The Progressive Flat Tax
The flat tax fanatics are back. They say that if there were only one rate of income tax, the system would be simpler, and the rich couldn’t reduce their tax by converting one kind of income into another kind taxed…
Karl Fitzgerald
Karl Fitzgerald was the former Director of Research at Prosper Australia for 18 years. He now leads Grounded Community Land Trust Advocacy.
The Property Owner’s Suicide Bomb
In 1978 the voters of California, resentful of increases in property tax assessments caused by rapidly rising land values, enacted Proposition 13, which added Article 13A to the state constitution. This Article limited annual property taxes to 1% of the…
The Self-Hypothecating Tax
Opinion pollsters have consistently found that voters are more likely to support or tolerate a proposed tax if the revenue is hypothecated (i.e. reserved or “earmarked”) for a purpose of which the voters approve. They catch is: how can the…
Tolstoy and George
Victor Lebrun Victor Lebrun was a personal friend and Secretary to Leo Tolstoy. This is a translation of his article published in the July 1956 issue of the French periodical, Contre-Courant, and reprinted in the July-September 1956 issue of the…
Upton Sinclair and Dan Sullivan’s Review
The Consequences of Land Speculation are Tenantry and Debt on the Farms, and Slums and Luxury in the Cities by Upton Sinclair I know of a woman – I have never had the pleasure of making her acquaintance, because she…
Georgist Responds to Royal Libertarian
With great humility, an allodial ‘libertarian’ (that is, one who believes that land may be owned absolutely, without any annual rent or charge whatsoever for the privilege of exclusive ownership) wrote: "You should not presume to speak on behalf of…
Six Centuries of Work and Wages
Professor Thorold Rogers “I have stated more than once that the fifteenth century and the first quarter of the sixteenth were the golden age of the English labourer, if we are to interpret the wages which he earned by the…
Cheated, Robbed and Bamboozled
Richard Cobden: Parliamentary Corn Law debates [1845] “I warn ministers, and I warn landlords and the aristocracy of this country, against forcing on the attention of the middle and industrial classes, the subject of taxation ….. If you were to…
How To Abolish Unfair Taxation
Clarence Darrow, Attorney, Philosopher Clarence Darrow of Chicago became known and respected the world round as a courageous and intelligent foe of special privilege and monopoly. His social and economic philosophy rested on the same basic principles as those of…
The Mother of All Monopolies
Winston Churchill – From a Speech Delivered at King’s Theatre in Edinburgh on 17 July 1909 It is quite true that land monopoly is not the only monopoly which exists, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies –…