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Single Parents
Thirty years ago, one salary, even a woman's (on
average 75% or so of a man's salary) was enough to
support a family — not luxuriously, but
manageably. This meant that a divorced woman could
provide for her family, or a single mother could provide
provide for herself and a child. It also meant that
while children were young, a married couple could afford
to have one parent at home caring for the children
full-time, if they chose.
Today, the picture is very different. It takes two
salaries to support a family, and the families of single
parents are at a distinct disadvantage. Where has
all the money gone? Gone to landholders, every
one. When will we ever learn?
Take a look at Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi's book
"The Two Income Trap ..." for
some of the specifics.
But had we as a society been wise enough -- that is,
our parents', or grandparents', or great-grandparents'
generations -- to start collecting the annual value of
the land from its holders, we might not have found
ourselves in that position. The rise in incomes
created by the entry of women into the workforce would
not have, like all other benefits under land monopoly
capitalism, accrued to the individual, corporate and
other landholders, and while the value of choice
land would have risen, its price would not. Only
its rent would be higher, and that rent would be
collected for the commons, instead of taxing our income
and our transactions.
But there is another question worth thinking about.
Why is it that so many women are willing to "go it
alone," rather than waiting until they are married, to
have children? Are they more sure that they want to have
children while they are young, and expect to be able to
see them through to adulthood, even if it means raising
them alone? Is our current economy not leading to a large
number of our young men not being considered marriageable
by our young women?
What might we change in society to create jobs and
prosperity for all?
Henry George: Thou
Shalt Not Steal (1887 speech)
Natural religion and revealed religion alike tell
us that God is no respecter of persons; that He did not
make this planet for a few individuals; that He did not
give it to one generation in preference to other
generations, but that He made it for the use during their
lives of all the people that His providence brings into
the world. If this be true, the child that is born
tonight in the humblest tenement in the most squalid
quarter of New York, comes into life seized with as good
a title to the land of this city as any Astor or
Rhinelander.
How do we know that the Almighty is against
poverty? That it is not in accordance with His decree
that poverty exists? We know it because we know this,
that the Almighty has declared: "Thou shalt not steal."
And we know for a truth that the poverty that exists
today in the midst of abounding wealth is the result of a
system that legalizes theft.
The women who by the thousands are bending over
their needles or sewing machines, thirteen, fourteen,
sixteen hours a day; these widows straining and striving
to bring up the little ones deprived of their natural
breadwinner; the children that are growing up in squalor
and wretchedness, underclothed, underfed, undereducated,
even in this city, without any place to play —
growing up under conditions in which only a miracle can
keep them pure — under conditions which condemn
them in advance to the penitentiary or the brothel
— they suffer, they die, because we permit them to
be robbed, robbed of their birthright, robbed by a system
which disinherits the vast majority of the children that
come into the world.
There is enough and to spare for them. Had they
the equal rights in the estate which their Creator has
given them, there would be no young girls forced to
unwomanly toil to eke out a mere existence; no widows
finding it such a bitter, bitter struggle to put bread
into the mouths of their little children; no such misery
and squalor as we may see here in the greatest of
American cities; misery and squalor that are deepest in
the largest and richest centers of our civilization
today.
These things are the results of legalized theft,
the fruit of a denial of that commandment that says:
"Thou shalt not steal." How is this great commandment
interpreted today, even by men who preach the Gospel?
"Thou shalt not steal." Well, according to some of them,
it means: "Thou shalt not get into the penitentiary." Not
much more than that with some. You may steal, provided
you steal enough, and you do not get caught. Do not steal
a few dollars — that may be dangerous, but if you
steal millions and get away with it, you become one of
our first citizens. ... read the whole
article
Karl Williams:
Two Cow Economics
NEOCLASSICAL LAND-MONOPOLY
CAPITALIST
You have two cows and several hectares of land.
Your neighbour is a single mother, has no cows, no
land and works a part-time job.
You tell her that if she works longer and harder she
could buy one of your cows and become an enterprising
capitalist. So she takes on full-time work so that, after
3 months, she has saved enough money to buy one of your
cows.
But what use is a cow (or anything, for that matter)
without a plot of your land, which is now worth
$20,000?
So your neighbour takes on a night shift in addition
to her day job, leaving for work after the kids are in
bed and arriving home just in time to get them dressed
for school.
After a year she has saved enough money to buy that
land.
Expressing great regret you explain that, in the
meantime, the taxes on her income have paid for the
infrastructure that have boosted the value of your land,
so that the current market price for that plot is now
worth $30,000. Back to the grindstone, baby!
Another year of sweat and toil follows, after which
she returns with the money. But, with hand on heart, you
break the news that economic circumstances have recently
driven most single and married mothers to bring in an
extra income in order to save for the ever-escalating
price of land. As no-one’s making any more land,
the greater number of bidders has pushed up the price of
the fixed amount of land (this is called a
“healthy, buoyant property market”).
It’s now worth $40,000 but it would be a lot easier
if she just got a bank loan, you tell her. However, all
those eager bidders for land have also bid up the rate of
interest they’re prepared to suffer, so that
interest rates are now prohibitive. Your neighbour
collapses in tears at your feet, but what can you do?
– you didn’t invent the system! Just as our
poor mum relents and considers taking out a mortgage, she
finally gets some good news – in a surprise move,
the Reserve Bank has decided to make it easier on
prospective home-owners by reducing interest rates.
However, this has had the effect of making the owning of
property more attractive, so – immediately the
interest rate decision is announced – landowners
raise the selling price of land. The “fair market
price” of that plot is now $50,000.
However, under political pressure because of the
unaffordability of property, the federal government
announce that it will institute a First Home
Owners’ grant of $7,000. Suddenly that plot is
selling for $57,000.
GEOIST
You have two cows and several acres of land.
Your neighbour is a single mother, has no cows, no
land and works a minimum wage job.
You’ve had an amazing vision wherein you see the
geoist paradigm in all its glory and realise that all
other reforms are just band-aids, so you become an
activist with ProsperAustralia. You share your insight
with your neighbour and so everyone pulls together to
successfully reform our insane tax laws and system of
land tenure. As a result:
(1) your neighbour can keep all of her hard-earned
income, and
(2) those who have enclosed substantial amounts of the
Common Wealth for their own private domain now pay fair
land value taxation (LVT) to society.
Your LVT bill arrives and you realise you have been
holding more land than you really need, so auction off
the title to your land and the improvements on it.
Because of genuine tax relief, your neighbour can now
afford to buy the property.
And so - with LVT and trust and angel dust - they all
live happily ever after. ...
read the whole article
Jeff Smith: What the
Left Must Do: Share the Surplus
What would you do if you could work two days
and take five off? Write? Play soccer? Tend to the
community garden? Time off is an option made increasingly
viable by our relentlessly rising rate of productivity.
French Marxist and media critic Jean Baudrillard, while
still advancing the interests of labor, implores the Left
to move on from seeing humans as workers to seeing
workers as human beings, with more needs than merely the
material. Enabling people to live their
lives more fully is an issue made to order for
rescuing the Left from the doldrums that descended when
“history ended”.
What would single mothers do with enough income to
stay home? What would minorities do with the wherewithal
to begin their own businesses? What would communities do
if they did not leak resources up to an upper class and
out to a distant lender or tax collector? What would the
elite do without our commonwealth? The means to these
ends is an extra income apart from labor or capital
(savings), that is, a “social salary” from
society’s surplus, a “Citizens
Dividend” from all the rents, natural and
governmental, that people pay for land and to the
privileged, redirected to everyone equally. Merely
demanding a fair sharing of the bounty from nature and
modern society would raise people’s self-esteem, a
key component for political involvement. Actually
receiving an income supplement would transform our lives
and restructure society.
Unless humanity needs militarism, corporate
welfare, and debt service, it’s fair to say most
public revenue gets wasted. Demanding a dividend –
similar to Alaska paying residents a share from oil
royalties – forces a new dialog on spending
priorities. Beyond arguing “bread not bombs,”
a dividend replaces expenditures by politicians
(necessarily influenced by donors) with spending by
citizens, the people who generate the surplus in the
first place. With a dividend, citizens get to see
themselves as direct beneficiaries from reigning in the
wild spending spree on imperial aggression, disloyal
multinationals, and on “borrowing” money that
never existed until “lent” by the Federal
Reserve. ...
Demanding jobs rather than a fair
share of society’s surplus implies that there is no
commonwealth or that expropriating it by a few is OK.
Neither is true. Rents are real, and they are
ours. There is a free lunch (just ask the privileged), as
those downing it do get money for nothing. And since
society, not lone owners, generates these values, that
flow of funds belongs to everyone.
Read the whole
article
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