True Irish -- and all of us (LVTFan's Blog)

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Pages I refer to often

Income Distribution in the US
How is our income distributed? Well, it is pretty concentrated. How concentrated? Take a look.
Progress and Poverty, by Henry George
Here are links to online editions of George's landmark book, Progress & Poverty, including audio and a number of abridgments -- the shortest is 30 words! I commend this book to your attention, if you are concerned about economic justice, poverty, sprawl, energy use, pollution, wages, housing affordability. Its observations will change how you approach all these problems. A mind-opening experience!
Wealth Concentration Tables from 2004 SCF: Bottom 90%, Next 9% and Top 1%
Aggregated data by net worth quantile, for various kinds of wealth. With calculations you won't find anywhere else!
Wealth Concentration Tables from 2004 SCF: 50-40-5-4-1
These tables show how concentrated the ownership of various kinds of assets are. With calculations you won't find anywhere else! This version is less aggregated: Bottom 50%, Next 40%, Next 5%, Next 4% and Top 1%.

Books I Value

Henry George: Progress and Poverty: An inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with increase of wealth ... The Remedy
This is perhaps the most important book ever written on the subjects of poverty, political economy, how we might live together in a society dedicated to the ideals Americans claim to believe are self-evident. It will provide you new lenses through which to view many of our most serious problems and how we might go about solving them: poverty, sprawl, long commutes, despoilation of the environment, housing affordability, wealth concentration, income concentration, concentration of power, low wages, etc. Read it online, or in hardcopy.
Bob Drake's abridgement of Henry George's original: Progress and Poverty: Why There Are Recessions and Poverty Amid Plenty -- And What To Do About It!
This is a very readable thought-by-thought updating of Henry George's longer book, written in the language of a newsweekly. A fine way to get to know Henry George's ideas. Available online at progressandpoverty.org and http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm

Where Else Might You Look?

Wealth and Want
The URL comes from the subtitle to Progress & Poverty -- and the goal is widely shared prosperity in the 21st century. How do we get there from here? A roadmap and a reference source.
Reforming the Property Tax for the Common Good
I'm a tax reform activist who seeks to promote fairness and reduce poverty. Let's start with the enabling legislation and state requirements for the property tax. There are opportunities for great good!
A blog about Stamford, Connecticut, and its opportunities for progress and prosperity for all
Bringing it home to one medium-sized city's day to day issues and opportunities
LVTFan's blog: Connecting the dots between our most serious problems and what I've come to believe is the solution we need to embrace.
I'm a tax reform activist who seeks to promote fairness and reduce poverty in America. Land Value Taxation seems to me to be our very best hope for these goals, and for reducing urban sprawl and its concomitants.

Sites I enjoy

CityEconomist: City Economic and Financial News and Analysis
Dr. Gavin R. Putland
Land Rent will save the world
Land Value Tax | Jock's Place
Mark Wadsworth's blog
Mason Gaffney's website
Progress and Poverty: why there are recessions and poverty amid plenty -- and what to do about it! by Henry George
This is Bob Drake's excellent 2006 abridgment of Henry George's landmark book, Progress and Poverty. Its language and tone are very accessible. You can read it online or order hardcopy. And Bob's reading of it is available at http://www.hgchicago.org/audio
Saving Communities
Taxpayer: a more or less Henry George view of things
The Distributist Review

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« Closet Georgists and Georgites: Bill Buckley, and others | Main | Affordable housing -- for all of us. What policies promote it? »

March 14, 2008

True Irish -- and all of us

Link: True Irish - Timothy Egan - Op-Extra Columnist - Opinion - New York Times Blog.

A few lifts:

And more than once you will hear this Irish saying: “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at who he gives it to.”

and

“The thing about the Irish,” he said, “is that we have always been there for the little guy. We go through life as underdogs. We die as underdogs. There is no other way for the Irish.”

It isn't right to blame God for unjust manmade systems. And if we think it important to create a society with no victims -- and conversely, symmetrically, with no windfalls, no free lunches -- we need to understand the structural reasons for the poverty we see around us. God didn't create poverty. We do. Day in and day out. God didn't create slavery either; men did, and men ended it in this country, in its most obvious form, anyway.

Here's the comment I posted on the NYT blog:

I commend to your attention Henry George's book "The Irish Land Question," published in 1881. For all who would like to understand the underlying dynamics that sent so many Americans' ancestors from Ireland to the US, this short book, available online under its later title -- The Land Question -- can provide a clear understanding. [The retitling was in recognition of the universality -- and timelessness -- of what was most visible in Ireland.]

It is very much worth a read in 2008, and not just for those of Irish ancestry or with an interest in history!

And here are the chapter headings:

Ch. 1: Unpalatable Truth
Ch. 2: Distress and Famine
Ch. 3: A Universal Question
Ch. 4: Proposed Remedies
Ch. 5: Whose Land is it?
Ch. 6: Landlords' Right is Labor's Wrong
Ch. 7: The Great-Great-Grandson of Captain Kidd
Ch. 8: The Only Way, the Easy Way
Ch. 9: Principle the Best Policy
Ch. 10: Appeals to Animosity
Ch. 11: How to Win
Ch. 12: In the United States
Ch. 13: A little Island or a little World
Ch. 14: The Civilization that is Possible
Ch. 15: The Civilization that is
Ch. 16: True Conservatism
Ch. 17: In Hoc Signo Vinces

The book is available at http://www.wealthandwant.com/HG/irish_land_question.html. When I previewed it for printing, it was just 27 pages.

Posted on March 14, 2008 at 02:26 PM in economic justice, economic rent, ending poverty, FIRE sector, Henry George, housing affordability, land speculation, land value taxation, landed gentry, landlordism, opportunity, poverty, privilege, prosperity, wages, wealth distribution or concentration | Permalink

Tags: Henry George, landlordism, poverty, poverty's causes, the land question

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Land Value Taxation will solve many of the 21st century's most serious social, economic and environmental problems, and promote justice, fairness and sustainability. We CAN have a world in which all can prosper.

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