My reply to Jim's email of 9 June:  
http://eh.net/pipermail/hes/2006-June/006464.html  
  
  
First para., I made my statement not in relation to a 10% tax rate but to Jim's general
ideology as I have come to know it, to make an analytical assumption holding tax revenues
constant; Jim is evasive with regard to my point.
  
Second para., the "free ride" argument assumes the propriety of private capture of land
rent, which is the point at issue;  Roger Sandiland and my point is with regard to taxing
productive capital versus the unearned increment.
  
Third para., I do not think that the problem of the land-capital distinction is
Sandiland's or mine, Jim:  owners of land receive the unearned increment; the owners of
capital, cet. par. surplus value, if one believes that [I interpose it for the sake of
logic] receive earnings of productivity [cet. par. David Ellerman's point, which amounts
to saying that distribution is a function of institutions=institutions matter, as per
Coase].
  
My 2nd and 3rd points are in response to Jim's evasion of George's key argument.  
  
Fourth para., the alternate-uses reasoning applies to the use of land and to competition
over the unearned increment; the use of land complication--not a big one--was noted in
passing; my main concern then was the competition among 'entrepreneurs' over the unearned
increment.
  
End of fifth para., past inequalities still have consequences in the present.  E.g., I was
the sixth best high school shot putter in Florida in 1951.  I received medals and athletic
letters and the confidence I could accomplish anything I wanted to within limits, plus the
first of several college fellowships.  No such things came those ways to black athletes
who were by their color alone not allowed to participate in regional and state track meets
or against white boys, in any sport.  E.g., the Reagan et al tax cuts were a rent [in the
Ricardian sense of a payment over the amount necessary to induce my supply of papers and
books] and have substantially increased my income overall and in retirement.  Etc., Etc.
The distributional past greatly influences the distributional present; ever so much worse
when land ownership conveyed governance authority.  Of course, I also have benefitted by
the end of a certain quota system(s).  (Ten or so years after my PhD I was asked if I
would consider an appointment, if offered, by a certain university.  I learned later that
the school's faculty was solely WASP and was now under pressure to hire Catholics and
Jews, which they did, though not me (no problem with that; I could not have had a better
position than the one that did come my way; and the fellow who got the job rather than me
became a good friend of mine).)
  
End of sixth para., yes, poverty is  a larger problem but George recognized a significant
part of it.  Much of the problem of poverty is the greater power that the "rich" have in
government and in control of government and its policies.  I find that much of the HET
derived from the conflict over distribution and control of government.  That is a positive
proposition, Jim, not worthy of your charge of "envy".  I am not envious of any one or any
group, certainly not in my (earned) income and wealth brackets.
  
Warren Samuels