Professor Mason Gaffney

George's blend of radicalism and conservatism can puzzle one, until it is seen as a reconciliation of the two. The system is internally consistent, but defies conventional stereotypes. New Palgrave Dictionary of Economic Thought 1987 ...I’m very suspicious of people who take that point of view, I think it’s a substitute for having constructive ideas themselves. ..The word panacea is a scare word, it is used to intimidate people who have a solution, I refuse to be intimated. To me the wonderful thing about Site Value Rating the way it reconciles a number of ideas that in other philosophies and in the dominant philosophy today are considered to be incompatible. For example we can have a progressive tax system and we can have free markets and we can have incentives at the same time, these are not only compatible these are essential to each other. If the government imposes a rate on land and the rent that land yields, that not only allows land to put to its best use as defined by the free market. It encourages it! It’s not only compatible with the free market. Its more compatible than any other system. Furthermore it allows the government to untax labour, it allows government to untax exchange. The things that are the essence of the free market in are untaxed. The effects of the rate is highly progressive because the ownership of land is extremely concentrated. So what more could you ask for? Here’s a revenue system which is at the one time progressive and at the same time favourable to incentives. Association For Good Government Interview 1987