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Wealth and Want
... because democracy alone is not enough to produce widely shared prosperity.
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Superheroes and Heroes

"For some years prior to 1952 I was working on a history of American reform and over and over again my research ran into this fact: an enormous number of men and women, strikingly different people, men and women who were to lead 20th century America in a dozen fields of humane activity, wrote or told someone that their whole thinking had been redirected by reading "Progress and Poverty" in their formative years. In this respect no other book came anywhere near comparable influence, and I would like to add this word of tribute to a volume which magically catalyzed the best yearnings of our fathers and grandfathers."

- Dr. E. F. Goldman, Princeton University historian  

Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Spiderman, The Justice League, Powerpuff Girls ... All these superheroes are devoted to righting wrongs and protecting the powerless.  They hold a fascination for us, and particularly for our children. (Our children sometimes see injustice more clearly than we do, and are more offended by it.)

And yet we all have opportunities to work for justice and peace in the world, to go beyond simply offering charity to help the downtrodden withstand their plight or provide some skills which help a few individuals cope better in an unjust structure.

There is a bumpersticker which encourages us to do "random acts of kindness."  While it sounds nice, perhaps we should regard such acts as the icing on the cake — a cake we haven't even begun to bake yet.  We are called to first provide to all the means for earning their daily bread — and until we've assured that, we can't call ourselves civilized or just. Designing the curlicues for the icing when we haven't baked the cake seems to be rather irrelevant. (Also: starfish analogy)

Land Value Taxation is a way to moving to replace land monopoly capitalism with free market capitalism, and replace unjust and perverse taxes with taxes which are both just and pro-growth, and will reduce the hugely unjust distribution of wealth.

good triumphing over evil

Georgists see The Remedy as the most important thing that the U.S. as a society can do to reform itself, to move in the direction of becoming the country we say it is, what our founding fathers called for. (They said a lot of things that they didn't implement, but we've been moving in the direction of implementing: ending chattel slavery, recognizing women and non-whites as created equal to white men, etc.)


Jeff Smith: Steve Cord



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Wealth and Want
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... because democracy alone hasn't yet led to a society in which all can prosper