Here is RSF’s annual fund appeal letter and special offers on new and noteworthy Georgist books.

From the Desk of Gib Halverson

December, 2018

Dear Friends of the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation,

As Georgists, you and I share a moral conviction that we must work individually and together to make Henry George’s ideas heard and understood. We must inspire more people from various backgrounds to join us in building a better, freer and more prosperous world. A land value tax and free trade are vital steps to a more just economic system. The responsibility to further this falls on all of us, and requires individuals working as a team on worthy projects that would make Robert Schalkenbach smile.

Robert Schalkenbach Foundation has a megaphone to share these policy ideas, which it is the mission of our Board and Staff to expound and propagate, using the best approaches and methods of our time. By supporting and joining with the RSF team you will help prove that ideas of the prophet of San Francisco are relevant for everyone today. When our principles are put into practice, everyone benefits. And when people understand this they will want to join our cause.

Our primary website, schalkenbach.org, offers one of the best collections of Henry George’s writings along with works by other authors, including scholarly papers commissioned by RSF. And our online bookstore is the single best source of a broad range of materials related to George’s ideas, including materials you can download for free and share with others, such as Fred Foldvary’s excellent “The Ultimate Tax Reform.” Please see the accompanying list for this and other relevant links we think you will find of interest.

Our recent and forthcoming publications include:

* The Annotated Works of Henry George, a six-volume series edited by Francis K. Peddle and William S. Peirce, assisted by Alexandra Lough, and with support from the Henry George Foundation of Great Britain. Volume IV is forthcoming in 2019 and features Protection or Free Trade, with a wealth of scholarly notes and extensive introduction by Professor Stephen Meardon. With trade policy in the news, this is a timely new edition.

* Fortschritt und Armut – a German edition of unabridged Progress and Poverty – in cooperation with Dirk Loehr and Metropolis-Verlag.

*Progreso y Miseria – Paul Martin’s new Spanish translation of unabridged P&P is being prepared for publication by the RSF Staff.

* Rent as Public Revenue: Issues and Methods, co-published with the Henry George Institute and edited by Lindy Davies, features leading Georgist theorists and experts.

* Georgist Journal – also co-published with HGI and edited by Lindy Davies, it features the latest material by leading Georgists, suitable for the concerned and intelligent layperson.

RSF was a co-sponsor of the Council of Georgist Organizations’ Annual North American Conference held in Baltimore, August, 2018. It brought together local community activists, such as Clarence Davis, as well as veteran and new Georgists from across the USA, Canada, UK and beyond. Charles Avila of the Philippines gave a very well received talk based on his book, Ownership: Early Christian Teaching, which is also available from the RSF online bookstore.

RSF also partnered with the Center for the Study of Economics to sponsor educational materials and an annual information booth, first established by the Public Revenue Education Council, at the National Conference of State Legislators. For the third year in a row we will pursue this outreach effort to policy makers at the 2019 NCSL Summer conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

Following-up the International Union for Land-Value Taxation and Free Trade public forum in New York City in 2017, we continue to seek to partner with international (Georgist and sympathetic) organizations to address issues of fair access to unpolluted water, an essential element for life.

Over the decades RSF has helped sustain The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. This publication was founded in 1941 by RSF member Will Lissner and a distinguished group of scholars, including Francis Neilson, Franz Oppenheimer, and John Dewey. Today AJES is edited by former RSF president, Cliff Cobb, with each thematic issue addressing a vital social or economic concern. Recent back issues may be purchased from our online bookstore.

These efforts and many others need support. Your generous tax-deductible contribution will help us further the vision that Henry George enunciated so clearly. Like him, we see a world that could be, and choose to act to turn that vision into reality. Your donation makes you part of our team – a team that goes back to those noble supporters of Henry George’s 1886 New York mayoral campaign. For the sake of your children, grandchildren, and unknown future souls who seek a better life with higher ideals, please continue this tradition of working for economic justice. We offer “Thank You” gifts of one or more of our latest publications mentioned above, dependent upon the level of your contribution. The details are attached or enclosed with this annual letter.

Now, some final updates:

Sadly, the Henry George Birthplace in Philadelphia is no longer within the Georgist movement. After great effort, the RSF Board regretfully decided that the seller’s price of $740,000 was too high. The building is now in private hands.

We are blessed with a dedicated Staff in NYC, some remote workers, and our Board of 21 volunteer Directors who give generously of their time and talents. You may have already heard that Mark Sullivan will be retiring as our Administrative Director in 2019. We thank Mark for his decades of service to RSF.

RSF is starting a process of searching for an Executive Director. We invite you to think about whom you might encourage to explore this opportunity and to make them aware of the search information on our website.

On behalf of the Board and Staff of RSF, thank you once more for your support, and best wishes for the Holidays and the 2019 New Year,

Gilbert M. Halverson

President of the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation

Links to Organizations mentioned Presidents letter

THE ANNOTATED WORKS OF HENRY GEORGE

Series Editors: Francis K. Peddle and William S. Peirce

Volume IV of The Annotated Works of Henry George presents the full and original text of Protection or Free Trade, and supplements it with annotations that explain George’s many references to the trade policies and disputes of his day. Professor Stephen Meardon contributes an extensive introductory essay, “Protection or Free Trade and the Political Strategy of Labor’s Emancipation.” It provides the historical and theoretical context for George’s debates with prominent political economists and trade advocates. A thorough index augments accessibility to the introduction and annotations and well as George’s original text, and their key terms.

Protection of Free Trade was read into the U.S. Congressional Record in its entirety in 1892, and remains one of the most well-articulated defenses of the free exchange of goods, services, and labor, exposing the monopolistic practices and the privileging of special interests in the trade policies of his time. While “free trade” today is often associated with a neo-liberal agenda that oppresses working people, PFT makes the case that true free trade, when linked with land value taxation or the systematic collection of economic rent, reduces wealth and income inequality, promotes international cooperation and peace, and elevates the condition of labor to far greater degree than any form of trade protectionism.

HC FORTHCOMING IN 2019

2019 Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

At the RSF Bookstore

TAXATION: THE LOST HISTORY

By Terry Dwyer

Introduction by Clifford W. Cobb.

From the 17th century onward, there was a conflict at the heart of political economy about the proper object of taxation. On the one hand socially-minded thinkers, such as Adam Smith, sought to avoid taxation by requiring landholders to finance government directly with land rents. On the other side were business-oriented thinkers who favored taxes on wages and commerce. This book is an in-depth treatment of the 19th and 20th century debates over the nature of land rent and the theory and application of Land Value Taxation. What was lost in the course of this history is the wisdom that the French Physiocrats and their student Adam Smith carried over from the medieval view of society as an organism. This work by Dr. Terence Dwyer enables us to share in this wisdom, and it offers a renewed understanding of the intellectual roots of the impasse facing nations and their economic advisers.

Forthcoming in 2019. AJES & Wiley. 366 pages plus index.

Originally published as AJES Vol. 73 # 4 (October 2014). RSF and HGI

RESPONDING TO THE CUMULATIVE DAMAGE OF RACISM

“The system of white supremacy that operated openly from the 17th century until the 1960s in the United States was a state of terror. Not only were enslaved people taken from their land and culture, deprived of freedom, tortured, bought and sold, dehumanized, forced to learn a new language and religion, cut off from their ancestors, and denied even the minimal solace of family attachments, they were forced to survive under those degraded conditions for 15 to 20 generations with no hope of rescue. White prisoners of war… who survived those sorts of conditions for four or five years, are considered national heroes. The African-Americans who survived centuries of far greater abuse have never received an official apology, much less an effort to rectify past transgressions.”

– From the Introduction by Clifford W. Cobb, Editor

Sixteen additional articles by an array of diverse authors, on the cumulative damage of racism, include:

* Cracking the Racial Code: Black Threat, White Rights, and the Lexicon of American Politics, Dylan Bennett and Hannah Walker

* The Five Refusals of White Supremacy, Andrea Gibbons

* The Destruction of Black Wall Street: Tulsa’s 1921 Riot and the Eradication of Accumulated Wealth, Chris M. Messer, Thomas E. Shriver, and Alison E. Adams

* The War on Drugs, Racial Meanings, and Structural Racism: A Holistic and Reproductive Approach, Michael L. Rosino and Matthew W. Hughey

* Land Gains, Land Losses: The Odyssey of African Americans Since Reconstruction, Waymon R. Hinsom

* The History of Residential Segregation in the United States, Title Viii, and the Homeownership Remedy, Teron McGrew

* Mass Incarceration and Racial Inequality, Becky Pettit and Carmen Gutierrez

AJES Vol. 77 Double Issue 3-4, May-September 2018. PB 601 pp. AJES & Wiley

At the RSF Bookstore.

GEORGIST JOURNAL #133

The Georgist Journal, since its inception in 1973, has given a platform to outstanding voices in the Georgist movement. Edited by Lindy Davies, the journal addresses current issues through the lens of political economy and gives way to both popular and scholarly discourse. Here are some of the items in this new issue:

* Baltimore 2018: Envisioning Renewal, Photos by Mark A. Sullivan

* Parameters of the Climate Change Debate, Cliff Cobb

* Great Expectations: How Credit Markets Twist the Allocation and Distribution of Land, Mason Gaffney

* Wilmington, Delaware: An American City that Needs Fixing, Mike Curtis

* Will Cryptos Force Value Capture? Frank de Jong

* Shirley-Anne Hardy 1929-2018

* By the Way: Seeing the Earth, Editorial feature by Lindy Davies

Originally edited by Bob Clancy and published by the International Union for LVT & Free Trade, the GJ was the lifeline of the Henry George Institute, (HGI), and was later adopted by the Council of Georgist Organizations. In 2016, Robert Schalkenbach Foundation joined with HGI to serve as co-publisher.

GJ #133, November 2018, HGI and RSF

At the RSF Bookstore

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