Mason Gaffney wrote:
>What is historical is that one Wang-an Shih, a finance minister in the Sung
>Dynasty about the time of the Norman conquest of England, successfully
>promoted taxation of land, a policy that succeeded in perpetuating the
>dynasty for another 200 years; and that Turgot, the Physiocrat, became known
>as the French Confucius (probably Taoist would be more accurate); and that
>George replicated most of Turgot's ideas (probably independently, with a
>boost from Mill); and that Dr. Sun read George when in Hawaii, and
>incorporated them as "right livelihood" in the San Min Chu I; and that
>Taiwan idolized Dr. Sun, long after his death, and incorporated many of his
>ideas in the land reform and tax reform policies, creating one of the
>"Tiger" economies.
I am not sure about the connection between Shih
and Turgot, but I can add that the Taiwanese
policy was advanced by the fact that General
MacArthur was a Georgist and that his deputy,
(whose name escapes me at the moment) who was
responsible for reorganizing the land systems of
Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, was a
Distributivist. The Kuomintang had never been
able to carry out any meaningful reform on the
mainland. However, under the twin impetus of the
demands of MacArthur and the fear of a communist
victory, Taiwan was able to reform their land
system, a reform that transformed Taiwan from a
feudal society to an industrial state within one
generation, and did so with rising levels of
equity and stability, in complete contradiction
to the Kuznet's curve. Because of the twin
influences of MacArthur and Sun Yat-sen, Georgism
has had a greater sway in the East than in the West.
John C. Medaille
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