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
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