Georgist Conference in O'Fallon, Part Twenty-Three

To continue with Open Mike the morning of July 29, Dr. Polly Cleveland said that land value taxation may raise, rather than lower, land values. It depends on the size of the jurisdiction, what the tax rate is, and what the revenue is spent on. For a small jurisdiction, wages don't go up.

Alan Ridley spoke about Charles Ashira's proposed film about Henry George. Could we have a skit about Henry George? Secondly, he spoke about the cattle king of California, Henry Miller, born Heinrich Kreiser, a butcher's son and apprentice in Germany. After his mother died, in 1837, he moved to New York, aged 30. He worked as a butcher, and was allowed to keep the intestines, from which he named sausages. He made friends with a man named Henry Miller, who had a ticket to San Francisco, and couldn't use it. So Heinrich changed his name to Henry Miller, and became a butcher in the Gold Rush. He got away from longhorn cattle, and obtained Herfords instead; he also acquired land, beginning in the 1850's. He made friends with assessors, a CA Supreme Court justice, and the governor, and became the largest landowner in the United States. Miller & Lux were partners.

To be continued.

Letter in Wednesday's Financial Times

An evidently well-read man named John Read had a letter published in Wednesday's Financial Times:

No one asks why human labour should be taxed

Sir, Lesley Spencer (Letters, February 14) highlights the taxation loss when employees are replaced by machine, yet nobody seems to question why the commercial use of humans should be taxed while the use of machines is tax free. After all, we have to work to live so why charge us for fulfilling that obligation?

One of the great tricks pulled by the landowner-controlled governments in the industrial revolution over the past 250 years was the transfer of the main burden of taxation from land to labour.

An effort was made with the People's Budget early in the last century to stop this, but following this failure and the growth of misguided attempts to solve the problem by increasing taxes on labour and capital, either directly or indirectly, governments find themselves increasingly locked into a situation of artificially inflated borrowings and land prices that cannot be sustained, the threat of catastrophic economic collapse appearing now to be a veritable sword of Damocles hangs over us.

Is it any wonder that nobody in power dares to speak the truth?

John Read
London NW11, UK