Joseph Stiglitz endorses Henry George

At the opening plenary session of the INET Conference in Paris Joseph Stiglitz responded to an opening speech by Tommas Picketty.

This is how he ended his speech:

“The whole problem is the structure of our economy which has be more orientaed at increasing rents than increasing producitivty and real economic growth…… But a tax on land ..rents would actually address some of the underlying problems. This is an idea that Henry George had more than 100 years ago but the analysis that I have done says it would actually go one step beyond Henry George. Henry George argued for a land tax because it was non-distortionary but this analysis says that a land tax actually improves the productivity of the economy because you encourage people to invest in productive capital rather than into rent generating wealth and the result of that shift in the composition of savings toward more productive investment leads to a more productive economy and leads to a more equal society.”