Review of the Book:
The Theory of Earned and Unearned Incomes
by Harry Gunnison Brown
Joseph Dana Miller
[Reprinted from Single Tax Review, Vol.XIX,
No.1, January-February 1919]
We hope this book will be widely read. We welcome its appearance.
Particularly should it be read by those who at this critical time are
responsible for the reconstructive legislation which a disordered and
disheartened world demands. Now, more than ever, must legislation look
beyond palliative devices to economic laws. In so far as statesmen,
whatever their sphere, -- the nation, the state, the municipality, --
act upon the old make-shift policy, to the neglect of the lasting
needs of the community, they will do an evil service to their own day
and future generations.
Mr. Brown addresses hb book to all who "are concerned with the
evils in our present economic system and who look forward to
worthwhile changes during or after the war. World-wide democracy will
be but half achieved if it be achieved in the political realm only,
with no accompanying economic changes."
With Mr. Brown's conclusions Single Taxers have little reasons to
quarrel. The debate will be rather with those whom the author
describes as "economists whose social sympathies (of the
influence of which they are not always conscious) or whose training by
their former teachers, incapacitate them for seeing any distinction
between land and capital." To these Mr. Brown's work comes as a
virile challenge, made in such terms that it must be taken up. The
fundamental issues raised affect the economic policy of the country
too profoundly to be ignored. They must be discussed by professional
economists and settled once for all. It is unfair to American
democracy, now deeply concerned about her future, that uncertainty as
to these issues should continue a day longer than necessary. Class
interests of a contrary nature must not be allowed to prejudice the
final triumph of reason.
While the economists debate, we trust that the unprofessional student
of the economic problems now facing our nation, will also consult this
work of Prof. Brown. Economic problems, after all, are but the
problems of business, industry, agriculture, the getting and
distributing of wealth, the material and better things we all are
rightly striving for. The style of the work is clear, easy, and its
vocabulary untechnical; while on every page it is provocative of
thought.
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