds all closer and closer together in bonds from which none can escape. He who observes the law and the proprieties, and cares for his family, yet takes no interest in the general weal, and gives no thought to those who are trodden underfoot, save now and then to bestow alms, is not a true Christian. Nor is he a good citizen. — Social Problems — Chapter 1, the Increasing Importance of Social Questions

The Earth-for-All Calendar: Undecimber 1 -- Hildebrand - Pope Gregory the Great

The soil was given to rich and poor in common. Wherefore, O ye rich, do you unjustly claim it for yourselves alone?

—Hildebrand, Pope Gregory the Great.

(See also March 11)

Hmmm.  Googling this, it appears to be from St. Ambrose.  (See December 21 for another):

Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968). The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest.  1915.

The Voice of the Early Church. V.

By St. Ambrose

(Latin; 340?–397)

HOW far, O rich, do you extend your senseless avarice? Do you intend to be the sole inhabitants of the earth? Why do you drive out the fellow sharers of nature, and claim it all for yourselves? The earth was made for all, rich and poor, in common. Why do you rich claim it as your exclusive right? The soil was given to the rich and poor in common—wherefore, oh, ye rich, do you unjustly claim it for yourselves alone? Nature gave all things in common for the use of all; usurpation created private rights. Property hath no rights. The earth is the Lord’s, and we are his offspring. The pagans hold earth as property. They do blaspheme God.

 

The Earth-for-All Calendar: December 30 -- Dove

If, then, successive generations of men cannot have their fractional share of the actual soil (including mines, etc.) how can the division of the advantages of the natural earth be effected? By the division of its annual value or rent; that is, by making the rent of the soil the common property of the nation. That is (as the taxation is the common property of the State), by taking the whole of the taxes out of the rents of the soil, and thereby abolishing all other kinds of taxation whatever. And thus all industry would be absolutely emancipated from every burden.

— PATRICK EDWARD DOVE, Theory of Human Progression (1850), Chap. III., Sec. 3.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: December 24 -- Sue

"Yes, ah yes, there is frightful misery in the world," answered Gabriel tenderly and sadly.  "Yes, many of the poor, cut off from all joy, all hope, are cold and hungry and in want of shelter and raiment, in the midst of the immense riches which the Creator has provided, not for the happiness of a few, but for the happiness of all, for his wish was that they should be equitably divided — but a few have acquired the common inheritance by fraud and violence."

— EUGENE SUE, The Wandering Jew, Part XVI., Chap. 34.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: December 21 -- St. Ambrose and Dr. McGlynn

God has ordered all things to be produced, so that there should be food in common to all, and that the earth should be a common possession to all. Nature therefore has produced a common right for all, but greed has made it a right for a few.

— ST. AMBROSE, On the Duties of the Clergy (A. D. 391), Chap. XXVIII., Sec. 132. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. X., p. 23.

The Creator has made ample provision for all men in the storehouse of nature and in the faculties and powers of man. To do God's will, we must make room at the Father's table for all His children.

— FATHER EDWARD McGLYNN, Lecture on the Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: December 20 -- Blackstone

The ground was in common and no part of it was the permanent property of any man in particular; yet whoever was in occupation of any determined spot of it, for rest, for shade or the like, acquired for the time a sort of ownership, from which it would have been unjust and contrary to the law of nature to have driven him by force; but the instant that he quitted the use or occupation of it another might seize it without injustice.

— SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, Commentaries, Book II., Chap. I, p. 3.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: November 28 -- Morris and Ruskin

He may, and often he does, engross the first necessity of labor, land, and neither use it himself or allow anyone else to use it, and though it is clear that . . . he is injuring the community, the law is sternly on his side.

— WILLIAM MORRIS, Signs of Change, p. 194.

Land should be given to those who can use it.

— JOHN RUSKIN, Fors Clavigera, Part II., Letter ii, p. 96.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: November 25 -- Alfred Marshall

The use of a certain area of the earth's surface is a primary condition of anything that man can do; it gives him room for his own actions, with the enjoyment of the heat and the light, the air and the rain which nature assigns to the area; and it determines his distance from, and in a great measure his relations to, other things and other persons.  We shall find that it is this property of "land" which, though as yet insufficient prominence has been given to it, is the ultimate cause of the distinction which all writers on economics are compelled to make between land and other things.

— PROF. ALFRED MARSHALL, of the University of Cambridge,

Principles of Economics, Vol. I., Book 4, Chap. 2, Sec. I.

 

The Earth-for-All Calendar: October 22 -- Schreiner

The doctrine that land can become the private property of one is a doctrine morally repugnant to the Bantu. The idea which is today beginning to haunt Europe, that, as the one possible salve for our social wounds and diseases, it might be well if the land should become again the property of the nation at large, is no ideal to the Bantu, but a realistic actuality. He finds it difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile his sense of justice with any other form of tenure.

— OLIVE SCHREINER, Stray Thoughts on South Africa, Fortnightly Review, July, 1896, p. 6.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: October 20 -- Howells

The common ownership of mines necessarily followed, with an allotment of lands to anyone who wished to live by tilling the land; but not a foot of the land was remitted to private hands for purposes of selfish pleasure or the exclusion of any other from the landscape.

— W. D. HOWELLS, A Traveler from Altruria, Chap. XI., p. 271.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: October 19 -- Aristotle

Of necessity, therefore, the land ought to be divided into two parts, one of which should belong to the community in general, the other to the individuals separately.

— ARISTOTLE, Politics, Book VII., Chap. 10.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: October 17 -- Plutarch

They determined to choose a trusty person for their leader to deliver those who had failed in their time of payment, to divide the land, and to give an entire new face to the commonwealth.

— PLUTARCH, Life of Solon.

Born Yesterday

Well, not quite.  The film's a little older than I am.

Watched that film last night ... great quote:

Billie: Because when ya steal from the government, you're stealing from yourself, ya dumb ass.

And when we allow others to steal from the commons what rightly belongs to the community, what are we?   Some of that theft we all recognize as theft, and other kinds are perfectly legal, even honored, under our current laws.  I find the latter even more troubling than the former.

And when neither our economists nor our leaders even SEE it, it is fair to call that a corruption of what their businesses are supposed to be.

 

The Earth-for-All Calendar: October 6 -- Pufendorf

All that natural law does is to suggest the establishment of property when the welfare of human society demands it, leaving it to the wisdom of men to determine whether they should allow private property in all things or only in some, and whether they should hold those which they appropriate separately or in common, leaving the rest to the first occupant, so that no one can assume the right to enjoy them alone.

— PUFENDORF, Law of Nature and Nations (1672), Book IV., Chap. 4, Sec. 4.   

The Earth-for-All Calendar: October 5 -- Spencer

Equity, therefore, does not permit property in land.  For if one portion of the earth's surface may justly become the possession of an individual and may be held by him for his sole use and benefit as a thing to which he has an exclusive right, then other portions of the earth's surface may be so held; and eventually the whole of the earth's surface may be so held; and our planet may thus lapse into private hands.

— HERBERT SPENCER, in 1850, Social Statics, Chap. IX.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: October 4 -- Bagehot

In the early ages of society it would have been impossible to maintain the exclusive ownership of a few persons in what seems at first sight an equal gift to all (the land) — a thing to which everyone has the same claim.   

— WALTER BAGEHOT (1826-1877), Economic Studies, Essay I., Part I., p. 31.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: October 3 -- Marmontel

Let us suppose that a people is excluded from the ownership of the land.  I say that this exclusion, even if followed by no other injustice (which I think impossible), by making a man a stranger to the commonwealth, makes him indifferent to the existence of the State.

— MARMONTEL, Address in Favor of the Peasants of the North (1757), Oeuvres, Vol X., p. 72.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: October 2 -- Jefferies

That any human being should dare to apply to another the epithet "pauper" is, to me, the greatest, the vilest, the most unpardonable crime that could be committed.  Each human being by mere birth has a birthright in this earth and all its productions; and if they do not receive it, then it is they who are injured, and it is not the "pauper," oh, inexpressibly wicked word! — it is the well-to-do who are the criminal classes.

— RICHARD JEFFERIES, The Story of My Heart, Chap. X., p. 122.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 30 -- Exodus and the Bishop of Meath

The land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

— Exodus, XX., 12.

Any settlement of the land of a country that would exclude the humblest man in that country from his share of the common inheritance would be not only an injustice and a wrong to that man, but moreover would be an impious resistance to the benevolent intentions of the Creator. 

— BISHOP OF MEATH, Letter to Clergy and Laity, April 2, 1881.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 29 -- Froude

Land is not, and cannot be, property in the sense in which movable things are property.  Every human being born into this planet must live upon the land if he lives at all.  He did not ask to be born, and, being born, room must be found for him. The land in any country is really the property of the nation which occupies it.

— J. A. FROUDE, Ireland, Nineteenth Century, September, 1880, p. 362.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 13 -- Winstanley

That which is yet wanting on your part to be done is this, to see that the oppressor's power be cast out with his person; and to see that the free possession of the land and liberties be put into the hands of the oppressed commoners of England.

— JERRARD WINSTANLEY,  Epistle Dedicatory to Oliver Cromwell, in

The Law of Freedom in a Platform, or True Magistracy Restored.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 12 -- Grant Allen

"But how is it that you allow these chiefs — landlords, don't you call them? — to taboo the soil, and prevent you all from even walking on it? Don't you see that if you choose to combine in a body, and insist upon the recognition of your natural rights — if you determined to make the landlords give up their taboo, and cease from injustice, they'd have to yield to you? And then you could exercise your natural right of going where you pleased, and cultivate the land in common for the public benefit, instead of leaving it as now, to be cultivated anyhow, or turned into waste, for the benefit of the tabooers?"

— GRANT ALLEN, The British Barbarians (Words spoken by Bertram).

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 6 -- A. R. Wallace

A great landholder may legally convert his whole property into a forest or hunting ground, and expel every human being who has lived upon it.  In a thickly populated country like England, where almost every acre has its owner and occupier, this is a power of legally destroying his fellow-creatures; and that such a power should exist, and be exercised by individuals, in however small a degree, indicates that as regards true social science, we are still in a state of barbarism.

— ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE,The Malay Archipelago, Chap. 40.  Final Note to the book. (1869)

One's "Fair Share"

The post below this one, "Mitt Romney's 'Fair Share' " refers to his fair share of the costs of providing public goods.

But perhaps an equally important question is the nature of one's fair share of the output of our economy and the output of the earth.  Some of the former output is the result of individual efforts, and one ought to be able to keep that portion. But at the same time we must recognize how much comes from the division of labor, from drawing down on the non-infinite supply of non-renewable natural resources on which all of us today must depend and on which future generations of human beings must rely. Those who draw down more than their legitimate share owe something to the rest of the community.  Our wealthiest tend, we suspect, to use many, many times their legitimate share, and the median American likely draws far more than their share, when one considers the planet as a whole.   

Perhaps "legitimate" is not the right word here.  It refers to what is permissible under current law.  (The word gets misused a lot -- see the discussion on "legitimate rape," which seemed to be about the circumstances under which a woman has a right to make a specific very personal, decision, and when it is considered by some to not be left to her and is the province of government, legislators or others.)

What is one's "fair share" of natural resources?  America is using a hugely disproportionate share of the world's resources.  Are we entitled to it because we're somehow "exceptional"?  Because "our" God is somehow better than other nation's Gods?   Or do we genuinely believe that all people are created equal, and intend to live our lives accordingly?

Our output of greenhouse gases exceeds our share of the world's population.  This is not without consequences for the world, and for peace on earth.

We ought to be re-examining our incentives so that they move us in the direction we ought to be going, which is, to my mind, using less.  We can build transportation infrastructure which will permit many more of us to move around with less impact on the environment.  We can fund that through collecting the increases in land value that infrastructure creates.  We can correct the incentives which cause us to use today's inferior technologies to extract natural resources from the earth in ways which damage the environment, as if ours was the final generation, or the only one worth serious consideration.

Better incentives could reduce, eliminate, even reverse urban sprawl.  I refer specifically to land value taxation as a replacement for the existing property tax, particularly in places where assessments are for one reason or another not consistent with current property values -- e.g., California and Florida, parts of Delaware and Pennsylvania which currently use assessments from the 1970s, and many other places where assessments are simply out of whack with current reality!)  We should be replacing sales taxes, wage taxes, building taxes with taxes on land value and on natural resources.  Most of that value is flowing generously into private or corporate pockets, to our detriment.  It concentrates wealth, income, and, of course, political power. 

Collecting the rent, instead of leaving the lion's share of it to be pocketed by the rent-seekers, would go a long way to making our society and our economy healthier.  Eliminating the privilege of privatizing that which in a wisely designed society would be our common treasure would make our society a better place in which to live, a place in which all could thrive and prosper without victimizing their fellow human beings. 

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 2 -- Gerrit Smith and Thomas Paine

The vacant land belongs to the landless.  The simple fact that the one is vacant and the other landless is of itself the highest proof that they should be allowed to come together.  Alas, what a crime against nature that they should be kept apart.

— GERRIT SMITH, Smith's Speeches in the U. S. Congress, p. 247 (1854). 

The earth in its natural uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race.

—THOMAS PAINE, Agrarian Justice (1797),  Paine's Writings, Vol. III,, p. 329.

Devyr: Thoughts addressed to every true and brave man (1882)

Thoughts addressed to every true and brave man:

The Creator either made the land
Or He did not.

He made it for the dukes and lords,
Or He did not.

He made it for the people,
Or He did not.

To pay Rent to earth-lords, is it a DENIAL OF THE
CREATOR?
Or is it not?

Is it hard to know His will?
Or is it not?

If you know His will
And do it not,

Are ye brave and true men,
Or are ye not?

Thomas Ainge Devyr

The Earth-for-All Calendar -- August 21 -- Carlyle and Paine

Properly speaking, the land belongs to these two — to the Almighty God and to all the children of men that have ever worked well on it, or that shall ever work well on it.

— THOMAS CARLYLE, Past and Present, Book III., Chap. 8.

Every man, as an inhabitant of the earth, is a joint proprietor of it in its natural State.

— THOMAS PAINE, Agrarian Justice, Paine's Writings, Vol. III., pp. 330-1.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: August 15 -- Rousseau

It was in vain anyone repeated, "I built this well; I gained this spot by my industry." Who gave you the boundaries? it might be objected, and what right have you to demand payment of us for doing what we did not require of you? Are you ignorant that numbers of your fellow-creatures are starving for want of what you possess in superfluity?

— J. J. ROUSSEAU, Essay on the Origin of Inequality Among Men, Part II., p. 20.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: August 13 -- Emerson

Then he says: "If I am born into the earth, where is my part? Have the goodness, gentlemen of this world, to show me my wood lot, where I may fell my wood, my field where to plant my corn, my pleasant ground where to build my cabin."

"Touch any wood or field or house-lot on your peril," cry all the gentlemen of this world; "but you may come and work in ours for us, and we will give you a piece of bread."

— EMERSON, The Conservative.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: July 15 -- Coleridge

It seems an elementary proposition that a free people can deal as it thinks fit with its common stock, and can prescribe to its citizens rules for its enjoyment, alienation and transmission.

— LORD CHIEF JUSTICE COLERIDGE, The Laws of Property, Address before the Glasgow Juridical Society, Macmillan's Magazine, April, 1888, p. 406.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: July 7 -- John Stuart Mill

The social problem of the future we consider to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labor.

— JOHN STUART MILL, Autobiography, Chap. VII., p. 232.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: July 3 - Simon Newcomb

The doctrine that the soil is of natural right the common property of the human race, and that each individual should be allowed to enjoy his share, is now tacitly admitted by many eminent economists in England and France.

— PROF. SIMON NEWCOMB, The Labor Question, North American Review, July, 1870, p. 151.

NYT 99 years ago ... a "Lower Rents" bill in Albany

1913-05-11 Demand Reduction of Building Taxes

Thousands Sign Petition at a Mass Meeting Held in Union Square

Pastor Flays Legislature

Dr. John Haynes Holmes Says Bosses Have No Right to Stop the Expression of the People's Will

Petitions asking for a referendum vote upon the question of reducing gradually the tax rate upon buildings in New York to one-half the tax rate upon land, through five consecutive reductions in as many years, were signed yesterday by several thousand persons at a mass-meeting held in Union Square under the auspices of the New York Congestion Committee. The meeting was announced as a public protest for lower rents.

Benjamin Clark Marsh, Executive Secretary of the Committee on Congestion of Population in New York, was Chairman.  Dr. John Haynes Holmes of the Church of the Messiah said that the Legislature "in the wisdom of the Big Sachem at Fourteenth Street has decreed that the people are not fit to register their judgment as to this bill.  I, for one, desire to protest against the boss or set of bosses who presume to forbid the people to express their will on any question."

Frederick Leubuscher, representing the New York State League of Savings and Loan Association, said:

"It was admitted by some of the land speculators at the hearing of the Lower Rents bill at Albany that they were unable to answer our arguments.  Nevertheless, a Democratic majority stifled the bill.  As a savings and loan association man, I am interested particularly in the enactment of this proposed law.  The stimulation of the erection of buildings and the making of improvements generally will be more market in the suburbs, where modest homes, costing from $2,000 to $5,000 to erect, are most in demand."

The purpose of the law was explained in a letter from Assemblyman Michael Schaap, who introduced the Salant-Schaap bill in the lower House of the State Legislature.

"If the tax rate on buildings had been half that on land this year," he wrote, "the rents of the average tenant would have been at least one month's rent less than it was; owners of small houses would have paid $15 to $25 less taxes than they do, and there would be fewer than 9,000 evictions for non-payment of rent.

"The taxes on all adequately improved property would have been reduced and the city would have recovered almost $20,000,000 more of ground rent which now goes to a few people of New York and to absentee landlords.  This ground rent at 6% is over $273,000,000.  The people of the city have created and maintain these values, but they get less than $84,000,000 of it -- the land owners get the other $189,000,000.  Rent and taxes on homes and other buildings would have been reduced by at least $20,000,000."

The Rev. Alexander Irvine said that one family out of every 150 in New York City was evicted for non-payment of rent, because of the unjust taxation of improved property as contrasted with vacant land.  Only 3% of the residents of the city own land, the speaker asserted.

John J. Hopper, Chairman of the New York State Independence League, said:

"A tax upon anything tends to lessen the supply of that commodity.  By the same principle a tax upon buildings tends to lessen their number.  A bill tending to reduce the tax upon buildings will bring about the construction of more buildings, and as a result there will be more competition and a corresponding reduction in rents.

"The Legislature refused to let us decide this question for ourselves, asserting that we did not know enough to vote on the subject of taxation.  When we realize that for the expenses of the National Government each one of us pays $7.50 a year; for the state expenses, $5.50 and for the city expenses $38.50, making a total of $51.50 per individual, or $255 for a family of five, then we understand that we must think upon this subject of taxation.

Frederick C. Howe, Director of the People's Institute, said:

"Think of the stupidity of New York citizens.  We talk about bankruptcy and lack of city credit and yet we give away each year at least $100,000,000 in the speculative increase of land values which the growth of the community creates.  That is, the increase show by the tax valuation of the city.  New York could pay a large part of its present budget out of the land speculation profits alone, if it taxed land and exempted buildings."

C. N. Sheehan of the Twenty-eighth Assembly District Board of Trade, Brooklyn, and J. P. Coughlin of the Central Labor Union of Brooklyn also spoke.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: June 22 -- Pufendorf

In principle I do not see why the sea should be dispensed from serving our need and comfort, any more than the land. However . . . men were left free to make private property of the sea as well as of the land, or to leave it in its primitive state, common to all, so that it should not belong to one more than to another.

— PUFENDORF, Law of Nature and Nations (1672), Book IV., Chap. 5, Sec. 5.

Resource Rentals for Revenue -- The 3 R's of fixing our economy

I came across an excellent site at http://www.resourcerentalsrevenue.org, and thought their FAQ page particularly worth sharing.   The links will take you to answers.

We don't HAVE to burden ourselves and our economy with taxes which throw a wet blanket on jobs, on production, on homes.  There is a better way to finance our common spending!

Resource Rentals for Revenue.

The following list comprises the most commonly asked questions about the concept of making land and resource rentals the source of revenue for government. As you continue this study, you will see the value from giving resources the respect they deserve and the benefits resulting from the freeing of labour, production and exchange from taxation. If you have any questions which are not covered here, or observations you would like to put to our panel, please feel free to do so by sending your question as an e-mail query and we will attempt to respond.

The inclusion of land and resources in the economic equation is central to any solution for revenue raising. A taxation solution which does not consider the nature of taxation itself and allows the continuing private monopolisation of community land and resources fails to recognise the essential role land plays in the economic equation and will not work. Land is the only element in the economic equation which is both fixed and finite. It can be monopolised. It is a unique class of asset which must be treated accordingly. If we were to wrest not the land itself, but its unimproved value from private monopolies and return the value to the community — whose very presence creates it — then we would have reduced many problems in one stroke with great benefit to production, to the environment and to the cause of individual freedom and justice.

On the subject of land and resource rents, Henry George said this:

The tax upon land values is the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive. It is the taking by the community, for the use of the community, of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by nature be attained.

1.Understandings

• What’s with all the terminology?
• Won’t the site rent be passed on to the tenant?
• It sounds too simple
• What is the difference between Land Value and Land Price?
• What is meant by ‘unimproved’ value?
• Why is income from land ‘unearned’ income?
• There is no such thing as a free lunch.
• There is no unimproved land value!
• This tax, like a debits tax, ignores two of the basic principles of raising tax
• It’s incorrect to suggest that income derived from holding land or resources out of use is not a productive activity. It is, since it produces income for the owner.

2.Interest Groups

• Will I be better off with Resource Rentals?
• Are resource rentals fair?
• Wouldn’t the wealthy simply find some way of evading it?
• Wouldn’t the wealthy sell up and flee with their wealth?
• Won’t the poor get caught, while the rich escape as usual?
• Would farmers be able to afford the tax?
• How will it affect multinationals (MNC’s)?
• How will it affect lenders and borrowers?
• Entrepreneurs and Manufacturers?
• Exporters and Importers?
• Environmentalists?
• Won’t it fall harder on the prince in his mansion than on the pauper in his hovel?
• How would old age pensioners on valuable sites be able to pay the site rent as suggested?
• What happens to the self-funded or partly self-funded retiree?
• Unemployed adults - currently untaxed but perhaps owning their own home? Will they have to pay as well?
• The investor in a site has taken a risk, and tied up their capital – who else could possibly be entitled to their capital gain?

3.Implementation

• How would such a system be implemented?
• What would happen to Land Prices?
• If resource rentals are such a good idea, why don’t we have them?
• Why would anyone want to own land under this system?
• How do I buy a property?
• If site values fall, won’t revenue fall too?
• How will it curb unemployment?
• Wouldn’t we run out of space?
• Who wins; who loses?
• Will pensioners and retirees - currently untaxed but living in their own property, be liable for site rents? Will they be reimbursed for past taxes paid?
• New enterprises - yet to realise any profit but paying tax on the property from which they operate? If you tax them, won’t they fail?
• Why don’t we impose reciprocal import duties?
• What about anti-pollution tax rebates?
• What about a Debits Tax?
• Site Rent for Revenue is a crackpot idea.
• Why put the entire burden of taxation on one area of economic activity?

Good questions -- and good answers!

The Earth-for-All Calendar: June 11 - Old English Rhyme

It is a sin for man or woman
To steal a goose from off the common;
But who shall plead that man's excuse
Who steals the common from the goose?

— Old English Rhyme, quoted in Gowing's Life of Cobden, p. 120, note.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: June 9 -- John Stuart Mill

The essential principle of property being to assure to all persons what they have produced by their labor and accumulated by their abstinence, this principle cannot apply to what is not the product of labor, the raw material of the earth.

— JOHN STUART MILL, Political Economy, Book II., Chap. 2, Sec. 5.

When the "sacredness of property" is talked of, it should always be remembered that any such sacredness does not belong in the same degree to landed property.

— JOHN STUART MILL, Political Economy, Book II., Chap. 2, Sec. 6.

No one generation of people has ...

I came across this in my files, and thought it worth sharing.  It fills a regular sheet of paper.

No one generation of people

has a greater right to the

use of the planet

than succeeding

generations.

God didn't make a plan like

that.

 

Inquire within or call 727-784-3543

The Earth-for-All Calendar: May 11 -- Gibbon

But the colony multiplies, while the space still continues the same, the common rights, the equal inheritance of mankind, are engrossed by the bold and crafty; each field and forest is circumscribed by the landmarks of a jealous master. . . . In the progress from primitive equity to final injustice the steps are silent, the shades are almost imperceptible, and the absolute monopoly is guarded by positive laws and artificial reason.

— EDWARD GIBBON, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

Chap. XLIV., Sec. 2.

 

The Earth-for-All Calendar: April 29 -- Newman

Here is the fundamental error, the crude and monstrous assumption, that the land which God has given to our nation, is or can be the private property of anyone. It is a usurpation exactly similar to that of slavery.

— PROF. F. W. NEWMAN, Lectures on Political Economy (1851), Lecture VI., p. 533.

 

The Earth-for-All Calendar: April 27 -- Pufendorf

The truth is that God gave all things in common to men for their use.

— PUFENDORF, Law of Nature and Nations (1672) Book IV., Chap. 4, Sec. 9.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: April 24 -- Mill and Paine

No man made the land; it is the original inheritance of the whole species.

— JOHN STUART MILL, Political Economy, Book II., Chap. 2, Sec. 6.

Man did not make the earth, and though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator of the earth open a land office, from whence title deeds should issue.

— THOMAS PAINE, Agrarian Justice (1795-6), Paine's Writings, Vol. III., p. 330.

 

The Earth-for-All Calendar: April 23 -- Simon Newcomb

It is well known that these materials and agencies, as fast as they become available, are in the main appropriated by individuals, through the agency or consent of the government, and are then held as private property. Such is the case with the soil and the minerals beneath it. The owners of this property charge as much for the use of it as if it were their own creation, and not that of nature.

— PROF. SIMON NEWCOMB, The Labor Question, North American Review, July, 1870, p. 151.

a link and a longer except follow ...

 

The Earth-for-All Calendar: April 13 -- Jefferson

Wherever there is in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on.

— THOMAS JEFFERSON (1785), Ford's Writings of Jefferson, Vol. VII., 36.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: April 10 -- Goldsmith

Where, then, ah, where shall poverty reside 
To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride?
If to some common's fenceless limits strayed,
He drives his flocks to pick the scanty blade,
Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide
And e'en the bare-worn common is denied.

— OLIVER GOLDSMITH, The Deserted Village.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: April 1: Queen Elizabeth's Prayerbook

Thou, O Lord, providest enough for all men with Thy most liberal and bountiful hand, but whereas Thy gifts are, in respect of Thy goodness and free favour, made common to all men, we (through our naughtiness, niggardship and distrust), do make them private and peculiar. Correct Thou the thing which our inequity hath put out of order, and let Thy goodness supply that which our niggardliness hath plucked away.

— A Prayer for Them That Be in Poverty, from Queen Elizabeth's Private Prayer Book (1578).

The Earth-for-All Calendar: March 30 -- Emperor Joseph II

Land, which nature has destined to man's sustenance, is the only source from which everything comes, and to which everything flows back, and the existence of which constantly remains in spite of all changes. From this unmistakable truth it results that land alone can furnish the wants of the state, and that in natural fairness no distinctions can be made in this.

— EMPEROR JOSEPH II., in Oestreichische Geschichte fur das Volk, Vol. XIV. (Vienna, 1867).

The Earth-for-All Calendar: March 27 -- Paine and Penn

Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated land owes to the community a ground rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds.

— THOMAS PAINE, Agrarian Justice, Paine's Writings, Vol. III., p. 329 (1795-6).

If all men were so far tenants to the public that the superfluities of gain and expense were applied to the exigencies thereof, it would put an end to taxes, leave never a beggar and make the greatest bank for national trade in Europe.

— WILLIAM PENN, Reflections and Maxims, Sec. 222, Works V., pp. 190-1.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: March 26 - Spinoza

Let the fields and all the soil, and, if possible, even the houses, belong to the state, that is, to him which is the depositary of the right of the state, so that he may let them out for an annual rent to the inhabitants of the cities and the cultivators. This will exempt all citizens from extraordinary taxes in time of peace.

— SPINOZA, Tractatus Politicus, Chap. VI., On Monarchy, Sec. 12.

The Unearned Increment -- Unearned By Whom?? Earned by Whom?

another excerpt from Dawson (1910 -- see an earlier post, below) -

IT is necessary now to consider more fully than hitherto the question, cannot society with right claim the increased value given to land by distinctly social causes? We have seen the various factors which tend to create what is generally known as "unearned increment." In one sense this term is very inaccurate. The increment is by no means unearned; what is meant, when the phrase is used, is that the landowner has not earned it. Society, however, has; and earned it honestly by heavy toil, by exertion of body and brain, by plodding industry, by bold enterprise, by culture and enlightenment, by progress in numbers, in wealth, and in morality. There is not a yard of land in the country — be it used for the growing of corn, the pasturing of cattle, or the habitations of men — whose value has not been enhanced by these social causes. It was the settlement of men with their various activities upon the land which originally gave it value, and the increase of population has been a constant and potent factor in value-growth since the primitive communities first established the institution of private property in the common soil. And yet, while society has for centuries been growing and labouring to increase the value of the land it required for its food, its industries, and its habitations, it has ever done so to its own detriment. While enriching the landlords it has impoverished itself.

This, indeed, is the greatest anomaly presented by the social increment problem. As a community develops and prospers, owing to its energy, enterprise, and enlightenment, it is all the time preparing a rod, armed with which the landlords will sooner or later turn upon it. A town's residents are punished for their industry and merited success by having to pay the landlords more and more money for the land they use. Did not tradesmen, by dint of perseverance and pluck, succeed and thrive, the demands made upon them would not increase; but simply because they reap in prosperity the reward of exertion, the landlords require growing tribute in the form of higher rents. And so it is in all departments of social life. In the eyes of the owners of the soil, human communities become, in fact, simply value-creators, rent-producers. The landlords reap where they have not sown, they gather where they have not strawed. Little of the value of that land which they lend and sell, at prices which are often so fabulous, has been created by them, yet they appropriate it all.