LVTFan's Blog

"Proputty" --- A Lecturette in Rhyme, by J. W. Bengough

John Wilson Bengough was a skilled artist and cartoonist, but he was also skilled with words.  This appeared in Single Tax Review, Winter 1906.

“PROPUTTY.”
(For the Review.)
A LECTURETTE IN RHYME.

I took up my Tennyson lately and read his dialect verse
Of the sturdy old “Northern Farmer,” whose soul was in his purse;
How he berated Sam, his son, who wanted to marry for “loove,”
And the folly of such a notion sought earnestly to prove.

“ ’Ear my ’erse’s legs,” says he, “as they canters and canters awaay,
Proputty, proputty, proputty—that’s wot I ’ears ’em saay!”
“Proputty, proputty, proputty”—that was the only thing
That to him was of real importance concerning a wedding ring.

Gentleness, truth and sweetness; a pretty figure and face,
These, and a passionate love, are all very well in their place;
But to be of any account in blushing, prospective brides,
“Proputty, proputty, proputty”—that must be there, besides!

Now, to many who read the poem this Northern Farmer seems
A sordid old grasping wretch, who only of riches dreams;
“Proputty, proputty, proputty.”—so runs his one refrain,
“Proputty, proputty, proputty”—hoarding, profit and gain.

Meum, Tuum and Stealum

Another gem, also from the Leavenworth Labor News -- a little bit of filler at the bottom of a column:

Qualified Ownership

The moral law recognizes three kinds of ownership: what belongs to me, what belongs to you, and what I can legally steal from you.  "Meum," "Tuum" and "Stealum."

My high school Latin is long behind me, but I think the 3rd person plural would be Nostrum --- "ours," as in common property. 

(And http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/latin/stage-1-latin/resources/stage-1-latin-grammar-resource/pronouns/ didn't refresh my memory much.) 

 

Working, Begging or Stealing; Workers, Beggars or Thieves -- and putting one's family first

How far is the saying true that "Every one lives either by working, or by begging, or by stealing."' Observe: This is primarily a question merely of fact, and not of right or wrong. There may be (1) Right Work and Wrong Work; (2) Begging that is justifiable, and Begging that is unjustifiable; (3) Stealing which is pardonable, and stealing which is unpardonable. In simply placing, therefore, any class of persons under one or another of these three heads, I am not necessarily either praising or blaming the individual members of that class. Again, of two paid workers one may be greatly underpaid, and the other as greatly overpaid. But neither is this consideration embraced in the question before us. We have not to do, tonight, with the merits of any individual, nor with the value or valuelessness of any kind of work, nor yet with the equitable assignment in any particular case of the reward of work. Let us, in the first place, classify the members of English society by dividing them simply into — I. Workers, and II. NonWorkers. I. Workers, e.g.: — Manual labourers, skilled and unskilled; domestic servants; soldiers; sailors; farmers; clerks and overseers; professional men; retail and wholesale dealers; merchants and manufacturers; bankers (sleeping partners are excepted); teachers and preachers; artists, authors, and editors; high officers and Ministers of State; the Sovereign; housewives. All these are doing work, and are receiving pay in coin or kind in return for their work. Some of them may be doing unpaid (honorary) work as well as paid work; and others may be getting interest (on a capital for which they never worked) in addition to those wages of superintendence which are strictly the reward of a merchant's or manufacturer's work. Again, some of them may be working in appointed places for definite salaries, while others may be working, so to speak, "on their own hook," or, in more elegant language, "paddling their own canoe." By what mark, then, shall we distinguish the type of man who lives by his work? What is his definition? He is the man who lives upon pay, in coin or kind, which is given him in return for his personal services. And only in proportion as his means of living are derived from such pay, or from his personal labour on the soil, can he properly be said to "live by working.'' We have next to consider who are the (II.) Non-Workers of Society, and whether they may all, without exception, be properly included in the two classes, "Beggars," and "Stealers" — whether, in fact, this two-fold division of them is an exhaustive one. Now, Beggars and Thieves are alike in these respects, that they, both of them, consume without producing, enjoy without labouring, are served but render no service to others, receive but give not in return, are clever in subtraction, but failures in addition. Wherein, then, do they differ from each other? They differ, for the purposes of the present argument, only in the different dispositions of their respective victims towards them. The victim of the Beggar is a willing victim; he is influenced by custom, or by compassion for weakness, pain, or privation. On the other hand, the victim of the Thief is an unwilling victim. It may be that he is unconscious of the spoliation that is perpetrated upon him.

Shiller: Too Many Graduating Seniors Go Into Finance

One might be led to ask, how many is enough, and how we might go about encouraging our best and brightest into careers that serve others instead of rent-seeking.  Two generations ago, many became doctors, engineers and teachers.  

• What changes in public policy will reduce the returns now funneled so generously to the rent-seekers, leaving more for the folks who labor in the productive sectors of the economy?  
• Why do we pay so little attention to rent-seeking?  
• Why is rent-seeking taught to our MBAs, but the impacts of rent-seeking not taught to our liberal arts, social sciences, political science, public policy students?   
• D'ya think that the rent-seekers might really really like it this way??

Shiller: Too Many Graduating Seniors Go Into Finance

http://www.moneynews.com/Economy/Shiller-financial-field-speculative/2013/09/25/id/527558

Too many of the our brightest people may be choosing careers in finance, undertaking economically and socially useless — and even harmful — activities, Robert Shiller, a Yale University economics professor, writes in an article for Project Syndicate.

A survey of elite U.S. universities showed that 25 percent of Harvard graduating seniors, 24 percent of Yale graduating seniors and 46 percent of Princeton graduating seniors were going into financial services in 2006, notes Shiller, co-creator of the Case-Shiller home price index. 

While those proportions have fallen more recently, he explains that might only be a temporary effect of the financial crisis.

And more are going into speculative fields like investment banking rather than traditional finance such as lending, he says, citing a study by Thomas Philippon of the Stern School of Business, New York University and Ariell Reshef of the University of Virginia. 

We need some traders and speculators, Shiller concedes, as they provide some useful service — sorting through information about businesses and trying to judge their real worth.

"But these people's activities also impose costs on the rest of us," he explains. Much of their speculation and deal making is "pure rent-seeking." 

"In other words, it is wasteful activity that achieves nothing more than enabling the collection of rents on items that might otherwise be free."

Those working in speculative finance fields are like a feudal lord installing a chain across a river to charge fees on passing boats, he argues. Making no improvements to the river, the lord does nothing productive and helps no one but himself. Few people will use the river if enough lords put chains across it to collect fees. 

Those working in speculative fields, he says, "skim the best business deals, creating a 'negative externality' on those who are not party to them."

For example, they can reject bad assets, such as subprime mortgage securities, offloading them to less knowledgeable investors. 

The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which blocked commercial banks from investment banking, allowed bankers to act more and more like those feudal lords collecting fees.

"In fact, the main advantages of the original Glass-Steagall Act," he says, "may have been more sociological than technical, changing the business culture and environment in subtle ways. By keeping the deal-making business separate, banks may have focused more on their traditional core business."

A paper by economists at Columbia University and Princeton published on the Social Science Research Network website showed that over-the-counter (OTC) traders allowed informed dealers to extract excessive rents and to undermine organized exchanges by "cream-skimming" the best deals. 

"The informational rents in OTC markets in turn attract too much talent to the financial industry, which would be more efficiently deployed as real-sector entrepreneurs," the paper asserts.

Plus, OTC dealers' rents tend to increase "as there are more informed dealers, because the greater cream-skimming by dealers worsens the terms entrepreneurs can get for their assets on the organized exchange, and therefore their bargaining power on OTC markets."

The Earth-for-All Calendar: Undecimber 14 -- Rousseau

He who eats in idleness what he himself has not earned, steals; and the landholder whom the State pays for doing nothing does not differ from a brigand who lives at the expense of travelers.

— Rousseau.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: Undecimber 7 -- Renan

In our society, established upon a very rigorous idea of property, the position of the poor man is horrible; he has literally no place under the sun. There are no flowers, no shade, no grass but for him who possesses the earth. In the East these are the gifts of God, which belong to no man. The proprietor has but a slender privilege; nature is the patrimony of all.

—Ernest Renan, "Life of Jesus," Chapter X.

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 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 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: July 25 -- Ruskin

These principles the professor (Fawcett) goes on contentedly to investigate, never appearing to contemplate for an instant the possibility of the first principle of the whole business — the maintenance, by force, of the possession of land obtained by force, being ever called in question by any human mind. It is nevertheless the nearest task of our day to discover how far original theft may be justly encountered by reactionary theft, or whether reactionary theft be indeed theft at all; and farther, what, excluding either original or corrective theft, are the just conditions of the possession of land.

— JOHN RUSKIN, Munera Pulveris, (1871), p. 20.

What we propose -- and the alternative

It is not proposed to confiscate any value that has been created by human industry. This would be robbery. But when the community creates wealth it is entitled to it as much as the individual is to the wealth he creates.

-- From The Irish World, cited in the first issue of Henry George's weekly newspaper, The Standard.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: June 11 - Old English Rhyme

It is a sin for man or woman
To steal a goose from off the common;
But who shall plead that man's excuse
Who steals the common from the goose?

— Old English Rhyme, quoted in Gowing's Life of Cobden, p. 120, note.

What Tolstoy Taught: Human Rights

In a recent column in the NYT entitled "Description is Prescription", David Brooks made references to Tolstoy, and it sent me looking to see whether a book I remembered was available via Google Books.  The book was written in 1905 by Bolton Hall, and it is entitled "What Tolstoy Taught."  Its final chapter, "Human Rights," follows:

(Tolstoy proclaimed the law of love as enunciated by Christ; the political rights as enunciated by Thomas Jefferson; the economic rights as announced by Henry George: the two latter as amplifications of the first; all being essential to man's earthly welfare. Tolstoy's philosophy was progressive. At first he saw that the law of love was necessary; then he recognized the necessity of equal political rights; next he recognized that without economic justice these remedies were futile, and he accordingly embraced the philosophy of Henry George, as evidenced by the following article addressed to the Russian people.— Ed.)

A number of suggestions have been made as to how to divide, in the most just manner, all land among the workers, but of all these only the one made by the late Henry George appears to me to be practicable.

The property right, Henry George wrote in his book about the single tax, is founded not on human laws, but on the laws of God. It is undeniable and absolute, and everyone who violates It, be it an individual or a nation, commits a theft.

A man who catches a fish, who plants a tree, builds a house, constructs a machine, sews a dress or paints a picture, thereby becomes the owner of the results of his own efforts — he has the right to give them away, to sell them or to leave them to his heirs. As the land has not been created by us, and only serves as the temporary residence of changing generations of human beings, it is clear that nobody can own the exclusive right to possess land, and that the rights of all men to it are equal and inalienable.

The right to own land is limited by the equal rights of all others, and this imposes upon the temporary possessor of land the duty to remunerate society for the valuable privilege given him to use the land in his possession.

When we impose a tax upon houses, crops, or money in any form, we take from members of society something which by right belongs to them, we violate the property right and commit a theft in the name of the law; while when we impose a tax upon land we take from members of society something which does not belong to them, but to society, and which cannot be given to them except at a detriment to others. We thus violate the laws of justice when we place a tax on labor or the results of labor, and we also violate them if we do not levy a tax on land.

Let us, therefore, decide to stop levying all taxes except the tax on the value of land, regardless of the buildings erected or the improvements made on it, but only on the value which natural or social conditions give to it.

If we place this single tax on land the results will be these:

1. The tax will relieve us of the whole army of officials necessary to collect the present taxes, which will diminish the cost of government, at the same time making it more honest. It will rid us of all the taxes which lead to lying, to perjury, to frauds of all kinds. All land is visible, and cannot be hidden, and its value is fixed easier than that of any other property, and the single tax can be determined at less expense and less danger to public morals.

2. It will to a great extent increase the production of wealth, doing away with the discouraging tax upon labor and thrift, and it will make the land more accessible to those who want to work or improve, as the proprietors, who do not work themselves, but speculate in its increasing value, will find it difficult to keep up such expensive property. The tax on labor, on the other hand, leads to the accumulation of immense fortunes in a few hands, and the increasing poverty of the masses. This unjust division of wealth on one side leads to the creation of one class of people who are idle and corrupt, because they are too rich, and the creation of another class of people who are too poor, and thus doubly delays the production of wealth. This unjust division of wealth creates on one side terrible millionaires, and on the other side vagrants, beggars, thieves, gamblers and social parasites of various kinds, and necessitates an enormous expense for officials to watch these — policemen, judges, prisons and other means which society uses in self-defense.

The single tax is a remedy for all these evils.

I do not mean to say that this tax will transform human nature, for that is not within the power of man, but it will create conditions under which human nature will grow better instead of worse, as under the present conditions. It will make possible an increase of wealth, of which it is hardly possible to form an idea. It will make undeserved poverty impossible. It will do away with the demoralizing struggle for a living. It will make it possible for men to be honest, just, reasonable and noble, if they desire to be so. It will prepare the soil for the coming of the epoch of justice, abundance, peace and happiness, which Christ told His disciples of.

Let us suppose that in a certain place all land belongs to two owners — one very rich, who lives far away, and another, not rich, living and working at home — and to a hundred of small peasants owning a few acres each. Besides these, there live on that place some scores of people who own no land — mechanics, merchants, and officials.

Now let us suppose that the people of that community, having arrived at the conclusion that the land is common property, decide to dispose of the land according to their new conviction.

What would they do? Take all the land away from those who own it, and give everybody the right to take the land he desires? That could not be done, because there would be several people who would want the same ground, and this would lead to endless quarrels. To form one society and work all things in common would be difficult, because some have carts, wagons, horses and cattle, while others have none, and, besides, some people do not know how to till the soil, or are not strong enough.

To divide all the land in equal parts, according to its value, and allow one part to each is very difficult, and this would, besides, be impracticable, because the lazy and poor would lease their property to the rich for money, and these would soon again be in possession of it all.

The inhabitants of the community, therefore, decide to leave the land in the possession of those who own it, and to order each owner to pay into the common treasury money representing the revenue which had been decided on after appraising the value of the land, not according to the work or the improvements made on it, but to its quality and situation, and this money was to be divided equally among all.

But as it was difficult first to take this money from all those who held the land, and then divide it equally among all the members of the community, and as these members, besides, paid money toward the public needs — schools, fire departments, roads, etc.— and as this money was always needed, they decided to use all the money derived from those who had the use of the land, for public needs.

Having made this arrangement, the members of the community levied the tax for the use of land on the two large owners, and also on the small peasants, but no tax at all was imposed on those who held no land.

This caused the one landowner who lived far away, and who derived little income from his property, to realize that it did not pay to hold on to land thus taxed, and he gave it up. The other large owner gave up part of his land, and kept only that part which produced more than the amount of his tax. Those of the peasants who held small properties, and who had plenty of men, and not enough land, as well as some of those who held no land at all, but who desired to make a living by working the land, took up the land surrendered by its former owners.

After that all the members of the community could live on the land and make a living from it, and all land passed into the hands of or remained with those who loved to work it, and who made it produce the most. The public institutions flourished and the wealth of the community increased, for there was more money than before for public needs; and the most important fact was that this change in the ownership of land took place without any discussions, quarrels, or discord, by the voluntary surrender of the land by those who did not derive any profit from it.

This is the project of Henry George, which, if tried here, would make Russia wealthy and happy, and which is practicable all over the world.