I stumbled across some recent posts from Keith Gardner, at libertyrevival.wordpress.com, which I thought worth sharing. I think he raises some interesting questions!
The Henry George Conspiracy
January 13, 2010 by Keith Gardner
Everyone knows about the most popular board game Monopoly. What many people don’t know is that this board game was originally called The Landlord’s Game and created by Lizzie Magie in 1904, specifically as an educational tool to teach the principles of Henry George.
If Henry George was such an influential economist to inspire the most popular board game, you begin to wonder why his name isn’t even mentioned in high school books covering American history, economics, or ethics. He isn’t even taught in college courses.
Henry George pointed out the flaws of both capitalism and socialism. His concepts bridged the gap between capitalism and socialism in a definitive and justified manner. However, the global banking cartel, european monarchs, and other aristocrats couldn’t take over our nation if the people had a solid understanding of economics. They couldn’t push forward the flawed systems of socialism, keynesian economics, and austrian economics if there was a theory which debunked all of them.
They couldn’t engineer problems and present solutions with Henry George in the pool of public knowledge. They hid the concepts as a children’s game, preventing people from relating common sense to real economic theory. The American people could only relate to whatever the false left, false right, and false libertarian foundations pushed forward.
They instituted the Austrian School of Economics and the Ludwig von Mises Institute in conservative and libertarian foundations, taught at places like Auburn University. They instituted Keynesian Economics and the Chicago School of Economics for more mainstream or moderate economics. They instituted socialism and communism in your left and liberal institutions.
All political paradigms were under their misdirection of flawed economic policies so they could run their problem-reaction-solution scams with the people, who were unable to articulate a real solution.
They made sure Henry George, the most important American economist, was deleted from the American memory. He is the unknown ghost behind the most popular board game and behind our state and local government tax systems. His remains consist of a one room office barely manned with a part-time volunteer in Pennsylvania.
It is the conspiracy never talked about even though so blatant. It is difficult for the people to give up their flawed team and support the team with no fans. It is only a matter of time until the global banking empire can achieve their dream of once again owning all the land and having a complete monopoly over the people, unless the people learn about Henry George.
The Native Americans still scratch their head, “How can man own the land and the rivers?” Thomas Paine progressives still search for common sense and agrarian justice. Albert Jay Nock, a ghost among Libertarians, still tries to revive the ghost of Henry George.
The Keynesians still search for ways to moderate the boom and bust cycles. The socialists still search for a way to justify social justice. The Libertarians still search for a way to apologize for the short-comings of capitalism.
If they only knew the European monarchs were hard at work using large tribal organizations called governments and voodoo economics like ancient witch doctors to scam their people into enslavement. If they only knew the answer was staring them in face when they played Monopoly.
Well, I know quite a few fans of Henry George's ideas, and hope that a year or two from now there will be many more, as people search for answers to the sad state our economy has fallen into. I think George's thought provides the most rational answer I've found. Explore http://www.wealthandwant.com/ for more information.
Here's the other post, at http://libertyrevival.wordpress.com/2009/12/29/henry-george-the-economic-nightmare-of-tyrants/. I particularly like its final paragraph:
Henry George: The Economic Nightmare of Tyrants
December 29, 2009 by Keith Gardner
If the price of land (and natural resources) goes up holding money supply constant, the price of labor has to go down. The more money is spent on land, the less money there is to spend on labor and eventually the only money spent on labor is coming from land wealth rather than labor wealth. The wealthy like to own and buy land because they realize this truth. With the more land they own, the less they have to pay someone to mow their lawn, clean their house, or polish their shoes. The working class pays increasing rent or pays increasing interest on their mortgage. The worker pays more on rent than they do on taxes. The worker pays more on interest on their mortgage than they do to any other creditor. This is the big secret the tyrants don’t want you to know.
Even if you hold population constant, the wealthy who already own a lot of land, collecting rent on it, continue to generate wealth and keep buying more land. They keep driving up the price. The rest of the people have to increasingly work harder in order to afford to buy their own land or pay rent for land. As this happens, there are more people working harder for the land owner than there are people working for each other.
Eventually the commodity bubble of land bursts because eventually there isn’t enough money for the workers to keep renting or buying available land. When this happens, the wealthy, specifically the banks, grab all the land back from the workers and start the cycle over by renting and selling land to the workers again at lower, more affordable rates. Labor rates stay down since people are still desperate to start building their wealth again which is now more concentrated in the hands of the wealthy.
The worker never wins unless they are able to work hard enough and sacrifice enough to keep their own land under the rules of the tyrants. They sacrificed more than they should have to get there. Many will get a false sense of financial security and spend what they earn. Many will give up in frustration trying to work in a system rigged against them. They’ll start to game the system which gamed them.
This is why the elite push forward such economists like Ludwig von Mises, Karl Marx, Milton Friedman, and Maynard Keynes. They want you to be left confused by witch doctor economics. The Native Americans were intuitively better economists than any of the big names from the last two centuries.
Most anarcho-capitalists, and I hate to call them “anarcho” since most of them support land theft through statist institutions, try to claim that the one with the most gold wins and to the victor goes the spoils. I’m sorry, but that piece of paper saying you own a piece of land or a lot of gold is secured by force of the state and was once taken by force of the state. They throw out the Cicero’s natural law philosophy, probably the Roman Empire’s greatest achievement. They come forward with this egoist, objectivist philosophy, which is no better than the social darwinism put forth by the socialist tyrants they oppose.
I’m not trying to promote anarcho-socialism or the moderate schools of anarchism. I believe they all have valid concerns, but none of them are valid is isolation. People should have the freedom to live in communes as pack animals and leave the commune if the alpha dog is a fraud. People should have the freedom to be rugged individualistic capitalists as lone wolves and be protected from other lone wolves and pack animals who will likely be stronger than they are. Neither can accomplish their goals without awareness or acknowledgement of the concerns raised by Henry George.
I’m just trying to promote the idea that land and labor are different. People have the right to their own labor. Land is not a person’s labor. People borrow land from nature. However, land is needed by everyone to exist, and everyone needs to have their right secured to have land and the natural resources the land provides to compete fairly in free markets. They shouldn’t have the right to someone’s labor. They should have the right to have the land and natural resources needed for survival. They shouldn’t have to work for someone else just to exist on land.
It is also equally important to recognize Henry George just proposed the idea of collected land rent through land value taxes in order to pay everyone a citizen dividend to everyone. There are flaws in this application as there are flaws in any application of any philosophy. I hope we can work to build upon this philosophy to recognize natural resources are also land, some land should be held in private while other land should be public. That we do need some minimum government to secure rights and help move people in the direction of a realizing their ability to provide for themselves.
Therefore, I don’t want to promote a purist application of Henry George. I favor the use of property taxes, to simplify land valuation, and the use of sales taxes on the sale of natural resources, to fund both basic government and to supply a significant citizen dividend since today’s cave or hut tends to mean skilled labor in the creation of a home. We should minimize social services and maximize the citizen dividend so people have a claim to land and can more easily work in a capitalistic society to provide and choose their own social needs. You don’t want the state to become owners of the land and chose how to spend the money either since the state is ruled by the same tyrants. The state as land owner can be worse than slave owners since the state will eventually want to kill the slaves they can’t control to do their bidding.
Therefore, everyone pays taxes on land and natural resources. They are paying rent for the land and natural resources they are taking exclusively from everyone else. They are paying rent to everyone. Those who take more will pay more rent and they receive as a dividend. Those who take less will receive more than they pay rent. The result is that tyrants will no longer be able to horde land to drive up the price of living on land while they drive down labor rates without paying the people they’re stealing the land from under their feet, forcing people on the streets and into sweat shops. There won’t be people slaving in horrible conditions for a corporation just for some food and a place to sleep. People will have the freedom to say no and work for themselves and other people like themselves more freely. People are more driven to store their wealth in investments that put people to work rather than investments in land and natural resources. Fractional reserve banking could be eliminated because there would be significant savings available to loan to others. Usury would dramatically drop. A natural economic balance will be achieved where the inflation and deflation of land and labor move in the same direction rather than in opposite directions.
Income taxes should be banned by constitutional amendment. We should never promote the idea that one has the right to another person’s labor, but we should promote the idea that everyone has the right to have their own share of land and natural resources.
With that right secured, capitalists can go out and pursue their goals without pulling the rug out from under their own feet or the land from under the feet of another less abled person, and socialists can go build their communes without someone taking it from them or forcing it upon them.
If there is a citizen dividend, capitalists would realize they would have a great insurance policy if they should lose everything. If there is a citizen dividend, the socialists would have the freedom to fund their social goals without having to work for a capitalist.
Henry George economics is a victory for everyone, except perhaps the tyrants who are the only victors in other economic systems. It is time to bring Henry George out of the closet. Everyone has the inalienable right to land. If you don’t have your own land, you’re a slave because you have to work for someone else in order to just put your feet on the ground. It is time to get angry, put your head out the window, and yell, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m going to learn about Henry George.”
and Arthur Laffer’s Laughing Effect:
Arthur Laffer is the known Reagan economist for promoting the idea that lower taxes will result in increased economic activity and higher revenue for the state.
However, he has come back with a new idea of eliminating property taxes. Every globalist is laughing to the bank because the tea party patriots have embraced this idea from the We the People Foundation to Debra Medina, running for governor of Texas on a tea party patriot platform.
Land is limited in supply like gold, perhaps more limited than gold. Furthermore, we all need land to survive. if all property taxes were eliminated, globalists will rush out to sell their gold, causing tea party patriots everywhere to lose their savings in gold, and buy land.
There would be a land rush. The tea party patriots will be celebrating as their home values increase in value and a new housing bubble is created. They’ll also celebrate not having to pay property taxes. There will be good times with an economy propped up once again on the paper value of equity.
Meanwhile, David Rockefeller is yelling, don’t throw me in the harbor, tea party patriots! Don’t eliminate property taxes!
There is a beast laughing in the boom. Home prices are being driven up once again where working class people can no longer afford real estate. Since America’s manufacturing and services has been exported and out-sourced, there are no decent-paying jobs for them to afford the real estate.
Globalists around the world are suddenly slum lords, holding property to store their wealth while they grab whatever rent they can get for holding it with no care for maintenance. Who needs to maintain property when the supply is drying up, and you don’t need to pay property taxes?
The divide between wages and rent starts to widen to the point that mass poverty is created. Socialists call for minimum wage increases and income tax increases to pay for the social justice created by the increasing divide between the land tycoons and the working class. Keynesians call for larger government programs to provide stability in land and labor prices.
The people are finding their labor devalued even more while the land necessary to survive is being driven further up in price as the land tycoons continue to buy more and more land, to gain more and more wealth, and to collect more and more rent. Welcome to the game of Monopoly, a game where if you get unlucky or screw up, you become a slave, begging for a job.
Eventually, Nike owns a whole community. Unable to afford a place to live, people are forced to work in a factory making shoes for China and Saudi Arabi for pennies a day and for a place to sleep in Nike city. Welcome to the third world. A world where over 99% of you are slaves begging for food and a place to sleep.
While I agree that we need to eliminate property taxes for the person who owns a single home, I believe eliminating all property taxes would be a bad idea.
As seekers of truth, we might want to investigate Henry George and his treastie, Progress and Poverty. He is perhaps the most important American economist whose economic knowledge and works have been the most suppressed even though his economic works inspired the most popular American board game of Monopoly and his influence remains evident in the tax systems of state and local communities everywhere.
Our nation was founded on property taxes collected by states and local communities. The economic benefits of such tax systems were intuitive for early Americans considering many Americans were either fleeing the land slavery of Europe where the artistocrats owned all the land or were native Americans who didn’t even understand the statist-capitalist concept of land ownership.
Property taxes do have an interesting benefit of pushing down the price of land. It also does the same for commodities when sales taxes are used. The cost of the tax is hidden in the supply and demand of the land or commodity, reducing the cost of government and the cost of living for everyone.
If made progressive, as Henry George proposed, it can eliminate poverty on a moral basis of agrarian justice, as suggested earlier by Thomas Paine, since everyone has the right to put their feet on the land, provide for themselves, own themselves, and own their labor.
If you eliminate all property and sales taxes and replace them with income taxes, eventually, you’ll have to pay half your income to the government and the other half of your income to the land lord.
thanks for the link. i went ahead and edited the articles. saw a few typos and areas where i threw out ideas without much support.
i recently read another paper. i think i'm more willing to accept land value taxes over just property taxes so as to not punish development. i just didn't like the idea of the state determining the value of the land and the value of the development nor promoting the idea of development. i think people would already do that without state interference.
i do believe we need sales taxes in addition to land value taxes to fund a citizen dividend and our current system while a transition is made. i believe sales taxes can also close loopholes of off-shoring and strip-mining and provide the same types of economic benefits as land value taxes.
the main point is that we all need to learn more about the principles defined by henry george and think more about how to apply it to our current situation.
Posted by: Keith Gardner | January 13, 2010 at 07:28 PM
"'LVT Fan' because land value taxation is the only form of taxation which deserves a fan club."
Posted by: Keith Gardner | January 13, 2010 at 07:31 PM