OpEdNews » Geonomics and the true cost of poverty

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Poverty Speculation Taxes Value Work (less...)

June 29, 2009 at 01:40:40

by Scott Baker Page 1 of 1 page(s)

Why are there so many poor people when the world seems so much wealthier as a whole? By wealthier, I mean there is more food, more housing (and bigger, better housing too), more of everything, in fact. I'll get to the obvious misdistribution and the true remedy in a moment, but would point out here that this question is not new; in fact, it was asked, and brilliantly answered by Henry George, a Political Philosopher who wrote the answer - and debunked all the others - in his earth-shattering book, Progress and Poverty , written in 1879, which sold 2 million copies in its first year (1879!) and remains the best-selling economics book of all time (it is still very much in print, as are George's other 8 books).

It is no coincidence the poor are often forced to live on marginal, polluted land. In fact, Henry George - really, the father of the Geonomics school of thought - predicted it. It's easy to see why: if someone owns the best land - and this ownership is backed up by legal and physical means (i.e. police, the justice system etc.), then other people will have no choice but to either agree to work on that land (and by 'land' I, and George, mean any natural resources - oil, water, land itself etc.), or to try to eke out a living on marginal, less productive land.

The injustice springs from the fact that neither party actually created the land, nature did. The land 'owner' should pay rent (in the form of land value taxes) to work the land, profiting from actual improvements, but paying the value of the raw resource back to ...

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