Moses (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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March 30, 2010

Moses

A piece today on Huffington Post about Passover and Moses caught my attention. I learned a few things. It gives "talking points" about Moses; I've omitted the supporting material from all but one:

1. A quote from Moses appears on the Liberty Bell. ...
2. The Founding Fathers proposed that Moses appear on the U.S. seal. ...
3. Moses was the national hero for slaves. ...
4. The Statue of Liberty was modeled on Moses. ...
5. Superman was a modern-day Moses. ...
6. Cecil B. DeMille turned Moses into a Cold War icon. The 1956 epic The Ten Commandments, which is the fifth highest grossing movie of all time, opened with DeMille appearing onscreen. "The theme of this picture is whether men ought to be ruled by God's law or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator," he said. "The same battle continues throughout the world today." To drive home his point, DeMille cast mostly Americans as Israelites and Europeans as Egyptians. And in the film's final shot, Charlton Heston adopts the pose of the Statue of Liberty and quotes the line from the third book of Moses -- Leviticus -- inscribed on the Liberty Bell: "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."
7. Moses is the Patron Saint of Washington. ...

Cecil B. DeMille's Moses was, at least in part, inspired by his connection via his brother's marriage, to Henry George, the author of Progress and Poverty (1879), and a speech George gave the year before about Moses, and probably made repeatedly over the following years, on lecture tours around the world. (Cecil B. DeMille was born in 1881, and died in 1959. His older brother, William, married Henry George's daughter Anna George, a few years after George's death; their daughter was the choreographer Agnes de Mille (1905-1993.)

George's ideas provide a modern way to achieve a stable and just middle class society and economy in which all can prosper -- a modern version of the OT land laws.

Here's a short excerpt from "Moses":

Trace to its roots the cause that is producing want in the midst of plenty, ignorance in the midst of intelligence, aristocracy in democracy, weakness in strength –- that is giving to our civilisation a one-sided and unstable development –- and you will find it something which this Hebrew statesman three thousand years ago perceived and guarded against. ...
Everywhere in the Mosaic institutions is the land treated as the gift of the Creator to His common creatures, which no one has the right to monopolise. Everywhere it is, not your estate, or your property, not the land which you bought, or the land which you conquered, but "the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee" –- "the land which the Lord lendeth thee".

Read "Moses" and see what you think.

Posted on March 30, 2010 at 11:24 AM in a wedge driven through society, charity and justice, common good, connect the dots, cui bono?, economic justice, ending poverty, equality, government's role, Henry George, land, labor and capital, landed gentry, landlordism, natural resources, one solution for many problems, poverty's cause, privilege, reaping what others sow, slavery, teach your children well, wealth distribution or concentration | Permalink

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LVTFan's Blog

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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