Miller: Dying for Justice

Overview

Dying for Justice, by epidemiologist George J. Miller, was published by the Centre for Land Policy Studies (London) in 2003 (ISBN 978-1-901202-04-5).[1] Fred Harrison's Ricardo's Law (2006) describes the study as calculating that tax-induced economic inequality is associated with roughly 50,000 premature deaths per year in England and Wales, and states the analysis was submitted to the UK Department of Health and the Treasury.[2] The 2003 date is now well-supported by three convergent sources — Miller's British Medical Journal obituary (as reproduced by the Royal College of Physicians) and both the bibliography and a footnote of Ricardo's Law itself — which makes the 1999 date in the AbeBooks bookseller catalogue the likely outlier/error, and dissolves the apparent mismatch between the book's date and Harrison's "around 2003" submission account.[1][2][3] The book itself is not digitized (confirmed absent from the Internet Archive and from Google Books preview) and is known here only through secondary accounts; the 50,000-deaths figure, the underlying calculation, and the departmental-submission detail all rest on Harrison's account in Ricardo's Law and have not been checked against a primary copy of Dying for Justice or the submission documents themselves.

Two further honesty points from the 2026-07-17 verification pass. First, Harrison's own text concedes the analysis was never vetted: Ricardo's Law states that "None of Miller's peers, some of whom were consultants to the Department of Health, considered his analysis worthy of critical evaluation" — so by the citing author's own admission, the 50,000 figure never received critical peer evaluation.[2] Second, the one fully independent account of Miller's work located — his BMJ obituary — confirms his standing as a cardiovascular epidemiologist (professor of epidemiology at Bart's and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry; co-author of a landmark 1975 Lancet paper on HDL cholesterol and heart disease) and confirms both land-policy books' existence and dates, but conspicuously does not mention the 50,000 figure or any government submission; his land-policy work receives a single sentence.[3]

Miller is also the author of a related work, On Fairness and Efficiency: The Privatisation of the Public Income Over the Past Millennium (Policy Press, 2000), which Harrison cites for the same broader thesis — that privatising publicly-created land rent produces class-based health inequalities via a spatial "north-south" mortality gradient.[2] The two Miller studies together form the empirical core of Harrison's Chapter 8 argument that the distribution of rent, not merely income, drives inequalities in life expectancy.

See Also

• Ricardo's Law (Fred Harrison, 2006) — the book that cites this study's mortality estimate
• Economic Rent — the underlying concept: unearned surplus whose privatisation Miller links to health outcomes
• Fred Harrison — author who popularised Miller's findings within Georgist advocacy
• The Corruption of Economics (Gaffney & Harrison) — companion Harrison/Gaffney work on the same rent-privatisation thesis

Sources

1. George J. Miller, Dying for Justice (London: Centre for Land Policy Studies, 2003). Bookseller catalogue listing: AbeBooks — used for the ISBN and publisher; its 1999 date is contradicted by the three sources below and treated as a catalogue error.
2. Fred Harrison, Ricardo's Law: The Great Tax Clawback Scam and How Reform Can Save the Welfare State (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 2006), Ch. 8 — used for the ~50,000-premature-deaths/year claim, the Department of Health/Treasury submission account, and the "worthy of critical evaluation" concession (read verbatim via Google Books snippet view, 2026-07-17); its bibliography (p. 303) and a footnote both date Dying for Justice to 2003. Wiki book page
3. Royal College of Physicians, "George James Miller", Inspiring Physicians (reproducing his obituary, BMJ 2007;334:753) — used for Miller's biography and credentials, and for the independent confirmation of both books' titles, publishers, and dates ("Dying for justice (London, Centre for Land Policy Studies, 2003)"). Note: it prints "Polity Press" for the 2000 book, a transcription slip for Policy Press (Bristol).