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Thomas Jefferson and Jeffersonian
Ideals
Thomas Jefferson understood man's necessary connection
to the land, and recognized that without access to land
guaranteed, equality could not be maintained.
All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of
man. The general spread of the light of science has
already laid open to every view the palpable truth,
that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles
on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred,
ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of
God.
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman,
June 26, 1826,
before the celebration of the 50th anniversary
of the Declaration of Independence
Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, dated
October 28, 1785:
Legislators cannot invent too many devices for
subdividing property, only taking care to let their
subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural
affections of the human mind. The descent of property
of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all
the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal
degree, is a politic measure, and a practicable one.
Another means of silently lessening the
inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation
below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions
of property in geometrical progression as they
rise.
Whenever there is in any country,
uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear
that the laws of property have been so far extended as
to violate natural right. The earth is given as a
commonstock for man to labour and live
on. If for the encouragement of industry
we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that
other employment be provided to those excluded from the
appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to
labour the earth returns to the unemployed.
It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man
who cannot find employment but who can find
uncultivated land shall be at liberty to cultivate it,
paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to
provide by every possible means that as few as possible
shall be without a little portion of land. The small
land holders are the most precious part of a state.
Henry George: The Common Sense of
Taxation (1881 article)
The true purposes of government are well stated in
the preamble to the Constitution of the United States,
as they are in the Declaration of Independence. To
insure the general peace, to promote the general
welfare, to secure to each individual the inalienable
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
— these are the proper ends of government, and
are therefore the ends which in every scheme of
taxation should be kept in mind.
As to amount of taxation, there is no principle
which imposes any arbitrary limit. Heavy taxation is
better for any community than light taxation, if the
increased revenue be used in doing by public agencies
things which could not be done, or could not be as well
and economically done, by private agencies. Taxes could
be lightened in the city of New York by dispensing with
street-lamps and disbanding the police force. But would
a reduction in taxation gained in this way be for the
benefit of the people of New York and make New York a
more desirable place to live in? Or if it should be
found that heat and light could be conducted through
the streets at public expense and supplied to each
house at but a small fraction of the cost of supplying
them by individual effort, or that the city railroads
could be run at public expense so as to give every one
transportation at very much less than it now costs the
average resident, the increased taxation necessary for
these purposes would not be increased burden, and in
spite of the larger taxation required, New York would
become a more desirable place to live in. It is a
mistake to condemn taxation as bad merely because it is
high; it is a mistake to impose by constitutional
provision, as in many of our States has been advocated,
and in some of our States has been done, any
restriction upon the amount of taxation. A restriction
upon the incurring of public indebtedness is another
matter. In nothing is the far-reaching statesmanship of
Jefferson more clearly shown than in his proposition
that all public obligations should be deemed void after
a certain brief term — a proposition which he
grounds upon the self-evident truth that the earth
belongs in usufruct to the living, and that the dead
have no control over it, and can give no title to any
part of it. But restriction upon public debts is a very
different thing from restriction upon the power of
taxation, and reasons which urge the one do not apply
to the other. Nor is increased taxation necessarily
proof of governmental extravagance. Increase in
taxation is in the order of social development, for the
reason that social development tends to the doing of
things collectively that in a ruder state are done
individually, to the giving to government of new
functions and the imposing of new duties. Our public
schools and libraries and parks, our signal service and
fish commissions and agricultural bureaus and
grasshopper investigations, are evidences of this. ...
read the whole
article
a synopsis of Robert V. Andelson and James M. Dawsey:
From Wasteland
to Promised land: Liberation Theology for a Post-Marxist
World
Because George asserted, "We
must make land common property," he is sometimes
erroneously regarded as an advocate of land
nationalization. But, as we have seen, he was nothing
of the sort. The expropriation of land makes it
practically impossible to fairly compensate people for
the improvements to land, which are their legitimate
property. George's system renders to
the community what is due to the community, without
doing any violence to the wealth that has been fairly
earned by productive workers.
Common property in land is sometimes discredited
by equation with what Garrett Hardin calls
"The Tragedy of the Commons."
Referring to the common lands that were a major English
institution until the mid-nineteenth century, Hardin
describes the tendency of individuals, each rationally
pursuing self-interest, to overgraze, denude, and use
the commons as a cesspool. That which belongs to
everybody in this sense is, indeed, in danger of being
valued and maintained by nobody.
The enclosure movement
ultimately brought an end to this ecologically
destructive process, but not without literally pushing
people off the land, exacting a baneful price in human
misery that might well be termed "The
Tragedy of the Enclosures." George hit upon a way of securing the benefits of
both commons and enclosures, while at the same time
avoiding their evils. Land value taxation rectifies
distribution so that all receive wealth in proportion
to their contribution to its production. This liberates
the economic system from exploiters who contribute
little or nothing. Apportioning the wealth pie
fairly increases the incentive to increase the size of
the pie. The market becomes in
practice what capitalist theory alleges it to be -- a
profoundly cooperative process of voluntary exchange of
goods and services. Paradoxical though it may seem, the only way the
individual may be assured what properly belongs to him
or her is for society to take what properly belongs to
it: The ideal of Jeffersonian individualism requires
for its actualization the socialization of
rent.
Just as Marxists err in
insisting that everything be socialized, extreme
capitalists err in insisting that everything (even
public parks and forests!) be privatized. The middle way is to recognize society's claim to
what nature and society create -- the value of land and
its rent -- so that working people, including
entrepreneurs, may claim their full share of what they
create. In this balanced approach can be found
the authentic verities respectively inherent in
socialism and individualism. Read
the whole synopsis
Dan Sullivan: Are you a Real Libertarian, or
a ROYAL Libertarian?
Classical liberals recognized that exclusive
access to land, and especially to more land than one
was using, was a privilege that should be paid for,
thereby eliminating the need for taxes. It is not a fee
for using land, but a fee for the state privilege of
denying use of that land to everyone else.
Men did not make the earth.... It is the
value of the improvement only, and not the earth
itself, that is individual property.... Every
proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for
the land which he holds. --Tom Paine, "Agrarian
Justice," paragraphs 11 to 15
Another means of silently
lessening the inequality of [landed] property is to
exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and
to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical
progression as they rise. --Thomas
Jefferson
Today's land value tax advocates
consider graduated land value tax to be unnecessary and
problematic, leading to artificial subdivision (and phony
subdivision) of land. The point is that Jefferson, to
whom libertarians pay homage, considered land monopoly a
great evil and land value tax a remedy, as did many other
classical liberals:
Ground rents are a species of revenue which
the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or
attention of his own. Ground rents are, therefore,
perhaps a species of revenue which can best bear to
have a peculiar tax imposed upon them. --Adam
Smith
Landlords grow richer in their sleep,
without working, risking, or economizing. The increase
in the value of land, arising as it does from the
efforts of an entire community, should belong to the
community and not to the individual who might hold
title. --John Stuart Mill ...
Read the whole piece
Fred E. Foldvary — The Ultimate Tax Reform:
Public Revenue from Land Rent
Thomas Jefferson believed “the Earth is given
as a common stock for men to labour and live
on.”15 In 1797, he suggested “a land tax
supply the means by which the individual States were to
contribute their quotas of revenue to the Federal
Government.”16
From 1778 to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution
in 1789, the United States was governed by the Articles
of Confederation. Article VII stated the expenses of
the Confederation shall be defrayed out of a common
treasury, which shall be supplied by the several
states, in proportion to the value of all land within
each state, granted to or surveyed for any person, as
such land and the buildings and improvements thereon
shall be estimated according to such mode as the United
States in Congress assembled, shall from time to time
direct and appoint. The taxes for paying that
proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority
and direction of the legislatures of the several states
within the time agreed upon by the United States in
Congress assembled.17
Thus, the states would levy taxes and each would
pass on a share of the federal budget based on its land
value. Individuals would pay taxes only to their state
and local governments.18 ... read the whole
document
Peter Barnes:
Capitalism 3.0 — Chapter 7: Universal Birthrights
(pages 101-116)
The Idea of Birthrights
John Locke’s response to royalty’s claim
of divine right was the idea of everyone’s
inherent right to life, liberty, and property. Thomas
Jefferson, in drafting America’s Declaration of
Independence, changed Locke’s trinity to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These, Jefferson
and his collaborators agreed, are gifts from the
creator that can’t be taken away. Put slightly
differently, they’re universal birthrights.
The Constitution and its amendments added meat to
these elegant bones. They guaranteed such birthrights
as free speech, due process, habeas corpus, speedy
public trials, and secure homes and property. Wisely,
the Ninth Amendment affirmed that “the
enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
retained by the people.” In that spirit, others
have since been added.
If we were to analyze the expansion of American
birthrights, we’d see a series of waves. The
first wave consisted of rights against the state. The
second included rights against unequal treatment based
on race, nationality, gender, or sexual orientation.
The third wave — which, historically speaking, is
just beginning — consists of rights not against
things, but for things — free public education,
collective bargaining for wages, security in old age.
They can be thought of as rights necessary for the
pursuit of happiness. ...
read the whole chapter
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