LVTFan's Blog

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 30 -- Exodus and the Bishop of Meath

The land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

— Exodus, XX., 12.

Any settlement of the land of a country that would exclude the humblest man in that country from his share of the common inheritance would be not only an injustice and a wrong to that man, but moreover would be an impious resistance to the benevolent intentions of the Creator. 

— BISHOP OF MEATH, Letter to Clergy and Laity, April 2, 1881.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 29 -- Froude

Land is not, and cannot be, property in the sense in which movable things are property.  Every human being born into this planet must live upon the land if he lives at all.  He did not ask to be born, and, being born, room must be found for him. The land in any country is really the property of the nation which occupies it.

— J. A. FROUDE, Ireland, Nineteenth Century, September, 1880, p. 362.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 28 -- Sienkiewicz and Gras

"Every kind of wealth may be considered as fictitious except land; everything exists for it.  As a bank-note is a receipt for metallic money in the State Bank, so industry and commerce and whatever else you please is land turned into another form."

— HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ, Children of the Soil, Chap. III.  (Words spoken by Yamish.)

"He who has earth has bread."

— FELIX GRAS, Reds of the Midi, Chap. I.  (Words spoken by Pascal.)

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 27 -- Turgot

The labor of the tiller of the soil gives the first impulse. That which his work makes the land produce beyond his personal needs is the sole fund for the wages which all the other members of society receive in exchange for their work.

— TURGOT, On the Formation and Distribution of Wealth (1766), Sec. 5.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 26 -- Lowell

One of my tenants I have just let off from his lease, because he thought he could do better with less land. This takes off about a sixth of my income.  Another has not yet paid me a cent, and I cannot ask him for it, since it seems to me that the man who tills the land and makes it useful has a better right to it than he who has merely inherited it.

— JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1848), Letters, Vol. 1., p. 149.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 25 -- Arnold

All things spoke peace and plenty and the Prince
Saw and rejoiced.  But, looking deep he saw
The thorns which grow upon the rose of life;
How the swart peasant sweated for his wage,
Toiling for leave to live.

— SIR EDWIN ARNOLD, The Light of Asia, Book I., p. 20

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 24 -- Crabbe and Balzac

These fruitful fields, these numerous flocks I see, 
Are others' gains, but killing cares to me.

— GEORGE CRABBE, The Village (1783), Book I.

"There, where we are born, there we dig it, that earth! and spade it and manure it, for you who are born rich, just as we are born poor."

— BALZAC, Sons of the Soil (1845), Chap. V., p. 97.  (Words spoken by Fourchon.)

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 23 -- Cobbett

The Bible which they have been taught to read, as the means of saving their souls, tells them, from one end to the other, that their bodies are not to be left to perish for want, while the land abounds with plenty, and that plenty arising too from their own labor.

— WILLIAM COBBETT, Two-Penny Trash, November 1, 1830, p. 98.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 22 -- Carpenter

The plowman plows, the sower sows,   
   The reaper reaps the ear,
The woodman to the forest goes
   Before the day grows clear;
But of our toil no fruit we see,
The harvest's not for you and me;
A robber band has seized the land,
   And we are exiles here.

— EDWARD CARPENTER, The People to the Land, Chants of Labor, p. 51.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 21 -- Shelley

The seed ye sow another reaps;
The wealth ye find another keeps: 
The robes ye weave another wears;
The arms ye forge another bears. 

— PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, Song —To the Men of England.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 20 -- Wagner

See, there they troop from fields and farmyards; they've tilled the earth and turned it to a smiling garden, and fruits in plenty, enough for all who live, have paid their pains — yet poor are they and naked, starving; for not to them, or others who are needy, belongs earth's blessing, but solely to the rich and mighty one who calls men and the earth his own.

— RICHARD WAGNER, The Revolution, Prose Works, Vol. VIII, Chap. 14, p. 235.  (Translation of W. A. Ellis).

Mitt Romney, Class Warrior - NYTimes.com

Mitt Romney, Class Warrior - NYTimes.com.

The shame is not that those people don’t pay income taxes. The shame is how many poor people there are when the top 1 percent can amass uncountable fortunes fed by tax breaks and can donate tens of millions of dollars to political candidates to keep it that way.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 19 -- MacCarthy

Is it right, is it fair,
  That we perish of despair
    In this land, on this soil,
       Where our destiny is set,
   Which we cultured with our toil
       And watered with our sweat?
We have plowed, we have sown,
But the crop was not our own;
We have reaped, but harpy hands
Swept the harvest from our lands.
— DENIS FLORENCE MacCARTHY, Ireland (1847), Bryant's Library of Poetry, p. 579

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 18 -- Coleridge

A poor peasant hungers after the possession of a few acres which he occupies, but his land-hunger for that which is to him, as Lord Chancellor Blackburne said, a necessity of life, for the soil which he has reclaimed, and for the hut which he has built, this is a breach of the spirit of the Decalogue, something between petty larceny and highway robbery!

— LORD CHIEF JUSTICE COLERIDGE, The Laws of Property, Address before the Glasgow Juridical Society, Macmillan's Magazine, April, 1888, p. 411.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 17 -- O'Reilly and Morris

A cry to the toilers to rise, to be high as the highest that rules them,
To earn the earth in their life-time and hand it down to their children.

— JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY, From the Earth, A Cry, in The Statues in the Block, and Other Poems, p. 42.

Saith man to man, "We've heard and known
   That we no master need
To live upon this earth, our own,
    In fair and manly deed."

— WILLIAM MORRIS, No Master, in Songs of Freedom, p. 328.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 16 -- Marmontel and Scott

"If we are equal and if we are brethren, make me free," he would say to you; "and as a first favor cease to rob me of the gifts which nature has provided for me."

— MARMONTEL, Address in favor of the Peasants of the North (1757), OEuvres, Vol. X., p. 84.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
        This is my own, my native land?

— SIR WALTER SCOTT, Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto VI., I.

The Church(es) in Politics

I'm reading through the first issues of Henry George's newspaper, "The Standard," a weekly which was published in NYC beginning in January, 1887.  It was started shortly after the mayoral race of 1886 (chronicled in Post & Leubuscher's December, 1886 book), and in the 4th issue there is a very explicit article about the role that Rome was attempting to play in NYC politics by removing from the priesthood an activist priest, the much-loved Dr. Edward McGlynn, of St. Stephen's Church, on 28th Street in Manhattan, the largest parish in the city.  (This was before the creation of New York City by combining the five boroughs.)

For over 20 years, McGlynn had been living among New York's poor, hearing the confessions of the poor, and knew how hard their lives were.  He knew the situation in Ireland which had brought many of them to the U. S., and when he read Henry George's 1879 book, "Progress and Poverty," he found the cause of their suffering, and saw how to correct the underlying cause of poverty.

The article to which I refer is entitled, "From a Brooklyn Priest"

The Body of the Catholic Clergy Sympathize With Dr. McGlynn

The Brooklyn Times prints an interesting interview with “a well known parish priest” of that city. His name is not given "for obvious reasons,” but those acquainted with the Catholic clerics of Brooklyn have little difficulty in attributing it to the most popular and influential of the Catholic clergy of that city. We make the following extracts:

“The sympathy of the body of the Catholic clergy in New York and Brooklyn is undoubtedly with Dr. McGlynn. I have talked with a great many of my brother priests of both cities on the matter, and almost without exception, they have taken Dr. McGlynn's side in the controversy, though they would be loth to do so publicly for manifest reasons. The sentiment of the body of the Catholic clergy of the two cities is that whatever has been done in Dr. McGlynn's case has been done by inspiration from this side. Of course the question at issue does not at all touch matters of faith. It is purely a question of discipline. The authorities at Rome know little or nothing of the real state of affairs at this side of the Atlantic except as they are inspired by the archbishop of the different provinces. Archbishop Corrigan is in daily communication with Rome by cable, and the views of the controversy between Dr. McGlynn and his superior that are entertained at Rome pending the personal appearance of Dr. McGlynn in the Eternal City, are the views of the archbishop of New York that are telegraphed and written there.

“I do not mean to imply that Archbishop Corrigan would willfully misrepresent the situation here, but I do say that Dr. McGlynn, with all his experience as a priest in the American metropolis, with all his practical knowledge of the condition of the poor and of the working classes in that city, is a better judge of the political needs of the masses in New York than Archbishop Corrigan is, who has spent the greater part of his career as an ecclesiastic in the state of New Jersey; and I hold that Dr. McGlynn and every other Catholic priest has the right to take an active part in the politics of the country. To say that a man of the acknowledged piety and the blameless life of Dr. McGlynn sympathizes with anything that smacks of communism or anarchy is the veriest nonsense to anyone who knows him — and who does not know everything about him today? Dr. McGlynn, as a priest, knows the awful burdens which the laboring classes of New York city have to bear through political misrule and the corrupt combination of capital to oppress them. He knows how anomalous that condition of things is which allows one man to accumulate a hundred millions of dollars within 25 years and compels another to work for a dollar a day, nay, while thousands, anxious for work, are starving for the lack of it. Hence his support of the candidate of the labor party for mayor. Dr. McGlynn did not believe that anarchy or communism would follow in the wake of the election of Henry George to the mayoralty of New York any more than he believed that Mr. George, as the chief executive of the municipal government across the East river could put his land theories into practical operation in the metropolis. Any possible change in the government of New York city must be a change for the better, so far as the poor are concerned.

“If the bishops of the dioceses in the United States were taken by Rome from among the clergy of these dioceses who thoroughly understand the social and political conditions of their people, there would be none of these disciplinary troubles. What sense is there in sending an Italian priest to Canada or an Irish priest to Guatemala as bishop? Or why should a bishop be transferred from a city in the state of New Jersey to preside over the archdiocese of New York when there are many able and holy priests in the metropolis worthy of election to the prelacy who have spent their lives among the masses of the people? In countries where the canonical law of the church is in practical application the parish priests of a diocese in which the bishopric becomes vacant send three names to Rome by majority vote. One is set down as dignus, or worthy, another as dignior, or more worthy, and a third as dignissimus, or most worthy. Any one of the three may be selected, and it sometimes happens that it is the lowest on the list who is chosen. The pope has the absolute power to go outside the list sent to him from the diocese in which a vacancy occurs, but it is a power rarely exercised and only for the most exigent reasons. If the canon law applied in America, which is only yet a missionary country and subject to the propaganda at Rome, Dr. McGlynn could not have been turned out of St. Stephen's church as he has been and his salary would have run on despite his suspension until his case was finally decided at Rome.

“It is most unfortunate that the canon law does not apply in the United States, and that the political, social and educational situation in this country is not better understood at Rome. Wealthy Catholic politicians have too much to say on church policy in this country; and unfortunately that is today the trouble in New York city. The masses of the Catholic clergy say, 'Hands off.' As long as bishops, with whom wealthy politicians are most powerful, practically say who shall be elected to the prelacy in the United States there will be a chance for trouble among the laity.

“I am satisfied that if a majority of the Catholic clergy of the dioceses of New York and Long Island could do it Dr. McGlynn would have been elected archbishop and Archbishop Corrigan would have been allowed to remain in New Jersey. I unhesitatingly say that if the votes of the Catholic clergy in these two dioceses could do it Dr. McGlynn would be restored to St. Stephen's parish tomorrow. No old priest of New York city wanted to succeed Dr. McGlynn in that parish, for they all knew how his congregation idolized him. I am also free to say that if Archbishop Corrigan had not been brought from the state of New Jersey to New York city this trouble would never have occurred.

“Mgr. Preston is the bitterest foe that Dr. McGlynn has in the diocese of New York. I do not mean to imply that the monsignor entertains personal animosity toward the ex-rector of St. Stephen's church, but he is utterly opposed to what Dr. McGlynn stands for as an American citizen. Mgr. Preston is an aristocrat and the associate of aristocrats. Even converts to the Catholic church who know Father Preston well have admitted that the monsignor dearly loves the privileges which attach to church dignitaries in Catholic countries, and is inclined to ape the civil ceremonial of such communities in his intercourse with his flock. Dr. McGlynn is poor, is of the poor and loves to associate with the poor. He is in this respect the antithesis of Mgr. Preston, and the latter is a confidential adviser of Archbishop Corrigan.”

This article, more than anything else I've read, brings home to me the extent to which the rich manage even the Church for the benefit of the rich, to the detriment of the poor.   When a priest who seeks to correct the unjust structures is deprived of his priesthood because he might upset the privileges of the rich, the country and the church are both in trouble.

When churches benefit from contributions from wealthy contributors, they will tend to act to enforce the structures which enrich those wealthy contributors, rather than rocking the boat in any way.  When economic structures funnel the community's wealth into a relative few pockets, the Church will tend to embrace those pockets, not challenge the structures.  Money in elections is not the only corrupting force.

 

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 15 -- Charles Kingsley

Down, down, down, and down
    With idler, knave and tyrant!
Why jar sluggards stint and moil?
He that will not live by toil
Has no right on English soil!
    God's word our warrant.

— CHARLES KINGSLEY, Alton Locke, Chap. XLI.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 14 -- Abbe Lamennais

If you know how to defend your rights, if you accomplish your duty, this frightful disorder will cease, the human race, lifted up after its long downfall, will no longer be the property of a few tyrants, neither will the earth be their exclusive heritage.  All will share in the good things destined by Providence for all.

— ABBE LAMENNAIS, The Book of the People, Chap. XVI.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 13 -- Winstanley

That which is yet wanting on your part to be done is this, to see that the oppressor's power be cast out with his person; and to see that the free possession of the land and liberties be put into the hands of the oppressed commoners of England.

— JERRARD WINSTANLEY,  Epistle Dedicatory to Oliver Cromwell, in

The Law of Freedom in a Platform, or True Magistracy Restored.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 12 -- Grant Allen

"But how is it that you allow these chiefs — landlords, don't you call them? — to taboo the soil, and prevent you all from even walking on it? Don't you see that if you choose to combine in a body, and insist upon the recognition of your natural rights — if you determined to make the landlords give up their taboo, and cease from injustice, they'd have to yield to you? And then you could exercise your natural right of going where you pleased, and cultivate the land in common for the public benefit, instead of leaving it as now, to be cultivated anyhow, or turned into waste, for the benefit of the tabooers?"

— GRANT ALLEN, The British Barbarians (Words spoken by Bertram).

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 11 -- Ruskin

Do you know any honest men who have a will of their own among your neighbors? If not, set yourself to seek for such; if any, commune with them on this one subject, how a man may have sight of the Earth he was made of, and his bread out of the dust of it — and peace! And find out what it is that hinders you now from having these, and resolve that you will fight it and put an end to it.

— JOHN RUSKIN, Fors Clavigera, Vol. II., End of Letter 16.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 10 -- Arnold

We . . . may solace our minds with the imagination of right-minded Englishmen . . . acting as a commission to draw up a list of the thoroughly bad landlords,  . . .  and then bringing their list back to London and saying, "Expropriate these, as the monks were expropriated, by Act of Parliament."

— MATTHEW ARNOLD, The Incompatibles, Irish Essays, p. 33.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 9 -- Selden

When the founders of abbeys laid a curse upon those that should take away their lands, I would fain know what power they had to curse me. 'Tis not the curses that come from the poor, or from anybody, that hurt me, because they come from them, but because I do something ill against them that deserves God should curse me for it.

— JOHN SELDEN (1584-1654), Table Talk, p. 1.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 8 -- Sir Thomas More

The nobility and gentry and even those holy men, the abbots, not content with the old rents that their farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do no good to the public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good.  . . .  As if forest and parks had swallowed up too little of the land, those worthy countrymen turn the best inhabited places into solitude.

 — SIR THOMAS MORE, Utopia (1516), Book I.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 7 -- Swift

I have been assured  .  .  .  that a young healthy child, well nursed, is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled.  . . .  I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.

— DEAN SWIFT, A Modest Proposal  (1729).

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 6 -- A. R. Wallace

A great landholder may legally convert his whole property into a forest or hunting ground, and expel every human being who has lived upon it.  In a thickly populated country like England, where almost every acre has its owner and occupier, this is a power of legally destroying his fellow-creatures; and that such a power should exist, and be exercised by individuals, in however small a degree, indicates that as regards true social science, we are still in a state of barbarism.

— ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE,The Malay Archipelago, Chap. 40.  Final Note to the book. (1869)

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 5 -- Amos

If the land is looked upon as susceptible of permanent appropriation by some persons, other persons must, by the same theory, be regarded as possibly excluded from it — that is, banished from the territory of the State.

— PROF. SHELDON AMOS, Science of Law, Chap. VIII., p. 166 (1874).

One's "Fair Share"

The post below this one, "Mitt Romney's 'Fair Share' " refers to his fair share of the costs of providing public goods.

But perhaps an equally important question is the nature of one's fair share of the output of our economy and the output of the earth.  Some of the former output is the result of individual efforts, and one ought to be able to keep that portion. But at the same time we must recognize how much comes from the division of labor, from drawing down on the non-infinite supply of non-renewable natural resources on which all of us today must depend and on which future generations of human beings must rely. Those who draw down more than their legitimate share owe something to the rest of the community.  Our wealthiest tend, we suspect, to use many, many times their legitimate share, and the median American likely draws far more than their share, when one considers the planet as a whole.   

Perhaps "legitimate" is not the right word here.  It refers to what is permissible under current law.  (The word gets misused a lot -- see the discussion on "legitimate rape," which seemed to be about the circumstances under which a woman has a right to make a specific very personal, decision, and when it is considered by some to not be left to her and is the province of government, legislators or others.)

What is one's "fair share" of natural resources?  America is using a hugely disproportionate share of the world's resources.  Are we entitled to it because we're somehow "exceptional"?  Because "our" God is somehow better than other nation's Gods?   Or do we genuinely believe that all people are created equal, and intend to live our lives accordingly?

Our output of greenhouse gases exceeds our share of the world's population.  This is not without consequences for the world, and for peace on earth.

We ought to be re-examining our incentives so that they move us in the direction we ought to be going, which is, to my mind, using less.  We can build transportation infrastructure which will permit many more of us to move around with less impact on the environment.  We can fund that through collecting the increases in land value that infrastructure creates.  We can correct the incentives which cause us to use today's inferior technologies to extract natural resources from the earth in ways which damage the environment, as if ours was the final generation, or the only one worth serious consideration.

Better incentives could reduce, eliminate, even reverse urban sprawl.  I refer specifically to land value taxation as a replacement for the existing property tax, particularly in places where assessments are for one reason or another not consistent with current property values -- e.g., California and Florida, parts of Delaware and Pennsylvania which currently use assessments from the 1970s, and many other places where assessments are simply out of whack with current reality!)  We should be replacing sales taxes, wage taxes, building taxes with taxes on land value and on natural resources.  Most of that value is flowing generously into private or corporate pockets, to our detriment.  It concentrates wealth, income, and, of course, political power. 

Collecting the rent, instead of leaving the lion's share of it to be pocketed by the rent-seekers, would go a long way to making our society and our economy healthier.  Eliminating the privilege of privatizing that which in a wisely designed society would be our common treasure would make our society a better place in which to live, a place in which all could thrive and prosper without victimizing their fellow human beings. 

Stiglitz: "Mitt Romney’s Fair Share"

a few excerpts from: "Mitt Romney’s Fair Share" by Joseph E. Stiglitz | Project Syndicate.

A major theme of the underlying political debate in the United States is the role of the state and the need for collective action. The private sector, while central in a modern economy, cannot ensure its success alone. For example, the financial crisis that began in 2008 demonstrated the need for adequate regulation.

Moreover, beyond effective regulation (including ensuring a level playing field for competition), modern economies are founded on technological innovation, which in turn presupposes basic research funded by government. This is an example of a public good – things from which we all benefit, but that would be undersupplied (or not supplied at all) were we to rely on the private sector.

Conservative politicians in the US underestimate the importance of publicly provided education, technology, and infrastructure. Economies in which government provides these public goods perform far better than those in which it does not.

But public goods must be paid for, and it is imperative that everyone pays their fair share. While there may be disagreement about what that entails, those at the top of the income distribution who pay 15% of their reported income (money accruing in tax shelters in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens may not be reported to US authorities) clearly are not paying their fair share. ...

I have to disagree with the second sentence of this next paragraph.  And I think Stiglitz knows better, if he stops to think about it:

Democracies rely on a spirit of trust and cooperation in paying taxes. If every individual devoted as much energy and resources as the rich do to avoiding their fair share of taxes, the tax system either would collapse, or would have to be replaced by a far more intrusive and coercive scheme. Both alternatives are unacceptable. 

We don't need intrusive or coercive; we just need to start collecting the lion's share of the rent!  Well, I suppose some rent-seekers would find this extremely intrusive -- it intrudes on their habit of self-enrichment by privatizing of what is rightly and logically our PUBLIC treasure, the logical way of financing PUBLIC goods.   And Professor Stiglitz is quite aware of the value of natural resources; he may not be quite as conscious of the value of urban and other well-situated land.   

Our national recordkeeping doesn't even collect the valuations of land and natural resources on any consistent basis! (One could reasonably argue that this failure-to-measure is a form of corruption!)  What we don't measure we can't do anything about.  And the powers that be are quite content with how we do things; the benefits accrue to them!  And several generations of college-educated people know nothing about the issue, which was well known and widely discussed 100 years ago.  (Look into the extensive Single Tax literature and the ideas of Henry George.)

Some more excerpts:

The billionaire investor Warren Buffett argues that he should pay only the taxes that he must, but that there is something fundamentally wrong with a system that taxes his income at a lower rate than his secretary is required to pay. He is right. Romney might be forgiven were he to take a similar position. Indeed, it might be a Nixon-in-China moment: a wealthy politician at the pinnacle of power advocating higher taxes for the rich could change the course of history.

Comments

But Romney has not chosen to do so. He evidently does not recognize that a system that taxes speculation at a lower rate than hard work distorts the economy. Indeed, much of the money that accrues to those at the top is what economists call rents, which arise not from increasing the size of the economic pie, but from grabbing a larger slice of the existing pie.

Those at the top include a disproportionate number of monopolists who increase their income by restricting production and engaging in anti-competitive practices; CEOs who exploit deficiencies in corporate-governance laws to grab a larger share of corporate revenues for themselves (leaving less for workers); and bankers who have engaged in predatory lending and abusive credit-card practices (often targeting poor and middle-class households). It is perhaps no accident that rent-seeking and inequality have increased as top tax rates have fallen, regulations have been eviscerated, and enforcement of existing rules has been weakened: the opportunity and returns from rent-seeking have increased. 

Today, a deficiency of aggregate demand afflicts almost all advanced countries, leading to high unemployment, lower wages, greater inequality, and – coming full, vicious circle – constrained consumption. There is now a growing recognition of the link between inequality and economic instability and weakness.

There is another vicious circle: Economic inequality translates into political inequality, which in turn reinforces the former, including through a tax system that allows people like Romney – who insists that he has been subject to an income-tax rate of “at least 13%” for the last ten years – not to pay their fair share. The resulting economic inequality – a result of politics as much as market forces – contributes to today’s overall economic weakness. 

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 4 -- Sir Thomas More

For they account it a very just cause of war for a nation to hinder others from possessing a part of the soil, of which they make no use, but which is suffered to lie idle and uncultivated; since every man has by the law of Nature a right to such waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence.

— SIR THOMAS MORE, Utopia (1516), Book II., tit. Of Their Traffic.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 3 -- Grotius and Mahan

Vacant and uncultivated lands which are found in the territory of a State should be awarded to foreigners if they demand them. And in fact they have the right to seize them; for we should not regard as property that which is not cultivated.

— HUGO GROTIUS, Rights of War and Peace, Book II., Chap. 2., Sec. 17.

The earth is the common ground of all its inhabitants.

— CAPTAIN A. T. MAHAN, The Transvaal and the Philippines,

New York Independent, Feb. 1, 1900, p. 289.

Henry George (b. Philadelphia, 9/2/1839; d. NYC, 10/29/1897) - and Tolstoy's "The Great Iniquity" (1905)

 

 

 

 

The drawing is by J. W. Bengough, the great Canadian writer and cartoonist.  It appeared in The Public, Louis F. Post's weekly newspaper, on September 30, 1905.  (Tolstoy died about 6 years later.)

You can read more about Tolstoy's advocacy of George's ideas at http://www.wealthandwant.com/auth/Tolstoy.htm. 

On August 1, 1905, Tolstoy's letter, "The Great Iniquity" was published in the London Times.  The text follows.  It quotes extensively from Henry George's speech, The Crime of Poverty, which is one of the two speeches that initially "grabbed" me to look more closely at George's ideas.

You Didn't Build That!

seen on Twitter:

"If you extract economic rent from the value of your land, you didn't build that." -- Henry George http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoism

 

We -- WE! -- built that -- and we ought to be collecting it, month in and month out, and keeping our hands off what the individual or small business or corporation DID build.  (Of course, this presumes that each of us is expected to compensate the community for the pollution we create, and the non-renewable resources we take.)

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 2 -- Gerrit Smith and Thomas Paine

The vacant land belongs to the landless.  The simple fact that the one is vacant and the other landless is of itself the highest proof that they should be allowed to come together.  Alas, what a crime against nature that they should be kept apart.

— GERRIT SMITH, Smith's Speeches in the U. S. Congress, p. 247 (1854). 

The earth in its natural uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race.

—THOMAS PAINE, Agrarian Justice (1797),  Paine's Writings, Vol. III,, p. 329.

Film, available online: Real Estate 4 Ransom

I encourage you to take the time to watch this excellent film.  I've seen it a few times in different settings, and pick up different things each time.

Real Estate 4 Ransom from Real Estate 4 Ransom on Vimeo.

 

See also the website at http://www.realestate4ransom.com/

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 1 -- Thoreau

Wandering on through notches which the streams had made, by the side and over the brow of hoar hills and mountains, across the stumpy, rocky, forested and bepastured country, we at length crossed on prostrate logs over the Amonoosuck, and breathed the free air of Unappropriated Land.

— H. D. THOREAU, Week on the Concord and Merrimac (1849), p. 414.