Conservapedia - User contributions [en]

Fred E. Foldvary

2010-01-19T16:31:03Z

Foldvary:

Fred E. Foldvary teaches economics at Santa Clara University, California, and directs the school's Civil Society Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University and was a Phi Beta Kappa Honor student as a UC Berkeley undergraduate. Foldvary's main scholarly interests are public finance, real estate economics, public choice, and social ethics. He is the author of ''The Soul of Liberty'', ''Public Goods and Private Communities'', and ''Dictionary of Free Market Economics''. He edited ''Beyond Neoclassical Economics'' and, with Dan Klein, ''The Half-Life of Policy Rationales''. ''Public Goods and Private Communities'' won him the Atlas Foundation's Antony Fisher International Memorial Award in 1995, and a Chinese edition was published in 2006. Besides his numerous articles, Fred Foldvary writes a weekly column for ''The Progress Report'' [http://www.progress.org] and is an associate editor of the online journal Econ Journal Watch [http://www.econjournalwatch.org].

Fred E. Foldvary

2010-01-19T16:30:05Z

Foldvary: Fred Foldvary, biography.

Land value tax

2007-06-19T15:16:24Z

Foldvary: A land value tax, levied on land value exclusive of improvements, does not have the deadweight loss that other taxes have.

A land value tax is a levy on the market value of land, exclusive of any buildings or other improvements. Unlike taxes on labor, enterprise profits, and produced goods, a tax on land rent or land value has no deadweight loss, as it does not reduce the incentives to produce. Land has a fixed supply, so taxing it does not shrink the amount of land, nor does land flee or hide as does income. Since land receives much of its value from nearby public works and services, a land value tax returns value received, avoiding the implicit subsidy of rent and land value if these are paid for by taxing labor or enterprise. The American economist Henry George analyzed and promoted land value taxation during the later 1800s, and so land value taxation is referred to as a Georgist policy. Many economsts today consider a land value as both efficient and equitable, and a shift of taxes from labor, sales, and profits to land value would make the economy more productive.

Reference: Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 1879.

Universal ethic

2007-06-19T15:06:21Z

Foldvary: The universal ethic is the experssion of natural moral law and the moral foundation for proper governance.

The "universal ethic" is a set of moral rules that expresses natural moral law. If it exists, the universal ethic is a unique moral imperative for humanity. Its function is to provide the foundation for proper laws and policies. The claim for its existence is a set of criteria which the universal ethic should satisfy. The universal ethic has five basic rules:

1. A "benefit" is an act welcomed by the recipient.
2. A "harm" is an act which directly and actually invades the legitimate domain of a victim.
3. Acts which benefit others are good.
4. All acts, and only those acts, which coercively harm others are evil.
5. Acts which are neither good nor evil are morally neutral.

The criteria for the universal ethic are:
1. The ethic should apply universally to all persons.
2. The ethic should be comprehensive for all acts.
3. The ethic should be logically consistent with the premises from which it is derived.
4. The ethic should not be based merely on arbitrary beliefs, values, or on any particular culture or practice.

The premises from which the universal ethic are derived are those proposed by the British philosopher John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government. These are:
1. Human beings are morally equal, having an equal moral worth, there being no inherent master-slave relationship in human biology.
2. Human beings are independent in their thinking and feeling.
3. Each person has a personal ethic by which acts are deemed to be good, evil, or neutral.

Reference: The Soul of Liberty, by Fred Foldvary.