Want Americans to Have More Babies? Abolish Landlordism
America has a fertility crisis. While certainly not comparable to, say, South Korea — which is now on record for having the lowest birth rate of any country on the planet[1] — there are many reasons to be concerned with the below-replacement fertility of Americans. Among them are:
- The lack of a young working population that can be reliably taxed to fund a welfare state. (Note: Middle-class workers in Scandinavia make up the bulk of tax revenue.)[2]
- Finding soldiers for the military will become difficult as the number of potential recruits substantially decreases.
- Higher economic inequality: Wealth is redistributed from poor, young laborers to retirees who have already saved up large sums of money.[3]
- Labor shortages will increase aggregate demand while gutting aggregate supply (leading to runaway inflation). I have my doubts that automation can fill in all the gaps.
- As seen recently lower fertility rates necessitate high immigration, which has bred political instability.
- Civilizational progress in itself is driven by new ideas, of which older generations are typically more skeptical of.
For anybody concerned about guaranteeing social justice and security for the American people, this is exceedingly dreadful. And yet nobody seems to have a solution. Progressives, who wish to preserve gender equality while acknowledging the predicament, believe funding social programs incentivizing child bearing will suffice. However, most scientific data suggests these programs have negligible impacts on fertility.[4][5]
The increasingly reactionary right-wing populists — most of whom I consider angry virgins or “incels” — believe restoring in full patriarchal institutions will fix this; that if women are condemned to sex-based servitude, in which the pleasure of men is placed above all else, we shall “RETVRN” to large families. This is wishful thinking. Even today we see unstable or declining fertility rates in patriarchal societies. (Below are charts from the World Bank of countries I consider highly patriarchal to illustrate my point.) The correlation between gender inequality and higher fertility is a weak one regardless.[6] Religious organizations in America which uphold traditional gender norms — a key aspect of patriarchy in my opinion — also see fertility rates among followers decline, such as the Church of Latter-Day Saints.[7] Religious people in general have comparable fertility rates to their secular counterparts.[8]
Furthermore, as I will likely write about another time, if lower fertility rates hinder civilizational progress, so too does patriarchy. A few notable women in history, in spite of patriarchy, considerably advanced technological and material progress. Imagine the potential women in general could have unleashed had patriarchy not stunted their personal and spiritual growth.[9] Patriarchy fundamentally denies women the will to power; grossly limiting their capacity for elevating life in totality. Patriarchy should never be considered an option, even if it did lead to more children (in the short-term). If both lower fertility rates and patriarchy are equally detrimental to civilization, there must be a third way.
If neither government subsidies nor restoring patriarchy can raise fertility rates, what can we do? I believe the best way to raise American fertility rates is to abolish landlordism. The American political economist Henry George, carrying the torch for Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith who developed similar critiques of private property in land, wrote nearly 145 years ago about how landlordism destroys human potential. He believed that if landlordism was not defeated, the landless will eventually become subservient to the landowners (something he called worse than Southern chattel slavery). In his magnum opus Progress and Poverty, he wrote:[10]
The tax upon land values is, therefore, the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive. It is the taking by the community, for the use of the community, of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by Nature be attained. No citizen will have an advantage over any other citizen save as is given by his industry, skill, and intelligence; and each will obtain what he fairly earns. Then, but not till then, will labor get its full reward, and capital its natural return.
What Henry George critiqued in his writings was land speculation, which is defined by the Smithsonian Institution as:[11]
[The] investment practice or strategy of buying cheaply large quantities of land, guessing when the prices of the land would rise enough to make a profit, and then selling that land.
In the modern day, landlordism takes on the form of real estate markets, where people purchase land; use it in an inefficient manner (e.g., excessive horizontal housing, which is bad for the environment); artificially improve its value by influencing external conditions (i.e., calling for zoning laws); and then, after years of speculation or hoarding, either sell it for a high price or lease it to others (and for profit either way).[12][13] Such a situation invariably produces unbearable levels of inequality. And it makes having a roof over one’s head outrageously pricey. As Alex Tabarrok demonstrated, housing prices have been steadily increasing since the rise of suburban communities — again, fuelled by land speculation — in the 1940s, exacerbated by competition for such a “scarce resource.”[14]
And — surprise, surprise! — landlordism positively correlates with declining fertility rates. Think about it: If most of your working income (or working incomes to be more precise) goes towards paying off your rent or mortgage, as has been the case for decades now,[15] you have no financial incentive to enjoy life to the fullest extent: This includes passing on your genes and creating new life. There are too many financial pressures for you to even consider children. This is confirmed by the overwhelming empirical research done across the world.[16][17][18][19][20] And even to the degree it does encourage fertility among top beneficiaries,[21] it does so by worsening economic inequality, creating what Matthew Stewart calls “the new aristocracy.”
As more of our wealth goes towards land rents, the more costly just existing becomes. Landlordism is thus anti-civilization. It negates both individual cultivation and the potential of future generations. The relationship between private property in land and maximizing civilizational growth is undialectical. People who knowingly prosper from this scheme are subversive.
To solve America’s fertility crisis, only top-down, radical reforms — many of which necessitate a powerful central government capable of resisting both majority sentiment and big business lobbyists — can fix this; all with Georgism, adapted to America’s present-day clusterfuck, in mind. Four of them include:
- Abolish single-family zoning. Single-family zoning is a favorite policy among landlords as it artificially limits housing supply while efficaciously subsidizing already-existing real estate empires (e.g., McDonalds and Walmart).[22]
- Break up real estate empires. Subversive billionaires like Donald Trump built their wealth from land speculation. Such money translates to political power which primarily benefits other landlords.[23] Corporations who derive substantial revenue from landlordism should be disempowered, if not broken up.
- Implement the land tax. As Henry George argued for so long ago, taxing land based on its unimproved value, especially at a 100% rate, is akin to achieving the common ownership and leasing of land (“free land”). This will mean land is affordable to all while society is justly compensated for its commercial use.
- Nationalize other natural resources. Forests, petroleum, water, and other natural resources — including their for-profit refinement and extraction — should be brought under a sovereign wealth fund. (Think of a government-run holding company, which I have advocated for in the past.) This, combined with free land, would promote economic development and fund a generous welfare state.
In my view, following the tenets of Georgism will help restore America’s civilizational potential. This includes raising fertility rates, as housing will finally be treated as a human right and people who want more children can afford to have them. If you want Americans to have more babies — without embracing the forces of reaction or wasteful programs — your best bet is to abolish landlordism forever.
