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eoclassical economics is the idiom of most economic discoursetoday. It is the paradigm that bends the twigs of young minds. Thenit confines the florescence of older ones, like chicken-wire shapinga topiary. It took form about a hundred years ago, when Henry George and his reform proposals were a clear and present political danger and challenge to the landed and intellectual establishments of the world. Few people realize to what degree the founders ofNeo-classical economics changed the discipline for the express purpose of deflecting George and frustrating future students seeking to follow his arguments. The strategem was semantic: to destroy the very words in which he expressed himself. SimonPatten expounded it succinctly. "Nothing pleases a ...single taxer better than ... to use the well-known economic theories ...[therefore] economic doctrine must be recast" (Patten, 1908: 219; Collier, 1979: 270).