A Fresh Approach
Welfare or Earthshare? That is the Question!
by Alanna Hartzok
Despite our fondness for individual freedom, increasing numbers of us are being frustrated and thwarted from lack of security in the necessities that are basic to sustain life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In the USA, one out of four children under age six is now being reared in poverty. For some time now it has taken two full-time workers to sustain the modest middle class standard of living that could be procured by just one full-time worker twenty years earlier. The failure of wages to keep up makes the cost of housing and other necessities a greater burden each year.
Gains in automation and production, advances in education and training, all have been nullified by the steadily increasing cost of what what no one has ever manufactured -- land and natural resources. Our treatment of the earth as a manufactured market commodity, just like a car or television, is the basic flaw in our economic ground rules. Treating the earth as simply a capital line item is the root cause of the ever-widening gap between those who have so much and those who have so little.
The earth itself is the bottom line. The land is the source of all life and wealth. To survive, we must have somehwere to stand and to rest. But this absolute necessity for our very existence is nowhere guaranteed in our constitutional laws. Our Bill of Rights did not proclaim the human right to the earth. The failure to found democracy on the fundamental human right to the earth is the crack in the Liberty Bell.
One of the greatest wastes of natural and social resources is that of poorly utilized urban land sites upon which sit boarded-up buildings, while inner city homelessness increases everywhere. In Philadelphia today there are an estimated 27,000 abandoned properties -- and at least 24.000 homeless people. What is preventing people from access to these land sites?
Of the 127 million people working in the United States, 38 million work part time, and 35 million have full-time work that doesn't pay enough to support a family. Then there are the actual unemployed, who number 7.4 million as well as another 7 million who are discouraged, forcibly retired or working as temps. Nineteen million people work in retail and earn less than $10.000 per year, usually without any health or retirement benefits. For the majority of workers, real wages are no higher today than they were in 1973.
The United States has now surpassed the former Soviet Union in the proportion of its population in prison. Over 5 million men are incarcerated, waiting for trial, on probation, or on parole. We have become so inured to criminality that rural counties call prison construction "economic development." Between 1990-94 the prison industry grew at an annual rate of 34%.
Ah of these problems -- homelessness, unemployment, boarded-up buildings, deteriorating neighborhoods, increased incarceration -- are outcomes of the most fundamental flaw in democratic institutions. The human right to the earth has been denied.
The fundamental human right which we now need to affirm is this:
Thomas Paine urged this approach to tax policy when he said: "Men did not make the earth ... It is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property ... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."
Pennsylvania has been pioneering this reform and currently more than l8 cities, boroughs and school districts have shifted their tax base in this direction. Mayor Stephen Reed of Harrisburg has stated that "a land value taxation system ... is an important incentive for the highest and best use of land." Over 90 percent of the property owners in the City of Harrisburg pay less with this approach to local taxation. In 1982 there were more than 4200 vacant structures in this city of 53,000 residents. Today there are fewer than 500 vacant structures! Between 1982 and 1993 there were more than 4,700 local jobs created. Harrisburg, formerly the second most distressed city in the United States, now is one of the highest quality of life cities on a number of economic indicators, and has won numerous awards recognizing this.
Clearly, this simple tax reform would also work wonders in the City of Philadelphia. It should be fully implemented as soon as possible.
The second way to secure democratic rights to the earth is this: Land could be made available to individuals and groups who wish to live in ecologically sustainable villages and farms. Community land trusts can hold title to such lands while the buildings and other improvements can be privately owned. With land access, involuntary unemployment would be ended since the right to use land is the essential prerequisite to the right to work. Money available through non-profit grants and government transfer payments can be used as revolving funds for micro-loans for the purchase of building materials for the new ecovillages.
If you are in agreement with one or both of these proposals, please tell people and help make it happen. You can link up with the Earth Rights movement by contacting:
Earth Rights Institute, P.O. Box 328, Scotland, PA 17251. Phone: 717-264-0957 Email: earthrts@pa.net
Henry Geoge School, 413 South 10th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147. Phone: 215-922-4278 Email: bygeorge@dca.net
Pennsylvania Fair Tax Coalition, 631 Melwood Ave., Pittsbugh, PA 15213. Phone: 412-621-3499 Email: pimann@pobox.com
School of Living. 432 Leaman Rd., Cochranville, PA 19330. Phone: 610-593-6988
The following sources were useful in preparing this article:
David Zucchino, Myth of the Welfare Queen. New York, Scribner, 1997, pp. 207-8. "Social Waste" by Paul Hawken in Mother Jones, March/April 1997, p. 46.
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"The profit of the earth is for all." Ecclesiastes 5:9
The land, the earth God gave to man for his home, sustenance, and support should never be the possession of any man, corporation, society, or unfriendly government any more than the air or water, if as much. An individual, company, or enterprise should hold no more than is required for their home and sustenance. All that is not used should be held for the free use of every family to make homesteads, and to hold them as long as they are so occupied." - Abraham Lincoln "We need to revise our economic thinking to give full value to our natural resources. Reducing income taxes while increasing resource prices will stimulate employment and environmental restoration." - Paul Hawken, 'Natural Capitalism.' Mother Jones magazine, March/Aprll 1997.
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