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  • 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%.

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  • 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

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« Goldsmith, a supplement to the "Earth for All" collection | Main | Is the Philly Land Bank Going to Be a Tool for NIMBYism? »

April 02, 2012

Verily We Are a Great People

"A laborer turns a desert into a garden and then we increase his taxes.  The speculator turns a garden into a desert and then we diminish his taxes.  Verily we are a great people." 

This quote is on a card for "The Landlord's Game" and I stumbled across my reminder to myself to look for its source.  I found nothing definitive, but several mentions of the quote in newspapers from New Zealand from about 1894, and one from The Single Tax Review in 1914.

Certainly something to think about.

  • Otago Witness, Putanga 2300, 31 Poutūterangi 1898, Page 3
  • Marlborough Express, Volume XXX, Issue 77, 3 April 1894, Page 2
  • Bay Of Plenty Times, Rōrahi XXII, Putanga 3105, 16 Paengawhāwhā 1894, Page 2

Posted on April 02, 2012 at 03:10 PM in incentive taxation, incentives, land speculation, little people pay taxes, tax reform, taxation, unburdening the economy, untaxing production |

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