Frank de Jong, Green Part of Ontario Leader Frank toured Australia this time last year for the True Cost Economics Forum. He wrote this piece in lieu of exciting developments in Canada. For the first time to my knowledge, Toronto will be collecting economic rent to pay for infrastructure — in this case to redevelop [...]

INSITE: Bulletin of the Land Policy Council
Editor: Fred Harrison, April 1996, Vol 2 (3)

Kill the Tax Scams and Create Jobs

IT’ S ENOUGH to make Marx turn in his grave! His arch champion, the Soviet Union, capitulated to the capitalists in 1991 just as the market economies crashed into their most severe crisis since the 1930s.

Government ministers from the seven richest nations on earth burdened with 24m jobless people, double the number since the spirit of Thatcher/Reagan was unleashed in 1979 – met in Lille on April 2 to agonise about what to do. Global unemployment is running at 700m people, according to the International Labour Organisation, but governments are bereft of ideas about what to do to liberate the labour market.

TAYLOR CALDWELL

THE MIDDLE CLASS

With the rise of the Industrial Civilization in the world about two hundred years ago, there also arose a social body which we know as the middle class. Before that, most of the world suffered under a feudal system in which the people were truly slaves of their governments in all things. There was no strong buffer between them and their despotic rulers, no assurance of freedom to pursue commerce and to live decently, to keep the fruits of their labor and hold the paying of tribute at a minimum. The middle class made the dream of liberty a possibility, set limits on the government, fought for its constitutions, removed much of governmental privilege and tyranny, demanded that rulers obey the just laws as closely as the people, and enforced a general civic morality.

The Henry George Lecture at St. John’s University: March 18, 1997

Nicolaus Tideman

There is a bumper sticker that says, “If you want peace, then work for justice.” At a superficial level, this simple slogan contains an important half-truth. At a deeper level, it contains a more profound half-truth. To understand these half-truths and why they are only half true, we need to know what peace is, what justice is, and we need to understand the relationship between the two. So in this talk I want to explore the meanings of peace and justice, their relationship, and the role of economic reform in attaining both.

Mason Gaffney, Professor of Economics, University of California

What happens when a state radically slashes its property tax?

California can show you 17 years of experience. Here is what has happened since California passed Proposition 13 in 1978.

The obvious direct results have been to cut public services, raise other taxes, and lose credit rating.

Our school support fell from #5, nationally, to #40 in 1985 when last seen, still falling. County road maintenance is down to where my county (Riverside) is repaving its roads at an annual rate of once every 130 years. Once in 20 years is recommended here, and up north you generally need higher frequency. You can’t just build infrastructure and then stop paying for it, it’s a perpetual commitment. Thanks to urban scatter, a high fraction of our population now depends on these county roads.