Miller: Dying for Justice

Overview

Dying for Justice, by epidemiologist George J. Miller, was published by the Centre for Land Policy Studies (London); bookseller catalogue records give a 1999 publication date (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] Harrison's account gives the submission date as around 2003, which does not obviously match the 1999 catalogue date for the book itself — it is possible the figure was updated or resubmitted in later work, or that one of the two dates is a citation error; the wiki has not been able to independently verify which. [CITATION NEEDED: primary copy of Dying for Justice or the Department of Health/Treasury submission, to confirm the exact publication/submission date and the calculation behind the 50,000 figure]

Miller is also the author of a related work with a firmer publication date, 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). Bookseller catalogue listing: AbeBooks — used for the ISBN, publisher, and catalogue publication year (1999); this is a secondary bookseller record, not the book itself, so the date should be treated as provisional.
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 description of the study's submission to the Department of Health and Treasury, and the companion citation to Miller's On Fairness and Efficiency (2000). Wiki book page