Ricardo, George, Clark, Ramsey, Mirrlees, Vickrey, Wicksell, Musgrave, Buchanan, Tiebout, and Stiglitz, by Colin Read, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2016. Review by Bill Batt
Professor Read gives us an eminently readable book about the leading economists responsible for developing the sub-discipline of public finance. It is part of the author’s “Great Minds Series.” Continue reading
by Fred Harrison and Mason Gaffney, 2016, Land Research Trust. Review by Lindy Davies
I picked up Beyond Brexit: The Blueprint without great enthusiasm — but I’m happy to say I found it very impressive: an entirely worthwhile read. However, I’m afraid this review must begin with a couple of caveats. Continue reading
Comments by Bill Batt on Rent Unmasked: Essays in Honour of Mason Gaffney, Edited by Fred Harrison, Shepheard-Walwyn, 2016
Rent Unmasked, the newly published Mason Gaffney Festschrift volume, includes the thinking of many Georgist experts, showing the breadth that Gaffney’s work inspired. Continue reading
The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment, by Mei Fong, 2016, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Review by Lindy Davies
A committed Marxist will tell you that the historical failure of socialist societies proves nothing about Marxism per se, because real Marxism has never been implemented. But, exactly what “real Marxism” amounts to isn’t so easy to identify. There are many sects (for example, Wikipedia lists thirteen Trotskyist organizations in the United States). Continue reading
by Fred Harrison, Geophilos, 2015. Review by Ed Dodson
With this latest project, Fred Harrison raises his warning of impending disaster to an even higher level. Those familiar with Fred’s work will find this book familiar in tone and territory. For others, the book is a wake-up call for desperately-needed action. Continue reading
by Edward T. O’Donnell, Columbia University Press, 2015. Review by Ed Dodson
Henry George’s life and work have interested a small number of academic historians in each generation since George died in 1897. The latest of these, Professor Edward O’Donnell, succeeds in bringing to life the temper of the times during which Henry George rose from obscurity to become a champion of what he embraced as the true principles of republican democracy. Continue reading
by Martin Adams, 2015, North Atlantic Books. Review by Edward J. Dodson
Twenty years ago I made a decision that has been nearly all-absorbing of my time and energy. I started to compile the documented history of the people who came to embrace the principles embraced by Henry George. Today, despite a considerable number of books and published academic papers on the history of the movement established by Henry George and his generation of stalwart supporters, few people in any country one might name know the movement lives on. Continue reading
by Cathy Orloff
As a Georgist I love to tell people that the game of Monopoly was really invented by a woman who wanted to illustrate Henry George economics and to help end poverty and its suffering. Most people have never heard of George, but everyone has heard of Monopoly. Continue reading
by Lindy Davies
Pity the poor Georgists; they mean so well; they have such admirably momentous ambitions, but they’ve put all their eggs in one nineteenth-century basket. There’s so much more going on today! So many sources of privilege and exploitation — so many like-minded activists with whom we could make common cause! Yet here we remain, stuck in the aqua terra of land. Now and again some prominent (or, even, potentially prominent; we’re pretty desperate) commentator comes along, pats us on the head, and offers a list of nostrums that that’ll get us out of the mud! Continue reading
by Polly Cleveland
In Thomas Piketty’s doomsday model, slowing of growth in the twenty-first century will cause an inexorable increase in inequality. Piketty is not the first to propose a grand model of inequality and growth. To get some perspective on his model, let’s take a brief look at what the “classical” economists had to say, and how the “neoclassical” economists responded. Continue reading