On Fairness and EfficiencyThe privatisation of the public income over the past millennium.
Dr George Miller Bristol Policy Press, 2000, £55
THE SEEDS of modern poverty were sown over the past 1,000 years, according to the author of this impressive chronicle of British history. Dr Miller is Professor of Epidemiology at one of London's leading medical research and teaching hospitals. He has little doubt that the root cause of unemployment and the associated psychological and physical ailments are related to the maldistribution of the nation's wealth.
The record of the past century proves his point. Despite massive income redistribution in the welfare state, the life chances of people at the bottom of the class structure have not improved in relation to those who command most of the nation's resources. So the claim by Prime Minister Tony Blair that New Labour would abolish poverty within 20 years is almost certainly going to turn out to be a hollow one.
Dr Miller realises the explanation is difficult for people to swallow - they have been weaned on the conventional wisdoms. So he devotes a chapter to the careful exposition of the theory of rent, to enable readers to analyse for themselves the impact on their lives of rent privatisation. This book may be expensive for most people, but it is worth the investment. It constitutes one of the few works of reference to which social activists can turn for authoritative documentation of the evidence in support of the argument that modern governments should base public finance on the rent of land and natural resources.
The author takes us back to pre-Norman times, and traces the evolution of the modern system of land tenure by demonstrating an exhaustive knowledge of law, economics, politics and social history, as well as his own discipline of medicine. The story is a complex one of interactions that culminated in the experiment known as the Welfare State. But the assumptions and aspirations on which that experiment is based are now being seriously challenged. A new paradigm is needed to guide policy-makers, and Dr Miller leaves us in no doubt that the heart of the new approach in the 21st century must be driven by the determination to re-base public finance on that most immobile of resources land. Without such a shift in policy, argues Dr Miller, millions of people will continue to be deprived of their natural right to health and wealth.
David B Blane
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