Intergenerational Equity

It is an odd system we have, that a young person who needs a place to live — a piece of land to live on, or a piece of land on which to run a business — must first pay off another individual, someone who individually did no more to create the value of that land than anyone else! Far more logical, and just, would be for the young person to buy from the previous owner whatever buildings are on a plot of land, and then, year by year or month by month, pay to the commons for the economic value of the land he claims as his own.

Were we to do this, we could reduce or eliminate most of our other taxes. Were we to do this, housing would become far more affordable. It would also mean that some of us — those who own valuable urban land — would not be able to retire on the sweat of younger people's brows.

Frederick Verinder: My Neighbor's Landmark: Short Studies in Bible Land Laws (1911) — Chapter 2: First Principles: "The Earth is The Lord's"

If, therefore, God, the sole Landowner, has given the land to "the children of men" — i.e. to the whole human race in its widest extension through time and space — it follows that no single generation, still less any single individual, has absolute ownership in land. It is not the right of property in land, but the right to use land — limited by the equal right of every one else, now and for ever, to use land — that God has given to man. No man can claim land as "his very own," "to do as he likes with," e.g. to sell. "The land shall not be sold for ever; for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me," saith the Lord. No man could sell land "for ever" for any man's interest in it was only a life-interest; a temporary usufruct, and not a permanent, absolute ownership. It is only the interest of the race that is perpetual. "The days of the life of man may be numbered; but the days of Israel are innumerable." For God has given the land — i.e., the use of it — not to any particular class or generation of men, but to all generations of mankind. ... Read the whole chapter, including footnotes

Frederick Verinder: My Neighbor's Landmark: Short Studies in Bible Land Laws (1911) — 4: The Year of Jubilee: Land and Liberty

§ 1. The equal division of the land gave to every family in the Commonwealth of Israel direct access to the soil. There was little room for the growth of involuntary poverty in a community whose Law did not permit the divorce of land from labor. "He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread," "shall be satisfied with bread." It is very significant that while Moses (no doubt "for the hardness of their hearts," Mark 10:5) did permit to the Hebrews a certain form of chattel-slavery — then probably universal among Eastern nations — though hedging it about with unusually stringent limitations, yet he prohibited absolutely that more insidious form of slavery, landlordism, which reduces men to subjection by monopolising the natural elements necessary to their existence. "The bread of the needy is their life: he that defraudeth him thereof is a man of blood. He that taketh away his neighbor's living slayeth him; and he that defraudeth the laborer of his hire is a bloodshedder."

§ 2. So far, then, as the first settlers in the land of Canaan were concerned, they all had a fair start. Wage slavery and undeserved poverty were unknown. The legislator was able to contemplate the possibility of an ideal state of society "when there shall be no poor among you; for the Lord shall greatly bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it"; but "only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all these commandments which I command thee this day." So long as the Law was kept, no Hebrew need toil for sweated wages for a brother Hebrew. By his own labor, under the Law which secured to him the equal right to the use of the earth, he could produce all that he needed, without being beholden to or controlled by any one else. Under such a Law, the worker's wages consisted of the whole of his product. He was not compelled to share what he produced either with a landlord or with an exploiter of labor. "Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof?" "They shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat; for as the days of a tree are the days of My people, and Mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble." "The husbandman that laboreth must be the first to partake of the fruits." "Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? . . For it is written in the Law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith He it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written that he that ploweth the land plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope."

§ 3. But it is written that "God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." There was a good deal of human nature about the descendants of the crafty Jacob. They were subject to at least their share of human weaknesses and imperfections, and were, moreover, liable, like other folk, to accident and misfortune. It was necessary that the Law should take this into account, and provide, not only for a fair start in the first instance, but also for a continuance of fair conditions. Each succeeding generation had the same equal right to the use of the earth. So abhorrent to the Mosaic conception of justice was the idea of a landless proletariat, that special provision was made to secure, once in each generation, a restoration of the original right of equal access to the natural opportunities of labor. Hence the institution of the Year of Jubilee. ... Read the whole chapter, including footnotes

Frederick Verinder: My Neighbor's Landmark: Short Studies in Bible Land Laws (1911) —Chapter 5: Land, Labor and Learning

§ 5. The seventh year was also called the year of release, "partly because the land was "released" from cultivation, and partly because there was then a general remittance of all debts due from one Hebrew to another, and a manumission of all Hebrew bondservants. The war-cries of monopolists against reform in modern times would have been treated with scanty respect by Moses and the prophets. They recognised neither the right of the landlord to "do what he liked with his own," nor the "sacredness of (private) contract" made against public policy, nor the inalienable right of every (white) man to "whop his own nigger," or to sweat his own wage-slave. The Law aimed at making involuntary and undeserved poverty, as nearly as might be, impossible. When and where, through the vices or frailty of human nature, it crept in, temporarily and in spite of the Law, the most careful provision was made for mitigating its evils.

§ 6. To the average Englishman, who no longer keeps Saints' days, and who feverishly rushes through long railway journeys on four "Bank holidays" in the year, the idea of one year's rest in every seven from his ordinary occupations must seem an impossibly comic suggestion. And, besides, he will probably ask, what was the use of it? Let us see.

(a). The original division of the land secured to every Hebrew family the equal right of access to land. The Year of Jubilee was intended as one of the means for conserving that equal right from generation to generation. So far as it went, the Jubilee Law secured to each family in each generation the right of access, for labor use, to an approximately equal share of land.

But the Hebrew system of cultivation was very primitive. The plough was merely a big crooked stick attached to a wooden frame (I Kings 19:21), shod with a triangular piece of iron (1 Sam. 13:19-21; Isa. 2:4; Joel 3:10; Mic. 4:3). It was usually drawn by oxen, sometimes by asses, yoked together, the ploughman guiding the plough with one hand (Luke 9:62), and using the goad — an instrument like a spear and capable at need of being used as one (Judg. 3:31) — with the other.

The ploughing with such a light instrument was necessary shallow. There are but feeble traces of the systematic use of manure. The rotation of crops was almost certainly unknown. Had the Hebrew cultivator been allowed to keep on growing the same crop from year to year on the same land, without an intermission, there would always be a danger of exhausting even the fertile soil of Canaan, and of handing on to later generations a possession undiminished, indeed, in area, but of steadily decreasing productiveness. The Law therefore safeguarded the equal rights of future generations by enacting a periodical fallow. During one year in every seven, the soil, left to the influences of sun and frost, wind and rain, was to be allowed to "re-create" itself after six years' cropping, exactly as the tiller of the soil renewed his strength, after six days' work, by his Sabbath day's rest. "The seventh year thou shalt let the land rest and lie fallow." "It is a year of rest to the land."

§ 7. But, (b) while the main object of the Sabbath year was undoubtedly the protection of the land-rights of future generations, it was, by a statesman-like provision, made useful to the present generation also. It was to be a year of rest, truly, but not of idleness; a year of re-creation, not of mere cessation from work. It was only agricultural labor that was forbidden — ploughing, sowing, reaping, pruning, vintage. Other occupations were, undoubtedly, permitted, but the leisure from the ordinary work of the farm and vineyard was used, at least in part, for educational ends.

"Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, when all Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy God in the place which He shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all the words of this law; and that their children, which have not known anything, may hear, and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as ye live in the land whither ye go over Jordan to possess it."

§ 8. To say that, in the seventh year, the Israelites attended a Bible class conducted by their clergy would be to use one of those dangerous phrases which completely misrepresent the facts of the case under the appearance of stating the bare, literal truth about them. It is true, of course, that the rolls of the "Laws of Moses" now form part of what we now call the Bible — the collection of ancient writings from which extracts are read in church services. The peculiar position so long assigned to these Hebrew writings in our own religion has prevented most Englishmen from realising what they meant to the Hebrews.

They were at once "sacred" and "secular." They assumed in every paragraph the existence of God; but He was a God who stood in direct, constant, and immediate relation to the life of the Nation "the God of thy fathers," "the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the house of bondage," the God who dwelt in the midst of Israel. Yet — not in spite of this, but because of it — the Hebrew writers hold, as strongly as any modern secularist, that "the affairs of this life and of this world demand, and will repay, our utmost care and attention." So completely free from any trace of "other-worldliness" is the Hebrew Torah, that a good bishop once deduced an argument in favor of the inspiration of the Pentateuch from the fact that it contains no reference to a life after death. The future life to which the Law points as the result and the reward of rightdoing is the ideal life of a free and industrious Commonwealth, in which every citizen, secure in the enjoyment of the produce of his labor, surrounded by stalwart sons and comely daughters, sits under his own vine and his own fig tree, none daring to make him afraid "in the land which the Lord thy God hath given thee."

The Law contained not only the elaborate ritual of the sacrifices and the liturgy of the Jewish religion, but the biographies of their national heroes, and the history of the Nation itself. The primitive science of the infant Commonwealth lay in it side by side with the laws of their minstrels and an outline of civil and criminal law. The same collection of documents which told them how the voice of God called upon Moses from the burning bush to organise a general strike against the Egyptian taskmasters, claimed also that the skill of the handicraftsman, no less than the wisdom of the legislator, was due to Divine inspiration. If the Law regulated with minute care the vestments of the high-priests, it was no less careful of the foods of the people. It prescribed in detail the lavish ornaments of the Tabernacle, the outward symbol of national unity, but it also told the citizen how to keep his person, his clothing, and his house clean and healthy. It insisted upon man's duty to God, but no less upon man's duty to his fellows. With a magnificent impartiality it denounced a curse upon the idolater, who rebelled against the majesty of the Most High, and upon the remover of the landmark, who invaded the equal right of his neighbor. The "statutes and judgments of Moses" were the Acts of the Parliament and the case-law of the Hebrew Commonwealth. Whole chapters in Numbers and Joshua are filled with dry lists of names, which were once full of the same kind of interest and significance to the Hebrew reader as Doomsday Book or the Census returns or Mr. Lloyd-George's Land Valuation have to students of English social history.

To the Hebrew, therefore, the study of "all the words of this Law," enjoined in every seventh year, and made possible by the just land system which the sabbatical institutions safeguarded, was, for his time and place, a liberal education. To place within the reach of the English worker, once in every seven years, a year's course at a university in science and law and literature and theology, would be something like the modern equivalent for one of the advantages which the sabbath year offered to the ancient Hebrew. Read the whole chapter, including footnotes

9. Claiming the Promised Land: A New Jubilee for a New World

In the book of Joshua, we find that although the Promised Land is a gift from God, it is a gift that has to be claimed. Even before the actual conquest of the Promised Land, the Mosaic Law prescribed a method whereby possession of land was to be rendered pleasing in God's sight. The Canaanites' claim was forfeited by their idolatry, with human sacrifice and temple prostitution, and by their exploitive, monopolistic social order. By contrast, Israel, to make good its claim, had to institute a social order that would guard against the desecration, pollution, and injustices of which its predecessors were guilty, and would secure to each family and to every generation within the Hebrew commonwealth the equal right to the use of the land, of which the Lord was recognized as the sole absolute owner.

They began with a census of the tribes and families before the conquest (Num. 26:1-51). Every tribe, excepting Levi, and within each tribe every family, was to receive its proportionate share, according to size (Num. 26:55-56), and ultimately, to ensure fairness, by lot (Num. 34:16-29). The actual distribution, according to these provisions, was concluded at Shiloh (Josh. 19:51). According to ancient historian Josephus, the territory was not divided into shares of equal size but of equal agricultural value. The landmarks that protected these allotments were protected by the public and solemn denunciation of a curse against anyone who should dishonestly tamper with them (Deut. 27:11-16; 19:14).

As discovered again in our own century, it is easier to devise a one-time fair apportionment of land that it is to keep the system from falling apart. This is why the ancient law established the Jubilee year. At the end of every fifty years, any alienated lands — given away, sold, or lost from unpaid debts — would be restored to the original families. Temporary possessors were to be compensated for any unexhausted improvements they may have made on the land. Concentrated landownership, and the division of society into landed and landless classes, was thereby prevented from creeping into the system. The Jubilee effectively took the profit out of landholding as such, leaving no incentive for speculation. When it was observed — and historical records indicate that it was observed for long periods — the Jubilee system successfully removed the root cause of poverty from the Jewish society.

The influence of the Jubilee idea upon early Pennsylvania colonists is evidenced by the inscription on the Liberty Bell of the biblical words enjoining the Jubilee year: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." (Lev. 25:10) The founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn, advocated that all men be "tenants to the public", and to defray public expenses instituted a tax on land.

Environmental concern also goes back to biblical land laws. To prevent the exhaustion of the soil, a periodic fallow was ordered. "During one year in every seven, the soil, left to the influences of sun and frost, wind and rain, was to be allowed to 're-create' itself after six years' cropping, exactly as the tiller of the soil renewed his strength, after six days' work, by his Sabbath day's rest."

As noted, the tribe of Levi did not share in the equal division of the land, since it was charged with carrying out religious and public duties. Its members were entitled to an indemnity from the eleven tribes who received the land that otherwise would have gone to them. This indemnity was the tithe — one-tenth of the product from the land occupied by the eleven other tribes.

Here, in principle, is the formula for a just land system in almost any time or place. The compensation to the Levites maintained the substance of equal rights to land, alongside of and compatible with unequal physical division of the land itself. As Frederick Verinder pointed out in his book My Neighbour's Landmark, joint heirs of a house may share it equally by occupying it equally or unequally but "paying the rental into a common fund, from which each draws an equal share; or they may let the whole house to someone else and divide the rent equally." So it is with land. Sharing equally in the economic rent or value of land through the application of that value to common uses from which all benefit, renders private ownership and unequal partition of land morally and pragmatically benign.

The modern equivalent of removing one's neighbor's landmark is thus not the private ownership of land per se, but rather the private appropriation of land value. "The profit of the earth is for all" (Eccles. 5:9). The Old Testament ethic, to assure everyone the same natural opportunity, asserts that all people have an equal right to economic rent, and the Levite tithe demonstrates that the socialization of rent offsets the ethical and practical harm resulting from private land ownership. But there is another basis for its advocacy: Rent should be taken by society because it is a social product. Rent arises in large measure from two societal phenomena: the mere presence of population, and community activity in a particular area. More people means more demand for space on which to live and work. Community activities such as roads, schools, protection, parks, sewage, utilities and other public services, as well as the totality of private commercial and cultural operations, all make land more productive or desirable. It follows that a community which funds such improvements out of its rent fund will be provided with a stable and growing fund with which to maintain and improve them. And unlike conventional taxes, the collection of this fund will enhance, not penalize, the production of wealth.

Individuals, in their bare capacity as landowners, do nothing to produce land value. By withholding sites from use, whether for speculation or for other reasons, they may generate scarcity, artificially inflating rent, but this does not reflect any positive contribution to production on the part of landowners.

While land value is not the only type of unearned increment, unearned income resulting from such advantages as talent, genes or luck is not at the expense of others. Even Karl Marx admitted: "The monopoly of property in land is even the basis of the monopoly of capital." Marx could have — but did not — champion the abolition of land monopoly; instead he advocated its transfer from private into state hands. It was left to Henry George to expound how the universal principles of justice found in the Mosaic model could be applied to the modern age in all its economic aspects — rural and urban, agricultural and industrial, technologically undeveloped or advanced.

What George advocated was to leave land titles in private hands but to appropriate land rent via the existing machinery of property taxation. "I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate private property in land. The first would be unjust; the second, needless....It is not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate rent." No owner or tenant would be expropriated or evicted. No limit would be placed on the quantity of land one could hold, as long as the annual rent were paid.

Coordinately with the capture of rent as public revenue, taxes on products of human labor — improvements, personal property, services, commodities, wages, etc. — would be reduced and ultimately eliminated.

George considered his remedy no mere human contrivance. He saw the growth of land value and the easy means of equitably distributing it as an expression of benevolent supernatural design: "As civilization goes on... so do the common wants increase and so does the necessity for public revenue arise. And so in that value which attaches to land, not by reason of anything the individual does, but by reason of the growth of the community, is a provision intended — we may safely say intended — to meet that social want."

George's remedy goes a long way to stop current inequity and prevent future inequity. While past inequity, in the form of accumulations of capital based on previous land speculation and monopoly cannot be accurately redressed, these fortunes can be impelled to serve the needs of the public via investment in production, not by further investment in land speculation and monopoly.

Dependency theory, to the degree that it hits upon one of the causes of Third World poverty in exploitation by foreign investors, can find in George's land value tax the constructive practical approach it lacks. Neither erection of trade barriers nor legal restriction of foreign ownership is called for. As one Australian writer puts it:

(W)hen investors from one country buy property in other countries they are seeking site rent, which they hope to obtain directly from tenants, or indirectly by selling land in the future when the price or capital value has increased.... The site rent that is so attractive to overseas investors can be kept in the country quite easily — by shifting taxation from labor onto land."

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.

 

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