I'm looking for two respondents at the June HES meeting for a panel on Henry 
George: Equity in Economics.

Here's the panel.  Please contact me off the list at [log in to unmask] 
Thanks,

Polly Cleveland





Henry George: Equity in Economics

In George's economic theory, economies function best within an equitable 
political framework.

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Speaker 1: John C. Medaille

Justice and Mr. George:

What Henry George Knew, What the Neoclassicists Forgot, and Why it Matters

Abstract

Henry George was acclaimed by the general public and disdained by the 
professional economists, largely for the same reasons. For the general 
public, Progress and Poverty seemed to go to the heart of the matter, 
treating economics as a question of justice. But for the professionals, he 
was often regarded as a dangerous radical, even though he reasons within 
the tradition of Smith, Ricardo, and Mill. However, he conducted his 
studies at the precise moment of the marginalist revolution, just as the 
profession was undergoing a transition from political economy to economics. 
For the former, economic science was embedded in particular political and 
cultural systems, while the later aspired to be a pure science with its own 
mathematics. While some of the marginalists, such as Walras and Marshall, 
could maintain a commitment to justice, many others found the whole 
question superfluous. This paper will argue, however, that without some 
notion of justice, and especially justice in property relations, a complete 
description of an economy is impossible. Moreover, without some notion of 
equity, equilibrium is unattainable. And this relation can be shown to be 
present in the very starting conditions of neoclassical formulations, which 
initial conditions are, alas, too often forgotten.

Respondent: TBA

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Speaker 2: Francis K. Peddle

HENRY GEORGE: ARISTOTELIAN OR KANTIAN?

Abstract:

Henry George presents a pervasive conjunction of ethical and economic 
thinking that is unusual in the history of classical political economy. 
There has been surprisingly little written about the school, or schools, of 
ethics to which this important figure in American intellectual history may 
belong or which ones had the pivotal influence on his economic thinking. 
Natural law, Enlightenment principles, biblical nostrums and an embryonic 
philosophy of history all have their resonances in his writings. On the one 
hand, there is a powerful drift towards a Kantian notion of cosmopolitan 
law. Absolute political and legal rights are not enough. There must be an 
economics that provides a universal guarantee of access to the plenitude of 
nature. On the other hand, there are teleological and organic elements in 
George's concept of natural law, in both its physical and mental 
manifestations, that seem to put him squarely within the confines of the 
ethical naturalism of Aristotle. This Aristotelian naturalism, or what is 
known today as virtue ethics, makes assumptions about the human disposition 
that have implications for both the economic behaviour of individuals and 
their interaction in the Greater Leviathan, to use George's term, or the 
body economic. Kantians view the ethics of naturalism as relativistic and 
lacking in a strong theory of obligation. Aristotelians often dismiss 
rule-dominated ethics as formalistic and inadequate as an ethical guide on 
account of its insensitivity to the nuances of human nature. This paper 
will argue that George's conceptualization of the fusion of ethics and 
economics attempts to reconcile these fundamentally different schools of 
ethics.

Key Words:     George, Aristotle, Kant, ethics, economics, natural law, 
cosmopolitan law, teleology, rights, philosophy of history.

Respondent: TBA


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Speaker 3: Mary (Polly) Cleveland

Mason Gaffney's Georgist/Wicksellian Three-factor Macroeconomics

How Mason Gaffney uses the ideas of Henry George and Knut Wicksell to 
develop a three-factor macroeconomic theory in which equity and efficiency 
coincide.

Abstract:

Henry George advocated shifting all taxes to economic rent--land value 
taxation broadly conceived--and using the revenues for public purposes. 
This shift, he claimed, would raise wages, make land use more efficient, 
and tame the boom and bust cycle that regularly devastated the nineteenth 
century US economy. Mason Gaffney has extensively explicated and developed 
George's theories in modern marginalist terms. When it comes to cycles of 
boom and bust, however, Gaffney argues that George was right for the wrong 
reasons. To build a more compelling theory, Gaffney has turned to the 
modified Austrian economics of Knut Wicksell. Wicksell attributed boom and 
bust cycles to a lag in the bank rate behind the "natural" rate of 
interest--so that in a boom, banks continue to lend at too low a rate, 
encouraging excessive investment in fixed capital. In the following bust, 
banks hold the rates too high, hindering recovery. In Gaffney's 
modification, banks lend at too low a rate because low rates combined with 
expectations of continued appreciation overinflate the value of land and 
other resources used as collateral. In short, a boom creates an asset 
bubble. A policy of taxing rents, by reducing speculative values during a 
boom, can indeed dampen boom and bust.

Respondent: Marianne Johnson