In the two interviews below, William F. Buckley discusses with Roger Starr and Manuel Ayau the advantages of a tax system based on the principles of Henry George. Mr. Buckley has long favored the ideas of Henry George, and these two interviews are among the few where he explained why.
In a C-SPAN interview in 2000 with Brian Lamb, (http://www.wealthandwant.com/docs/Buckley_HG.html), Mr. Buckley explained that he had not said much publicly about his support for Henry George’s ideas because “I’m beaten down by my right-wing theorists and intellectual friends. They always find something wrong with the Single-Tax idea.” He went on to say, “What I’m talking about Mr. Lamb is Henry George who said there is infinite capacity to increase capital and to increase labor, but none to increase land, and since wealth is a function of how they play against each other, land should be thought of as common property. The effect of this would be that if you have a parking lot and the Empire State Building next to it, the tax on the parking lot should be the same as the tax on the Empire State Building, because you shouldn’t encourage land speculation. Anyway I’ve run into tons of situations where I think the Single-Tax theory would be applicable. We should remember also this about Henry George, he was sort of co-opted by the socialists in the 20s and the 30s, but he was not one at all.”
These two interviews (copyright Stanford University) come from the Firing Line Collection which is located at the Hoover Institution Archives.
| FIRING LINE: Has New York Let Us Down? |
This is a transcript of the Firing Line program taped in New York City on May 29, 1985, and telecast later by PBS. Host: William F. Buckley Jr. |
| FIRING LINE: For Central America: A Radical Prescription |
This is a transcript of the Firing Line program taped in New York City on October 2, 1986, and telecast later by PBS. Host: William F. |
