On Fairness and Efficiency (George Miller, 2000)

Summary

"Miller (2000), On Fairness and Efficiency" is cited in two books by the practitioner-author Fred Harrison — Ricardo's Law (Ch. 8.1) and Boom Bust (Ch. 5 §2) — in support of (1) an epidemiological-style argument connecting the privatization of land rent to class-based gradients in health and life expectancy, and (2) part of the actuarial reasoning behind why the growth phase of the 18-year land cycle runs roughly 14 years: the time for a sum to double at a historical ~5% long-run interest rate, matched against adult working-life expectancy.

The work is George Miller (catalogued as G. J. / George James Miller), On Fairness and Efficiency: The Privatisation of the Public Income Over the Past Millennium, Bristol: The Policy Press, 2000 (ix+470 pp.) — a full-length scholarly book, held by the Internet Archive and reviewed on publication in the Journal of Social Policy (2001) and the Journal of Public Health Medicine (2001), and later by Mason Gaffney (2011). Its author is the same George J. Miller whose related study Dying for Justice Harrison also cites. What remains open is not the book's existence but the accuracy of Harrison's characterisation of it: the bibliographic record is confirmed, but the health/class-gradient argument described below rests on Harrison's account of Miller rather than on Miller's own text.

The two claims this citation is said to support are not equally well grounded elsewhere on the wiki. The 5%-interest / ~14-year mechanism is independently and directly documented from Harrison's own text: Boom Bust Ch. 5 §2 (pp. 75–76, Table 5.3) derives the growth-phase length from the historical ~5% long-run interest rate and adult working-life expectancy, citing period sources (Weber's Glasgow data, Clay's 17th–18th century land price data) that the wiki's Boom Bust book page already records — that mechanism does not depend on Miller for its validity. The health/class-gradient claim, by contrast, rests on the Miller attribution alone, is not otherwise corroborated anywhere on this wiki, and remains unverified.

Why This Matters

Miller's book advances an epidemiological-style link between the privatization of land rent and class gradients in health and life expectancy — a line of evidence the rest of the wiki's research collection barely touches: little else here connects economic rent capture to population health. That makes the source worth carrying, though the account above rests on Harrison's secondary characterisation rather than on Miller's text.

See Also

• 18-Year Land Cycle — the independently-verified claim the same Harrison chapter also supports
• Boom Bust (book) — cites Miller for the cycle-timing half of the claim
• Ricardo's Law (book) — cites Miller for the health/class-gradient half of the claim
• Land Speculation Causes Cycles

Sources

1. Fred Harrison, Boom Bust: House Prices, Banking and the Depression of 2010 (2nd ed., Shepheard-Walwyn, 2010), Ch. 5 §2, pp. 75–76, Table 5.3 — used for the independently-verified 5%-interest/14-year mechanism this citation is reported to accompany (Heavy-scanned primary source; see book page for full sourcing). Book page · Publisher
2. Fred Harrison, Ricardo's Law: House Prices and the Great Tax Clawback Scam (Shepheard-Walwyn, 2006), Ch. 8 — used only as the origin of the attribution of the health/class-gradient claim to Miller, not as support for that claim; the exact page on which Harrison cites Miller is not confirmed against the book's own bibliography. Book page
3. George Miller, On Fairness and Efficiency: The Privatisation of the Public Income Over the Past Millennium, Bristol: The Policy Press, 2000 (ix+470 pp.). Internet Archive — used to bibliographically confirm the previously-unlocated source (author, title, publisher, year, extent). Independent reviews establishing its scholarly reception: Journal of Social Policy, 2001 (DOI 10.1017/S0047279401256463); C. C. Potter, Journal of Public Health Medicine 23(3), 2001, p. 256 (DOI 10.1093/pubmed/23.3.256); and Mason Gaffney (2011), review at Common Ground USA. The bibliographic record has been verified, not Miller's text; claim-level use still requires a direct read.