William Thomas Thornton
ISBN 978-0944997109
364 pp. $25.00 (U.S.) £20.00
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During the Great Famine in Ireland (1846-1852), William T.
Thornton (1813-1880), an English economist, proposed that unused land be
purchased by the government and sold on credit to families that would put it
into production. In this way funds spent on famine relief would be turned from
an expenditure into an investment, jobs would be created, and the benefits of
widespread capital ownership would accrue to individuals, families and the
nation. Although never adopted, later thinkers, offering a principled,
growth-oriented approach for the 21st Century, refined Thornton's vision. As
the global economy experiences ever-more-frequent downturns (with accelerating
replacement of human labor by advanced technology, reinforced by flawed methods
of finance that concentrate capital ownership in fewer and fewer hands)
Thornton's book shines light on the path out of today's global dilemma.
Originally published in 1848, this newly annotated and indexed edition of A
Plea for Peasant Proprietors was prepared from Thornton's 1874 revision
includes a foreword that examines a new framework for solving the global
financial crisis, financing economic growth and enabling every citizen to
become an owner of productive capital, as well as appendices explaining topical
references and the political and economic environment within which Thornton worked.