The Danes’ might and power that suppressed the people,
the Decline that made Equality and Common Welfare possible; and
the Democracy and happyland neither of which are perfect – yet.
Today’s REMARKABLY EVEN DISTRIBUTION of wealth in Denmark is due to centuries of fatal defeats and fall from great might and power:
This article is meant to turn the readers’ attention to the fact that the down-turn made equality and welfare possible to Danes in general who inhabited and today inhabit the remaining part of Denmark.
The Anglo-Saxons, whose invasion of Britain began in AD 449, 1 regarded everything they seized by conquest as their common property, to be distributed as each new district was secured. ‘Property’ included the former inhabitants (the weala), 2 all their moveable possessions, their livestock, and their agricultural land.
The invaders shunned the towns and cities, settling in small villages usually composed of less than twenty households (hiwiscs). The village community granted each household an entirely private area around their house (a haga), usually bounded by a hedge, to be used as a kitchen garden, to rear chickens, to store crops and to keep tools and equipment. The head of each household was absolute master of this land, with rights at law ranging from the capture and execution of trespassers to the discipline of the household, including slaves.
IU Conference July 2013 – Peter Bowman – School of Economic Science
In March 2013 I took the high speed train from Beijing to Shanghai for the first time. It is a five hour journey with a steady speed of three hundred kilometres per hour. I was eager to get out of the city and see what the Chinese countryside was like. The scene was fascinating. For the whole journey almost all the land I saw was in use, much of it under cultivation and most of that in rectangular patches silver . The cultivation lay right against the built up areas which were considerable. In fact there was nothing I would have called countryside. Later that month I took another train journey, this time from London Paddington to Devon. I was struck by the contrast. Travelling west through the England once you are out of London there seem to be great expanses of green, very pretty but not very much appearing to be happening. The relationship of the Chinese people with the land was noticeably different to that of the English and I suspected that went back a long way.
A short while later I stumbled across a published copy of the doctoral thesis of Han Liang Huang, published in 1918 which traced back the story of Chinese land tenure from the beginning of its history. At first glance it looked like it would provide a useful source of information to help understand the Chinese relationship with the land but his underlying thesis was also arresting. Essentially it was thPandora Sale is: over its long history the principle source of government revenue has come directly from the land. What follows here is to quite a large extent a summary Han Liang’s findings/ By coincidence the same thesis was also referred to by Alanna Harzog in her recent presentation to the World Bank’s Land and Poverty Conference on “Socializing land rent, untaxing production”.
China is single most extensive and enduring civilization in the world. Its language, in spoken and written form, has been largely unchanged for some four thousand years. Its early history fades into mythology. Back in 2967 BC Huang-Ti (diHuang) brought the feudal provinces under his control, made them acknowledge him as emperor and received tributes which were in the form of levies derived from the land.
The Xia dynasty was in 2150 BC by Yu the Great. There had been a great flood and Yu was the administrator responsible for bringing the water under control. After the inundation arable land was in short supply. At that time the tradition was that the land belonged to the people at large (not to individuals, nor feudal chiefs not even the emperor). Individuals were allotted a plot of land, fifty mows (probably about ten acres) the traditional measure of area at the age of twenty and then gave it back when they reached sixty. There was a tribute system called Kung fa. For the central province of Zhi Zhou one tenth of the produce of the land was given to the emperor. In the other eight provinces the same fraction went to the feudal lord.
The Economic Philosophy of Georgism, and Decreasing the Gap Between Rich and Poor
Today, the gap between the rich and poor is wider than it has ever been, and while there are certainly a number of causes of inequality in general, it is hard to ignore the role that how we distribute, ’own’ and view the simple dirt under our feet has a large role to play in this problem. The problem itself of course, is not necessarily anything new by any means. There has always been a division between wealthier and poorer elements of society for as long as history has been recorded. However, as new ideas and moral guidelines were introduced by the British Empiricists, John Locke in particular, new modes of thought began to form, and ways in which society could be made a fairer place for all, while perhaps a pipe dream, were actively pursued. Henry George, a economic philosopher of the late 19th Century, was one such thinker, and proposed a system that he believed would make for a much fairer way of approaching, and taxing, land in general.
EXTRACTED FROM PRACTICAL POLITICS ISSUE NO. 206 APRIL 2014
PREFACE
On 22nd. May elections are being held both to the European Parliament and to local government bodies. On 18th.September, voters in Scotland have their referendum on whether or not to break away from the rest of the United Kingdom. In May 2015, a General Election is due to be held for the House of Commons at Westminster. There is also an election to the Scottish Parliament to be held in 2015 or perhaps in 2016. After the Scottish referendum, the Island Councils of Shetland, Orkney, and the Western Isles will be considering plebiscites on their own options vis-à-vis Westminster and Edinburgh.
In view of all this important activity, we consider now to be the appropriate moment to reassert the unique significance of land in economic analysis, setting out our approach to, and arguments in favour of,the policy of LVT, and including some specific illustrations of how its full and proper implementation can lead to the solution of economic and social problems. Some of the material will have appeared previously in “Practical Politics”and elsewhere,but the present form of presentation is new.
Tonight I shall talk about the relationship between human beings and land, without which man cannot earn a living. I shall talk about free land and enclosed land; and I must tellyou what I mean by these terms.
Whether land is free or enclosed, we must occupy some of it to the exclusion of others.We need space for our homes, places of work, meeting, recreation and the rest, The difference consists not in the private occupation of land, a necessary condition, but in the customs and laws governing its occupation.
It is neither desirable nor possible to achieve complete equality between human beings. Where inequality arises because some people work harder than others, or use their talents better, there is no problem. But the really gigantic gaps between rich and poor, both in this country and in the world outside, are nPandora Charms UK ot attributable to different attitudes to hard work or differences of skill, and are neither desirable nor necessary. These gaps arise because some people contrive to take the result of other people’s wealth. How do they do it?
The issues raised by tax avoidance have featured heavily in the media over the last six months or so and were prominent on the agenda of the recent G8 summit. Tax havens play a prominent role in these issPandora Sale ues. This morning I will briefly describe what a tax haven is, how they developed, where they are located, and indicate their global significance. I will then explore the question of whether the use of tax havens to avoid tax necessarily gives rise to injustice.
What is a tax haven?
The term ‘tax haven’ is a bit of a misnomer, for these places don’t just offer an escape from tax. One useful definition is ‘a place that seeks to attract business by offering politically stable facilities to help people or entities toPandora Bracelets UK Sale get around the rules, laws and regulations of jurisdictions elsewhere’. In other words thPandora Braceletsey offer escape routes from the duties that come with living in and obtaining benefits from society – tax, financial regulation, criminal laws, inheritance rules and so on. This is their core business.
“When are businessmen, politicians, college professors and ordinary citizens who ask the silly question, “what state aCheap Pandora Beads UK gency enforces natural laws,” going to realise that the terrible crises of war, depression and runaway inflation are the natural enforcement agencies of natural laws? It better be soon!” So said Seymour Rauch in his essay “Credit and the Rent-Interest Index” HG News September 1953.
MORALITY AND THE LAW – THE ONLY WAY TO GO IS ETHICS
There is nothing moral about paying taxes. There is, however, a legal obligation to pay taxes. It is an offence to evade paying. The legal requirement is enshrined in the law. However, there can be no obligation, legal or moral, to pay more than is demanded by the law. Fairness does not come into it. If the tax system is unfair, all that is needed is that Parliament change the law.
