If we knew how to reduce or eliminate boom-bust cycles, it seems to me that it would be our duty and our pleasure and our privilege to act on that knowledge.
I think Henry George saw clearly, 125 years ago, the same phenomena that are at work today, and that he correctly identified the underlying causes. Better yet, he described how to remedy the problem.
But those who profit from the current way of doing things represent a powerful force (not dissimilar from what we've recently seen with respect to the 18 billionaire families who have sought the end of the estate tax, by trying to convince ordinary folks that they are negatively affected by it). Who profits? Those who own our most valuable land, which can be worth $250 million per acre -- a far cry from the land most of us own, which might be worth a tiny fraction of that amount. (You know about the Lion's Share? They are getting the Lion's Share of the economic benefit of the labor of all of us. The Lion's Share doesn't leave much for anyone else. No wonder so many of us must struggle just to meet our families' most simply defined needs!)
When I first read George's landmark book Progress and Poverty, the thing that most amazed me was that by 1879, the economic and social problems that we face today were already so prominent that he (a) saw them clearly and (b) was moved to figure out the underlying issues. I had tended to think of concentrated wealth and income as reasonably new problems. Not new at all, and think how they have spiraled out in the intervening 125 years.
If more of us understood the causes, and forced our elected representatives, at all levels of government, to become conversant, we might move the debate and discussion ahead.
Unfortunately, where we are right now is something like trying to learn physics while pretending gravity is irrelevant!
Our system creates misery for the many, huge land profits for the few, and high hopes for just enough people. Sort of like the lottery. And maybe part of the reason so many people take a chance on lottery tickets -- and have such high hopes for them. Wages just haven't kept up with the price of land -- and can't, the way we do things now.
Can we correct it? Yes. Emphatically, yes!!
But we need to look at real tax reform, tax reform that goes outside the income tax box within which most of what currently passes for tax reform resides.
Where to start? Read more of George's ideas, or material on the wealthandwant website, http://www.wealthandwant.com/. Check out the online courses at the Henry George Institute (free, or nearly so, depending on how you do it) at http://www.henrygeorge.org/). Check out CGO (at http://www.progress.org/cgo/) and their upcoming conference.
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