LVTFan's Blog

Hoi oligoi

Hoi oligoi.  A new phrase for me, and one which made immediate sense.  My Georgist grandparents sometimes referred to themselves as part of the hoi polloi, but at other times also used it to distinguish themselves, in a joking way, from the mass of people who didn't know George's ideas.  

Edgar Guest: Taxes

Taxes

By Edgar A. Guest

When they become due I don't like them at all.
Taxes look large be they ever so small
Taxes are debts which I venture to say,
No man or no woman is happy to pay.
I grumble about them, as most of us do.
For it seems that with taxes I never am through.

But when I reflect on the city I love,
With its sewers below and its pavements above,
And its schools and its parks where children may play,
I can see what I get for the money I pay,
And I say to myself: "Little joy would we know
If we kept all our money and spent it alone".

I couldn't build streets and I couldn't fight fire.
Policemen to guard us I never could hire.
A water department I couldn't maintain.
Instead of a city we'd still have a plain.
Then I look at the bill for the taxes they charge,
And I say to myself: "Well, that isn't so large".

I walk through a hospital thronged with the ill
And I find that it shrivels the size of my bill.
As in beauty and splendor my home city grows,
It is easy to see where my tax money goes.
And I say to myself: "If we lived hit and miss
And gave up our taxes, we couldn't do this".

Gems from George: Economic Terms -- Land -- still more

I AM writing these pages on the shore of Long Island, where the Bay of New York contracts to what is called the Narrows, nearly opposite the point where our legalized robbers, the Custom-House officers, board incoming steamers to ask strangers to take their first American swear, and where, if false oaths really colored the atmosphere the air would be bluer than is the sky on this gracious day. I turn from my writing-machine to the window, and drink in, with a pleasure that never seems to pall, the glorious panorama. 

"What do you see?"  If in ordinary talk I were asked this, I should of course say, "I see land and water and sky, ships and houses, and light clouds, and the sun drawing to its setting over the low green hills of Staten Island and illuminating all." 

But if the question refer to the terms of political economy, I should say, "I see land and wealth." Land, which is the natural factor of production; and wealth, which is the natural factor so changed by the exertion of the human factor, labor, as to fit it for the satisfaction of human desires. For water and clouds, sky and sun, and the stars that will appear when the sun is sunk, are, in the terminology of political economy, as much land as is the dry surface of the earth to which we narrow the meaning of the word in ordinary talk. And the window through which I look; the flowers in the garden; the planted trees of the orchard; the cow that is browsing beneath them; the Shore Road under the window; the vessels that lie at anchor near the bank, and the little pier that juts out from it; the trans-Atlantic liner steaming through the channel; the crowded pleasure-steamers passing by; the puffing tug with its line of mud-scows; the fort and dwellings on the opposite side of the Narrows; the lighthouse that will soon begin to cast its far-gleaming eye from Sandy Hook; the big wooden elephant of Coney Island; and the graceful sweep of the Brooklyn Bridge, that may be discovered from a little higher up; all alike fall into the economic term wealth — land modified by labor so as to afford satisfaction to human desires. All in this panorama that was before man came here, and would remain were he to go, belongs to the economic category land; while all that has been produced by labor belongs to the economic category wealth, so long as it retains its quality of ministering to human desire. 

But on the hither shore, in view from the window, is a little rectangular piece of dry surface, evidently reclaimed from the line of water by filling in with rocks and earth. What is that? In ordinary speech it is land, as distinguished from water, and I should intelligibly indicate its origin by speaking of it as "made land." But in the categories of political economy there is no place for such a term as "made land." For the term land refers only and exclusively to productive powers derived wholly from nature and not at all from industry, and whatever is, and in so far as it is, derived from land by the exertion of  labor, is wealth. This bit of dry surface raised above the level of the water by filling in stones and soil, is, in the economic category, not land but wealth. It has land below it and around it, and the material of which it is composed has been drawn from land; but in itself it is, in the proper speech of political economy, wealth; just as truly as the ships I behold are not land but wealth, though they too have land below them and around them and are composed of material drawn from land.

— The Science of Political Economy 

unabridged: Book IV, Chapter 6, The Distribution of Wealth: Cause of Confusion as to Property 

 

Gems from George: Economic Terms -- Land - continued

THAT land is only a passive factor in production must be carefully kept in mind. . . . Land cannot act, it can only be acted upon. . . . Nor is this principle changed or avoided when we use the word land as expressive of the people who own land. . . . 

That the persons whom we call landowners may contribute their labor or their capital to production is of course true, but that they should contribute to production as landowners, and by virtue of that ownership, is as ridiculously impossible as that the belief of a lunatic in his ownership of the moon should be the cause of her brilliancy.

— The Science of Political Economy
unabridged: Book III, Chapter 15, The Production of Wealth: The First Factor of Production — Land 

Gems from George: Economic Terms -- Land

THE term Land in political economy means the natural or passive element in production, and includes the whole external world accessible to man, with all its powers, qualities, and products, except perhaps those portions of it which are for the time included in man's body or in his products, and which therefore temporarily belong to the categories, man and wealth, passing again in their reabsorption by nature into the category, land.

— The Science of Political Economy — unabridged: Book III, Chapter 14: The Production of Wealth, Order of the Three Factors of Production •  
 abridged: Part III, Chapter 10: Order of the Three Factors of Production

Gems from George: On reasoning

THE power to reason correctly on general subjects is not to be learned in schools, nor does it come with special knowledge. It results from care in separating, from caution in combining, from the habit of asking ourselves the meaning of the words we use and making sure of one step before building another on it — and above all, from loyalty to truth.

— A Perplexed Philosopher (Introduction: The Reason for this Examination)

Gems from George: of Women, as of Men

I AM convinced that we make a great mistake in depriving one sex of voice in public matters, and that we could in no way so increase the attention, the intelligence and the devotion which may be brought to the solution of social problems as by enfranchising our women. Even if in a ruder state of society the intelligence of one sex suffices for the management of common interests, the vastly more intricate, more delicate and more important questions which the progress of civilization makes of public moment, require the intelligence of women as of men, and that we never can obtain until we interest them in public affairs. And I have come to believe that very much of the inattention, the flippancy, the want of conscience, which we see manifested in regard to public matters of the greatest moment, arises from the fact that we debar our women from taking their proper part in these matters. Nothing will fully interest men unless it also interests women. There are those who say that women are less intelligent than men; but who will say that they are less influential?

— Social Problems — Chapter 22: Conclusion