Link: Jay Nordlinger on Impromptus on National Review Online.
Since Bill Buckley died a few weeks ago, I've read numerous tributes, and a few have mentioned Buckley's abiding interest in the ideas of Henry George. The newest reference comes from the opening paragraphs of a National Review article today:
Friends, a week ago I put some notes on WFB in Impromptus. (That column is here.) Want a few more notes? Just a few more?
You know that he loved peanut butter. Ate it every morning of his life. Took it everywhere he went (because sometimes you couldn’t get it). But did you also know he had a thing for coffee ice cream? Yes — a real jones for it. I introduced him to Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Heath Bar Crunch — one of the best things on the planet.
(Yes, I know that they are communists or whatever. Just eat the ice cream.)
Note 2: Years ago, I had a spot of trouble finding housing in Manhattan. And he said to me, “Do you know I’m a closet George-ite?” He meant the 19th-century American economist and social thinker Henry George (author of Progress and Poverty).
How I wish that Bill Buckley, and others whose education was good enough to include exposure to the ideas of Henry George, had left/would leave their closets. (Perhaps the reason has something to do with something related to pluralistic ignorance; perhaps it is something more nefarious.)
Bill Buckley did mention Henry George repeatedly in his writings and on the air, but in passing, as if to run it up the flag pole, rather than as a confident advocate of an idea that might not be popular with his constituency.
I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes:
He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it. This is not radicalism in the bad sense which so many attach to the word. This is conservatism in the true sense.
It comes from Henry George, naturally, in his very readable short book The Land Question (originally published as "The Irish Land Question," but later retitled in recognition of its central truth, that what was easily seen in Ireland was equally true everywhere).
That quote comes to mind, too, when I consider that Milton Friedman, regarded as a lion among economists in some circles, could see the logic of George's remedy -- in 1978 and again in a newspaper interview a month or so before he died, he described the tax on land value as the "least bad" tax.
"Yes, there are taxes I like. For example, the gasoline tax, which pays for highways. You have a user tax. The property tax is one of the least bad taxes, because it's levied on something that cannot be produced — that part that is levied on the land. So some taxes are worse than others, but all taxes are bad." — interview, an Jose Mercury News, Nov 5, 2006
If we must tax -- and we must, in order to provide efficiently the services that are best provided by the public sector -- shouldn't we use the "least bad" tax? Wouldn't the encouragement of that have been a worthy endeavor for someone of Friedman's stature, or of Buckley's? Shouldn't we not only use it, but rely heavily on it, to the exclusion, if at all possible, of other taxes?
Now this would not be a popular notion in some sectors -- and many of them would probably call themselves "conservative."
But it seems to me that conserving for the commons that which we all create together -- that is, preventing the privatization of land rent and other like things -- while promoting the privatization of wages and the abolition of sales taxes would be quintessentially conservative ideas.
Since this began with a private reminiscence of Bill Buckley, let me provide some citations for some of Buckley's public comments about Henry George's ideas:
1. May 29, 1985 Firing Line conversation with Roger Starr and Mark Green includes this among a number of other references to the logic of HG's ideas:
MR. BUCKLEY: I think this city has been occasionally guilty of everything, Just to begin with. In the second place, the locational problem is, of course, easily solved by any Georgist, and I am one. It would simply go to the highest bidder. I, 40 years ago, came out in favor of auctioning radio and television channels rather than simply lending yourself into a situation in which favoritism has to play a part. If you and I both contend for the right to build in a particular corner, the market solution is whoever pays for it most ought to prevail. But by the same token, we have to recognize that there are political entities with which we have to deal. I know an otherwise utterly honorable person who bribed a labor union here. Otherwise he simply would nor have been able to get his building up in time to—
MR. GREEN: But your answer is off the point. The radio and television spectrum is scarce. You can’t have too many. So I agree with you that we should put them up for auction——
MR. BUCKLEY: So are locational advantages in New York City. ...
2. Firing Line, October 2, 1986: the guest was Manuel Ayau, and Howard Hunt was the examiner.
MR. BUCKLEY: Suppose Ferdinand and Isabella liked some bastard son and gave him three quarters of Guatemala, is it your position that his great-great-great-great-whatever grandchild should continue to own three quarters of Guatemala?
MR. AYAU: Well, if he has legal title to it, yes. He will lose it. Remember, everybody has got to bid for his own property every day if there is really a market economy. So if they have been able to keep it that long because they have done something about it—
MR. BUCKLEY: Only under the principles of Henry George. There isn’t much upkeep in owning three quarters of Guatemala, is there? You just own it.
MR. AYAU: No, that’s a consequence of the redistributionist tax system. If we had a land tax, I am sure people would not be able to hold it without—
MR. BUCKLEY: So you are in favor of a land tax.
MR. AYAU: Absolutely.
MR. BUCKLEY: Aha!
MR. AYAU: I am in favor of a land tax. Not a property tax, a land tax.MR. BUCKLEY: Is the Henry George land tax idea one that is taught in your university and are there a lot of disciples of it?
MR. AYAU: Well, we don’t teach it as a particular theory, but it’s mentioned. I used to make— In my examinations I would draw a profile of a city, one low and one high. I would ask the students, ‘Which one has the land tax and which one has the property tax?’ to make them think of the consequences of the land tax. Now, I don’t agree with what I think Henry George said that this would be the only tax. I also believe in other taxes.MR. BUCKLEY: Well, he thought that no other taxes would be necessary if you took 100 percent of the rental value of land, but that, of course, depends upon how heavy is the public sector obligation.
MR. AYAU: That’s right.
MR. BUCKLEY: Okay, let me ask you this. All right now, in Taiwan it is generally accepted, isn’t it, that land reform worked, but that land reform was effectuated by reimbursing the title holders in government bonds, which were very fastidiously repaid, and then forbidding the land buyer to wn more than I think it was seven hectares or whatever it is — i.e., he could sell it to anybody else he wanted to, but not to somebody who already owned seven hectares. You would not approve of that, and tell us why.
...
MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I understand Dr. Ayau’s point that you can’t simply stare at 100 million acres and say, "There are 100 million people and 100 million acres,so everybody should have one acre," and that’s the way to proceed. That’s making logic-making politics as the crow flies, to quote Michael Oakeshott. There is every reason in the world to suppose that in 10 years one person is going to own 30,000 acres and 30,000 people are going to be better off than if they had their individual acre. So number one, I would reject the abstraction. But number two, it seems to me plain that in a part of the world in which people who want to work their own and have no capital and no prospect for accumulating capital, there is a legitimate role for some unit to try to make that possible. Now, I very much like Mr. Ayau’s suggestion that a land tax would cause the huge landholders who don’t make profitable use of their land to get rid of it little by little because they simply can’t stand the tax bill. The tax of unused, under-utilized land is, I think, a beneficent idea which Henry George bequeathed on us which is under-utilized. Therefore, I would like to see some instrument by which people who yearn to own their own stretch of land might succeed in acquiring it.
3. Column: Home Dear Home, October, 2005, writing about the human effects of our housing affordability problems:
Henry George, the eminent social philosopher of a century ago, turned the attention of planners and economists, however briefly, to the indefeasible factor of land scarcity. Capital and labor can increase; land cannot.
Accordingly, George was the apostle of the single tax. It aimed most directly at land speculators. His insights would focus now on the limitations on the use of land imposed by zoning. If John Jones wants an acre protecting his house, he is laying claim to something that cannot expand in size. Since land, in George's analysis, is forever limited, it must be thought of and treated as common property. And therefore the rental value of one acre should constitute tax (the single tax) on the person who sequesters it for himself.
4. Usufruct -- see http://www.wealthandwant.com/docs/Buckley_HG.html for more about the word itself)
CALLER: I've heard you describe yourself as a Georgist, a follower of Henry George, but I haven't heard much in having you promote land value taxation and his theories, and I'm wondering why that is the case.
W.F.B.: It's mostly because I'm beaten down by my right-wing theorists and intellectual friends. They always find something wrong with the Single-Tax idea. What I'm talking about Mr. Lamb is Henry George who said there is infinite capacity to increase capital and to increase labor, but none to increase land, and since wealth is a function of how they play against each other, land should be thought of as common property. The effect of this would be that if you have a parking lot and the Empire State Building next to it, the tax on the parking lot should be the same as the tax on the Empire State Building, because you shouldn't encourage land speculation.
Anyway I've run into tons of situations where I think the Single-Tax theory would be applicable. We should remember also this about Henry George, he was sort of co-opted by the socialists in the 20s and the 30s, but he was not one at all. Alfred J. Nock's book on him makes that plain. Plus, also, he believes in only that tax. He believes in zero income tax.
...
B.L.: (Quoting the book) "The first time I met William F. Buckley, we were both members of a televised panel discussing word. The moderator introduced me with a pop-quiz to test my credentials asked me to define the word..." Is it USUFRUCT?
W.F.B.: Usufruct, yeah.
B.L. (Quoting the book) "I felt smug as I recite the right to enjoy another's property as long as you don't damage it. Then Mr. Buckley leaned into his microphone and quoted an entire paragraph on usufruct from the political economist, Henry George.
W.F.B.: Oh for heaven's sake!
B.L.: And this little book has..
W.F.B.: The land belongs to those in usufruct .
The law of gravity does not go away just because some people don't necessarily like it. Nor do the dynamics of the privatization of land rent, which favor some of us with lion's-share privileges, and condemn the vast majority of us to something resembling wage slavery.
I'll go back to the quote about genuine conservatism:
He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against . This is not radicalism in the bad sense which so many attach to the word. This is conservatism in the true sense.
And then we must join with others who see the truth and proclaim it. And seek this important change in how America structures itself.
Comments