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