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• ISBN: 085683 133 6
• Pages: 368pp

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Robert V. Andelson is professor of philosophy and member of the Graduate School faculty at Auburn University. He is author of Imputed Rights: An Essay in Christian Social Theory and recently edited Commons without Tragedy.

James M. Dawsey, whose conciousness on land issues was sensitised by a childhood spent in Brazil, is associate professor of religion at Auburn University and author of The Lukan Voice and A Scholar’s Guide to Academic Journals in Religion.

This book offers liberation theologians a non-socialist model for achieving their goal of economic justice.
Stymied by the persistence of poverty worldwide, persons of good will search for realistic models of social transformation. From Wasteland to Promised Land is such a book.

“Georgist economics can appeal with honesty and accuracy to the Bible, which is more than similar claims of many social reformers”
JOHN B. COBB, JR.

“This book appears at just the right moment… No true liberative development anywhere in the world will take place without benefit to the entire community…a book that should be greeted as a fresh, nuanced way to look anew at attitudes and policies that enslave so many.”
JOHN D. DAVIES
BISHOP OF SHREWSBURY, ENGLAN

Robert Andelson and James Dawsey mine classical Biblical themes, the vision of Henry George on land and the relationship of land policy to humane societies, and the production of wealth for the benefit of the community. Using these keys, they invoke the “Promised Land” as a symbol that offers challenging and promising horizons in the wake of the failures of both socialist and capitalist states.

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• SBN: 0 85683 166 2
• Pages: 60pp
• Size: 229mm x145mm

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Many doubt the existence of economic laws, but the once mighty Soviet Union collapsed because the grand theory on which it was based did not accord with the facts of economic life. It was unscientific.

“In seeking solutions” writes John Young, “we are not reduced to finding ideas no one has ever proposed before. It is rather a matter of perceiving which of the already suggested ideas are correct.” To aid us in this, he suggests “we should look at the nature of the basic realities pertaining to economics”. These include human nature (economics is about people as much about goods and services) and the common good — a moral element.

He argues that ‘A true grasp of how the economy should be constituted shows it to be a thing of harmony and beauty, all its parts cooperating for the common good, and its inbuilt laws distributing benefits equitably.’

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• ISBN: 085683 126 3

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Decades of concern and action have not removed the fear that mankind is reproducing too fast for the good of Mother Earth. The reason, argue the authors, is a flaw in the policies designed to deal with the rate at which finite resources are exploited. A new approach to property rights will have to be adopted if this apparent conflict is to be resolved.

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• ISBN: 085683 124 7

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Key social and economic trends, which point to the synthesis of the best elements of the established philosophical traditions of capitalism and socialism, are identified to provide a practical philosophy. The principled economic, political and legal changes that are a precondition for social justice and economic efficiency are articulated.

Economists know that the optimum conditions for private enterprise are achieved when taxes on the earned incomes of labour and capital are reduced to zero but, because neoclassical economic theory insists on treating land as capital, they dismiss the obvious alternative to taxing labour and capital – the unearned income from land.

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“Tax economists overwhelmingly support the idea that a tax on land represents an excellent source for government revenue.”
CHOICE

A former economist at the U.S. President’s Council of Economics Advisers, Professor Tideman, assembles arguments supporting this thesis which can be traced back to Adam Smith’

“Both ground-rents and the ordinary rent of land are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. Though a part of this revenue should be taken from him in order to defray the expenses of the state, no discouragement [emphasis added] will thereby be given to any sort of industry. The annual produce of the land and labour of society, the real wealth and revenue of the body of the people, might be the same after such a tax as before. Ground-rents, and the ordinary rent of land, are, therefore, perhaps, the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them.” Wealth of Nations, BkII, Ch 2

Each year Chancellors of the Exchequer pile on new taxes with little regard for their damaging effect on the economy – the most recent example being George Osborne’s windfall tax on the oil and gas industry. The way out is to appreciate the point Adam Smith is making: that the optimum conditions for private enterprise are achieved when taxes on the earned incomes of labour and capital are abolished, which complements the fairest and most efficient way to finance the public sector: out of unearned income from land.

This principle, as Prof. Tideman explains, has been developed and endorsed by economists, including Nobel prize-winners, in a theoretical tradition stretching back over two hundred years. It is, therefore, puzzling why governments have continued to tax the earned incomes of labour and capital to the detriment of the individual tax-payer and industry.

The explanation put forward is that a century ago neo-classical economists obscured the distinctive qualities of land as the source for public revenue. This theoretical revisionism confused governments, as Vic Blundell illuminates in his review of Labour’s flawed attempts between 1947 and 1976 to tackle the land issue.

To implement the policy recommended by Adam Smith and others, it is necessary to recognise land as a distinct economic factor, not part of capital, as modern economists contend. To this end Prof. Gaffney provides an exhaustive analysis of the distinctive qualities of land, and Dr Foldvary gives examples of how this economic paradigm can solve many of the problems facing modern governments.

‘For at least the past decade, it has been recognised by business, the tax professions and the Revenue alike that the tax system is too complicated, is getting more complicated and urgently needs simplifying.’ Peter Wyman in The Times

For the first time, the losses that accrue to Britain from the damaging affects of taxation are quantified. Every year, claims the author, the taxes favoured by the Treasury deprive each man, woman and child in Britain of £15,000: and that’s on top of the taxes collected by the Chancellor, Gordon Brown.

Ronald Banks exposes the dangerous fallacies that underpin Prime Minister Tony Blair’s claim that taxation delivers equity and efficiency. In fact, governments destroy people’s ability to produce incomes that would enable them to finance the private and public amenities they need. The theory that taxes inflict disincentives on employees and investors is not controversial. But economists fail to quantify the losses. The author censures Parliament as derelict in its duty to protect the common good by properly auditing the tax-raising budget submitted by the Chancellor.

The author proposes the reforms that would democratise public finance. This would be achieved by removing the tax burden on people’s wages and savings, replacing them with charges on community-created rental income from land and nature’s resources. The reforms would finally make it possible to establish a new partnership of co-operation between the public and private sectors.

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• SBN: 1901202046
• Pages: 80pp
• Size: 210 x 148mm

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Dr. George Miller,  is a member of the Medical Research Council’s Senior Clinical Scientific Staff. He is Professor of Epidemiology at the University of London Queen Mary and Westfield College..

In a unique investigation into the pathology of poverty, the author concludes that about 50,000 people in England and Wales alone die prematurely from causes that are ultimately traced to the way government raises the public’s revenue. Those people could live up to nine more years if they were not battered by the social and economic traumas that are caused by taxes that penalise wages and distort investment in the economy.

The hidden crisis confronting Britain and its National Health Service is exposed by methodically reviewing the historical evidence and scrutinising the theories that purport to explain the nature of deprivation.

While Government approaches the problem of health in terms of funding, Professor Miller explains that the heart of the challenge is to be found in the doctrines of public finance. Most taxes work to the detriment of the health and the wealth of the nation by burdening the economy unnecessarily.

Taxes reinforce the class structure. They institutionalise poverty. And they continue to disadvantage millions of people who would otherwise live longer and more prosperous lives, argues one of Britain’s leading medical scientists. Professor Miller calls upon government to investigate why the Welfare State has failed to reduce disparities in health and life expectancy between Britain’s richer and poorer. The tax reforms he outlines offer a realistic hope of attaining the most cherished goal of the public health movement – the equalisation of life expectancy for everyone in Britain.

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• SBN: 0856832278
• Pages: 80pp
• Size: 210 x 148m

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Duncan Pickard, received his doctorate from the University of Nottingham. After postdoctoral research at Cornell University School of Veterinary Medicine and the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, he returned to Britain and was appointed lecturer in Animal Physiology and Nutrition at the University of Leeds. He now farms in Fife with his wife and two sons.

The culture of deception that underpins the economics of agriculture is documented by Dr Duncan Pickard in this hard-hitting exposé. Governments and lobbyists manipulate statistics to disguise the real incomes of farmers, to justify the subsidies that enrich a relatively few big landowners. But in doing so, they abuse the interests of consumers and taxpayers.

Dr Pickard, whose family farms 1,100 acres in Scotland, takes no pleasure in revealing the scandal in which farmers are portrayed as living on the breadline – when many of them are banking handsome profits from the Common Agricultural Policy. His family intends to reduce dependency on subsidies, so that more time can be spent with the cattle and sheep rather than with the paperwork that disrupts the business of producing food.

Subsidies, argues the author, are the result of a tax regime that has crippled rural economies and village communities. Taxes encourage the sacking of employees in favour of capital-intensive methods. And those subsidies become the war chest for the big landowners, who are able to finance the purchase of even more land. That is how family farms are extinguished. The Blair Government’s plans for countryside reform, announced in the House of Commons in February 2004, will add new layers of bureaucracy to preserve a doctrine of economics that will continue to drive people off the land.

Dr Pickard proposes the remedy. Government should tax the value of his 600 acres – and abolish the taxes on people’s wages and on the savings which they invest on the land. That, he explains, is the path to sustainable farming and conservation of the environment. It would deliver a fair deal for farmers and consumers, and remove the red tape that engulfs the people who are supposed to produce our food.

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• SBN: 0 85683 245 6
• Pages: 128pp
• Size: 198 x 130mm

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Tony Hodgson, was brought up on a market garden in Hampshire. He spent most of his adult life living and working in rural communities in Norfolk, Huntingdonshire and Staffordshire till he moved to Berwick on the Scottish Border. He and his wife are now back at Little Gidding (title of T S Eliot’s fourth quartet) in Huntingdonshire where they helped found a land-based community in the 1970

Since the Second World War we have allowed the production, distribution and retailing of our food to be taken over by ever bigger organisations.

This is a policy pursued by successive governments to achieve ever greater productivity through economies of scale. We, the shoppers, have welcomed this trend on the grounds of price, convenience and choice.

The results are well known: seven-eighths of the people involved in growing our food have been forced to leave the land, two-thirds or more of small independent traders have been put out of business, most food is now trucked, shipped or flown over huge distances and ninety-five percent of the UK population do their main shopping at supermarkets. The high streets are dying or becoming homogenised by retail chains and fast food outlets.

But over the last few years a quiet revolution has been taking place. Alongside the gigantism there has grown up a series of networks that are pointing in the opposite direction. They have certain characteristics in common. First, they are striving to bring back a sense of community which has been weakened by this trend. Second, they are often motivated by compassion for the vulnerable, whether they are producers, consumers or the animals which provide much of our food. They also enable people to remain in contact with the earth, and are helping others, who have either lost contact with the land or who have never had it, to gain access in new and exciting ways. Finally, they are restoring a sense of conviviality to growing, shopping, cooking and eating, which is in danger of being lost.

The author details the efforts of a tiny selection of the courageous people from Britain and around the world to restore these qualities. Their example is an encouragement and inspira-tion to us all. They demonstrate that small is beautiful but also practical with cooperation.

Fifty years ago we spent a third of our income on food; now merely a tenth. Only a quarter of us today need to look for the cheapest food: the other three-quarters can afford to ask themselves whether their purchase is reinforcing the trend towards greater uniformity and gigantism or whether they are supporting care of soil and animals, diversity, and fair trade.

The possibility of change is in our hands. We are not as helpless against the big battalions as we sometimes think. We forget that every time we buy we are voting for impersonal gigantism or a more humane way of life.

The title of the book is taken from words addressed to the Sovereign during the coronation service which, the author points out, plays a much more important part in the life of our nation than is generally recognised. It is not just an empty ceremony but the occasion when Divine Law is acknowledged as the source of all our law. The service reminds, not only the monarch but all those assembled in Westminster Abbey (with television, the audience is worldwide) of a basic tenet of the British constitution, expressed by the 13th century lawyer Bracton as: ‘The King [or Queen] must be under no man but under God and the law, for the law makes the King’. The barons in forcing King John to sign Magna Carta were insisting that he abide by the law and his coronation oath.

This book demonstrates there is a government behind government, with a greater purpose and permanence than the changing spectrum of party political strife. It includes large parts of the Coronation Service.

This principle has frequently been compared, down the ages, with the Justinian precept, ‘What pleases the prince has the force of law’, which lies behind continental, Roman law. The civil freedom we enjoy in Britain today stems from Bracton’s statement, which regulates all our public servants, from prime minister to police officer, and which has enabled us to give freedom under law to large parts of the world – whereas in Brussels, what pleases the Commissioners has the force of law.

Writing after the Second World War, where Britain had been fighting to preserve the rule of law, Professor R W Chambers emphasised the importance of this principle enshrined in our coronation service: ‘Upon that difference – whether or no we place Divine Law in the last resort above the law of the State – depends the whole future of the world’.

The book also shows that there is government behind government, with a greater purpose and permanence than the changing spectrum of party political strife. This government consists of institutions, mostly of medieval origin, the monarchy, parliament, common law, jury system, church, universities and armed forces. The powers working through these institutions (which meet in the House of Lords) are made available to the government of the day, and may be retracted if and when they are abused – as the prime minister of Australia discovered in 1975.

Two appendices contain extracts from Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation service and an Anglo-Saxon document entitled Institutes of Polity, Civil and Ecclesiastical.