The elder Mirabeau, we are told, ranked the proposition of Quesnay, to substitute one single tax on rent (the impôt unique) for all other taxes, as a discovery equal in utility to the invention of writing or the substitution of the use of money for barter.

To whosoever will think over the matter, this saying will appear an evidence of penetration rather than of extravagance. The advantages which would be gained by substituting for the numerous taxes by which the public revenues are now raised, a single tax levied upon the value of land, will appear more and more important the more they are considered. ...

... With natural opportunities thus free to labor;

• with capital and improvements exempt from tax, and exchange released from restrictions, the spectacle of willing men unable to turn their labor into the things they are suffering for would become impossible;
• the recurring paroxysms which paralyze industry would cease;
• every wheel of production would be set in motion;
• demand would keep pace with supply, and supply with demand;
• trade would increase in every direction, and wealth augment on every hand. ... read the whole chapter

You have heard much about various steps that should be taken to promote economic recovery. I propose this evening to concentrate attention upon one step, a step absolutely fundamental to permanent recovery of the sick patient, as distinct from remedies that dope the patient into a temporary hectic burst of activity; a step so simple and so basic as to be generally neglected.

The one thing uppermost in the minds of everybody today is the appalling existence of want in the midst of plenty, of millions of unemployed in the midst of idle billions of hoarded money and unused credit, as well as factories and mills deteriorating for lack of use, of hunger while farmers are burning grain for fuel.

No wonder people are asking what sort of a crazy economic system we have when at a time when millions are short of adequate food, when babies are going without the milk necessary for their growth, the best remedy that experts can think of and that the Federal Government can recommend is to pay a premium to farmers to grow less grain with which to make flour to feed the hungry, and pay a premium to dairymen to send less milk to market.

Henry George called attention to this situation over fifty years ago. The contradiction between increasing plenty, increase of potential security--and actual want and insecurity is stated in the title of his chief work, Progress and Poverty. That is what his book is about. It is a record of the fact that as the means and appliances of civilization increase, poverty and insecurity also increase. It is an exploration of why millionaires and tramps multiply together. It is a prediction of why this state of affairs will continue; it is a prediction of the plight in which the nation finds itself today. At the same time it is the explanation of why this condition is artificial, man-made, unnecessary, and how it can be remedied. ...

Go to the work of Henry George himself and learn how many of the troubles from which society still suffers, and suffers increasingly, are due to the fact that a few have monopolized the land, and that in consequence they have the power to dictate to others access to the land and to its products -- which include waterpower, electricity, coal, iron and all minerals, as well as the foods that sustain life -- and that they have the power to appropriate to their private use the values that the industry, the civilized order, the very benefactions, of others produce. This wrong is at the very basis of our present social and economic chaos, and until it is righted, all steps toward economic recovery may be temporarily helpful while in the long run useless.

I suppose my hearers have heard the following line of consolation put forth by professional optimists like Mr. Charles Schwab and his imitators. "To be sure," they say, "we have a bad depression, but we have had in our history at least nine such depressions before, and yet have come out of them all to enjoy even better times than went before." What a wonderful consolation, and what a wonderful system! We can get out of our present hole and climb up in order to fall into a tenth, and eleventh and twelfth hole, and so on, each deeper than the one before! Is it not about time that instead of patching up here and there we try to go to the roots of our troubles? ... read the whole speech

The Perfect Tax

In the final analysis, a tax should be evaluated according to the tenets of sound tax theory that have evolved over the course of recent centuries, and much of what has been said above is recaptured by a review of those principles. These measures of what is a "good" tax or a "bad" tax are often listed differently in textbooks, but they are largely agreed upon. Failure to conform to these venerable benchmarks is by itself sufficient cause to explain an economy's faltering — a particularly noteworthy example today is the city of Philadelphia which appears to have done everything backward! It taxes income, sales, building capital and even business privilege, the result being that its fisc is destitute.[20] The principles by which to measure tax design are enumerated here so as to make quite clear how recapturing economic rent in the form of taxes — in all the several forms where 'land' can be identified — constitutes the best method of financing government services and the most advantageous to cities.[21]

The first measure of a good tax is its neutrality. A neutral tax in no way alters the behavior of its partners from what would transpire were there no tax at all. A simple example illustrates the case: today many consumers will travel to alternate jurisdictions to avoid paying a sales tax on particular items, be they food, medication, clothing, or whatever. Taxes fully absorbed ("capitalized") in a market price such as land taxes in no way distort behavior, the volume of transactions, or gross prices. They are neutral.

A tax should also be efficient. To be sure, efficiency has many meanings even in economics. But here, rather than speaking of the administrative efficiency of its collection as will be addressed below, the measure is whether and how much it constitutes an excess burden on the economy, thereby slowing down performance and market vitality. Many taxes, as was mentioned earlier, exert so much drag on market transactions that they are destructive, however much revenue is brought to government coffers. Because land has a fixed supply there is no excess burden at all.

People are frequently most concerned about the fairness of a tax, which is typically measured according to both horizontal and vertical equity. Horizontal equity means that those in similar circumstances will bear similar burdens. Vertical equity prescribes that those with greater resources will pay more. Although studies have yet to show this, land taxes are likely the most "progressive" of any levy, as tenants bear no passed-through burden at all.[22] Not only does no household or office tenant bear any tax burden, locational sites distant from the urban core, mostly homeowners and farmers, typically find their burden reduced. Vacant or underused lots in high value areas pick up the difference, employing a design that employs an alternate criterion of equity: taxing according to use. "Paying for what you take and not for what you make" encourages efficient consumption of space and resources in an automatic and non-coercive manner. The one-third of households that own no land are relieved of all taxes, and residential and non-residential property owners split the rest. Farmers, whose land is typically of inconsequential value relative to sites in urban areas, are likely to pay little if anything even if they are not already protected by other save-harmless provisions. By eliminating taxes on building improvements they typically enjoy savings just as do other businesses.

All this makes for a far simpler and more comprehensible system of taxation. Land taxes are totally transparent, impossible to evade, and therefore much more administrable. This further engenders the legitimacy of taxation and of government itself. What it also does is assure stability to the tax system, for the reason that land values are not subject to the variations and vacillations that other tax bases frequently have. Indeed, the removal of economic rent from locational sites discourages speculative bubbles and the related economic cycles that are associated with them. This greater stability and reliability is to the advantage of every sector of the economy — private, public, and non-profit.

A tax that collects economic rent offers a win-win proposition to every sector of the community — except to those who speculate in land. But who wants to favor land speculators? They are not held in high regard anywhere; their destructive behavior is the bane of cities, recognized everywhere for what it is: parasitic and passive. Speculators provide no added value to a community's well-being, and taxing rent is a foolproof means by which to eliminate it. Land speculation is highest where the most rent can be privately captured, but it forces those who choose to develop to look to sub-optimal locations when the primary locations they hoped for are held off the market for opportunistic gain. By collecting rent, primary choice locations become available for use and to facilitate the development of land use configurations ideal for the economic health and efficient allocation. Urban ambience is improved, public sector service costs are reduced, and sprawl development is stemmed. ... read the whole article

• Geo-rent taxation would reduce sprawl. Current tax policies tend to discourage the development of urban land, because the fruits of those developments are directly taxed. To the extent that those policies are replaced by policies that tap geo-rent, the landowner is incented to develop his land. Recall, an underused site pays the same geo-rent tax as a developed site. The untaxing of production combined with the tapping of geo-rent will induce infilling of the city center, making for a more compact city, agreeable to mixed use and pedestrian activity. Hence, the demand-side push for sprawl is diminished. Moreover, the supply-side pull toward sprawl would also be diminished: Today, sprawl landowners are subsidized by extraneous taxpayers who pay for the roads, sewers, schools, fire-fighting, and security in the sprawl neighborhoods. If those services depended on the community’s geo-rent, the pull toward sprawl would be reduced.
• Dampening cycles: Today, a factor in cycles is real-estate speculation. An economic boom increases the price of land, and speculation can drive prices even higher. Geo-rent taxation would mean that there are no “killings” to be made in land, since 75 percent of the geo-rent would flow to the government, not the landowner. Tapping geo-rent would dampen the real-estate cycle, which in turn dampens the business cycle (Foldvary, 1997).
• Tax-base of last resort: Technology promises to make capital and people ever more mobile, and encryption promises to make money and enterprise less visible. Put differently, technology threatens to make conventional taxation more difficult. Tapping geo-rent may well be the revenue source most suitable for the 21st century. Technology will never enable the landowner to hide his land or move it off-shore. Read the entire article

Albert Jay Nock — Henry George: Unorthodox American

Somehow he did manage to live. By one means or another he got over the peak of his greatest distress, and four years later, in the winter of 1868, he came from California to New York on an errand for a newspaper. He was then not quite thirty years old, and did not even yet have a dollar in his pocket that he could call his own. New York showed him something brand-new in his experience. Up to this time he had not been in a position to see any great show of inequality in the distribution of wealth. Life was simple in the Philadelphia of his boyhood days, and in the rough and new California of his youth one person lived much like another. But now, in the New York of 1868, he saw our western Palmyra in all the shoddy glory of its post-war period, and by all accounts it must have been a most dreadful sight, as repulsive as the pens of Dickens and George William Curtis pictured it. Shoddy riches, shoddy show, shoddy ideals and taste, shoddy people — and on the other hand, whole populations of troglodyte slum-dwellers living at an almost inconceivable depth of wretchedness and degradation.

Years afterward George said that here “I saw and recognized for the first time the shocking contrast between monstrous wealth and debasing want.” What was the cause of it? Again, nobody seemed to know. Like depressions and plagues, it was taken as part of the regular order of nature. It had always existed in large commercial and industrial centers, apparently it was bound always to exist, and it seemed to be just another one of the things that had to be put up with. There was no cure for it, so far as anybody knew. All that could be done was to take some of the curse off it by charity of one sort or another, and this was being done; in fact, it was beginning to be organized on a large scale, more lavishly perhaps than in any other country.

Nevertheless, George reasoned with himself, the thing had to have a cause, for nothing in nature ever happens without a cause. If that cause could be found, a cure might be found; but trying to deal with an effect without knowing anything about its cause would be mere fumbling in the dark. Here, then, was a second question, to which George pledged his lifetime for an answer. The first question was, what is the cause — not any superficial and apparent cause, but the true fundamental cause — of recurrent industrial depressions? The second question was, what is the true fundamental cause of the enormous inequality in the distribution of wealth?

George succeeded in answering these two questions to his own satisfaction while he was still a comparatively young man. This was the only success he ever had in his life; whatever else he touched failed. His one success, however, such as it was, led him through one of the strangest and most remarkable careers ever achieved in America, or for that matter, in the world. ...read the whole article

Louis Post: Outlines of Louis F. Post's Lectures, with Illustrative Notes and Charts (1894)

Poverty is widespread and pitiable. This we know. Its general manifestations are so common that even good men look upon it as a providential provision for enabling the rich to drive camels through needles' eyes by exercising the modern virtue of organized giving.32 Its occasional manifestations in recurring periods of "hard times"33 are like epidemics of a virulent disease, which excite even the most contented to ask if they may not be the next victims. Its spasms of violence threaten society with anarchy on the one hand, and, through panic-stricken efforts at restraint, with loss of liberty on the other. And it persists and deepens despite the continuous increase of wealth producing power.34

33. Differences between "hard times" and "good times" are but differences in degrees of poverty and in the people who suffer from it. Times are always hard with the multitude. But the voice of the multitude is too weak to be heard at ordinary times through the ordinary trumpets of public opinion. They are not regarded nor do they regard themselves as people of any importance in the industrial world, so long as the general wheels of business revolve. It is only when poverty has eaten its way up through the various strata of struggling and pinching and squeezing and squirming humanity, and with its cancerous tentacles touched the superincumbent layers of manufacturing nabobs, merchant princes, railroad kinds, great bankers and great landowners that we hear any general complain of "hard times." ...

d. Effect of Confiscating Rent to Private Use.

By giving Rent to individuals society ignores this most just law, 99 thereby creating social disorder and inviting social disease. Upon society alone, therefore, and not upon divine Providence which has provided bountifully, nor upon the disinherited poor, rests the responsibility for poverty and fear of poverty.

99. "Whatever dispute arouses the passions of men, the conflict is sure to rage, not so much as to the question 'Is it wise?' as to the question 'Is it right?'

"This tendency of popular discussions to take an ethical form has a cause. It springs from a law of the human mind; it rests upon a vague and instinctive recognition of what is probably the deepest truth we can grasp. That alone is wise which is just; that alone is enduring which is right. In the narrow scale of individual actions and individual life this truth may be often obscured, but in the wider field of national life it everywhere stands out.

"I bow to this arbitrament, and accept this test." — Progress and Poverty, book vii, ch. i.

The reader who has been deceived into believing that Mr. George's proposition is in any respect unjust, will find profit in a perusal of the entire chapter from which the foregoing extract is taken.

Let us try to trace the connection by means of a chart, beginning with the white spaces on page 68. As before, the first-comers take possession of the best land. But instead of leaving for others what they do not themselves need for use, as in the previous illustrations, they appropriate the whole space, using only part, but claiming ownership of the rest. We may distinguish the used part with red color, and that which is appropriated without use with blue. Thus: [chart]

But what motive is there for appropriating more of the space than is used? Simply that the appropriators may secure the pecuniary benefit of future social growth. What will enable them to secure that? Our system of confiscating Rent from the community that earns it, and giving it to land-owners who, as such, earn nothing.100

100. It is reported from Iowa that a few years ago a workman in that State saw a meteorite fall, and. securing possession of it after much digging, he was offered $105 by a college for his "find." But the owner of the land on which the meteorite fell claimed the money, and the two went to law about it. After an appeal to the highest court of the State, it was finally decided that neither by right of discovery, nor by right of labor, could the workman have the money, because the title to the meteorite was in the man who owned the land upon which it fell.

Observe the effect now upon Rent and Wages. When other men come, instead of finding half of the best land still common and free, as in the corresponding chart on page 68, they find all of it owned, and are obliged either to go upon poorer land or to buy or rent from owners of the best. How much will they pay for the best? Not more than 1, if they want it for use and not to hold for a higher price in the future, for that represents the full difference between its productiveness and the productiveness of the next best. But if the first-comers, reasoning that the next best land will soon be scarce and theirs will then rise in value, refuse to sell or to rent at that valuation, the newcomers must resort to land of the second grade, though the best be as yet only partly used. Consequently land of the first grade commands Rent before it otherwise would.

As the sellers' price, under these circumstances, is arbitrary it cannot be stated in the chart; but the buyers' price is limited by the superiority of the best land over that which can be had for nothing, and the chart may be made to show it: [chart]

And now, owing to the success of the appropriators of the best land in securing more than their fellows for the same expenditure of labor force, a rush is made for unappropriated land. It is not to use it that it is wanted, but to enable its appropriators to put Rent into their own pockets as soon as growing demand for land makes it valuable.101 We may, for illustration, suppose that all the remainder of the second space and the whole of the third are thus appropriated, and note the effect: [chart]

At this point Rent does not increase nor Wages fall, because there is no increased demand for land for use. The holding of inferior land for higher prices, when demand for use is at a standstill, is like owning lots in the moon — entertaining, perhaps, but not profitable. But let more land be needed for use, and matters promptly assume a different appearance. The new labor must either go to the space that yields but 1, or buy or rent from owners of better grades, or hire out. The effect would be the same in any case. Nobody for the given expenditure of labor force would get more than 1; the surplus of products would go to landowners as Rent, either directly in rent payments, or indirectly through lower Wages. Thus: [chart]

101. The text speaks of Rent only as a periodical or continuous payment — what would be called "ground rent." But actual or potential Rent may always be, and frequently is, capitalized for the purpose of selling the right to enjoy it, and it is to selling value that we usually refer when dealing in land.

Land which has the power of yielding Rent to its owner will have a selling value, whether it be used or not, and whether Rent is actually derived from it or not. This selling value will be the capitalization of its present or prospective power of producing Rent. In fact, much the larger proportion of laud that has a selling value is wholly or partly unused, producing no Rent at all, or less than it would if fully used. This condition is expressed in the chart by the blue color.

"The capitalized value of land is the actuarial 'discounted' value of all the net incomes which it is likely to afford, allowance being made on the one hand for all incidental expenses, including those of collecting the rents, and on the other for its mineral wealth, its capabilities of development for any kind of business, and its advantages, material, social, and aesthetic, for the purposes of residence." — Marshall's Prin., book vi, ch. ix, sec. 9.

"The value of land is commonly expressed as a certain number of times the current money rental, or in other words, a certain 'number of years' purchase' of that rental; and other things being equal, it will be the higher the more important these direct gratifications are, as well as the greater the chance that they and the money income afforded by the land will rise." — Id., note.

"Value . . . means not utility, not any quality inhering in the thing itself, but a quality which gives to the possession of a thing the power of obtaining other things, in return for it or for its use. . . Value in this sense — the usual sense — is purely relative. It exists from and is measured by the power of obtaining things for things by exchanging them. . . Utility is necessary to value, for nothing can be valuable unless it has the quality of gratifying some physical or mental desire of man, though it be but a fancy or whim. But utility of itself does not give value. . . If we ask ourselves the reason of . . . variations in . . . value . . . we see that things having some form of utility or desirability, are valuable or not valuable, as they are hard or easy to get. And if we ask further, we may see that with most of the things that have value this difficulty or ease of getting them, which determines value, depends on the amount of labor which must be expended in producing them ; i.e., bringing them into the place, form and condition in which they are desired. . . Value is simply an expression of the labor required for the production of such a thing. But there are some things as to which this is not so clear. Land is not produced by labor, yet land, irrespective of any improvements that labor has made on it, often has value. . . Yet a little examination will show that such facts are but exemplifications of the general principle, just as the rise of a balloon and the fall of a stone both exemplify the universal law of gravitation. . . The value of everything produced by labor, from a pound of chalk or a paper of pins to the elaborate structure and appurtenances of a first-class ocean steamer, is resolvable on analysis into an equivalent of the labor required to produce such a thing in form and place; while the value of things not produced by labor, but nevertheless susceptible of ownership, is in the same way resolvable into an equivalent of the labor which the ownership of such a thing enables the owner to obtain or save." — Perplexed Philosopher, ch. v.

The figure 1 in parenthesis, as an item of Rent, indicates potential Rent. Labor would give that much for the privilege of using the space, but the owners hold out for better terms; therefore neither Rent nor Wages is actually produced, though but for this both might be.

In this chart, notwithstanding that but little space is used, indicated with red, Wages are reduced to the same low point by the mere appropriation of space, indicated with blue, that they would reach if all the space above the poorest were fully used. It thereby appears that under a system which confiscates Rent to private uses, the demand for land for speculative purposes becomes so great that Wages fall to a minimum long before they would if land were appropriated only for use.

In illustrating the effect of confiscating Rent to private use we have as yet ignored the element of social growth. Let us now assume as before (page 73), that social growth increases the productive power of the given expenditure of labor force to 100 when applied to the best land, 50 when applied to the next best, 10 to the next, 3 to the next, and 1 to the poorest. Labor would not be benefited now, as it appeared to be when on page 73 we illustrated the appropriation of land for use only, although much less land is actually used. The prizes which expectation of future social growth dangles before men as the rewards of owning land, would raise demand so as to make it more than ever difficult to get land. All of the fourth grade would be taken up in expectation of future demand; and "surplus labor" would be crowded out to the open space that originally yielded nothing, but which in consequence of increased labor power now yields as much as the poorest closed space originally yielded, namely, 1 to the given expenditure of labor force.102 Wages would then be reduced to the present productiveness of the open space. Thus: [chart]

102. The paradise to which the youth of our country have so long been directed in the advice, "Go West, young man, go West," is truthfully described in "Progress and Poverty," book iv, ch. iv, as follows :

"The man who sets out from the eastern seaboard in search of the margin of cultivation, where he may obtain land without paying rent, must, like the man who swam the river to get a drink, pass for long distances through half-titled farms, and traverse vast areas of virgin soil, before he reaches the point where land can be had free of rent — i.e., by homestead entry or preemption."

If we assume that 1 for the given expenditure of labor force is the least that labor can take while exerting the same force, the downward movement of Wages will be here held in equilibrium. They cannot fall below 1; but neither can they rise above it, no matter how much productive power may increase, so long as it pays to hold land for higher values. Some laborers would continually be pushed back to land which increased productive power would have brought up in productiveness from 0 to 1, and by perpetual competition for work would so regulate the labor market that the given expenditure of labor force, however much it produced, could nowhere secure more than 1 in Wages.103 And this tendency would persist until some labor was forced upon land which, despite increase in productive power, would not yield the accustomed living without increase of labor force. Competition for work would then compel all laborers to increase their expenditure of labor force, and to do it over and over again as progress went on and lower and lower grades of land were monopolized, until human endurance could go no further.104 Either that, or they would be obliged to adapt themselves to a lower scale of living.105

103. Henry Fawcett, in his work on "Political Economy," book ii, ch. iii, observes with reference to improvements in agricultural implements which diminish the expense of cultivation, that they do not increase the profits of the farmer or the wages of his laborers, but that "the landlord will receive in addition to the rent already paid to him, all that is saved in the expense of cultivation." This is true not alone of improvements in agriculture, but also of improvements in all other branches of industry.

104. "The cause which limits speculation in commodities, the tendency of increasing price to draw forth additional supplies, cannot limit the speculative advance in land values, as land is a fixed quantity, which human agency can neither increase nor diminish; but there is nevertheless a limit to the price of land, in the minimum required by labor and capital as the condition of engaging in production. If it were possible to continuously reduce wages until zero were reached, it would be possible to continuously increase rent until it swallowed up the whole produce. But as wages cannot be permanently reduced below the point at which laborers will consent to work and reproduce, nor interest below the point at which capital will be devoted to production, there is a limit which restrains the speculative advance of rent. Hence, speculation cannot have the same scope to advance rent in countries where wages and interest are already near the minimum, as in countries where they are considerably above it. Yet that there is in all progressive countries a constant tendency in the speculative advance of rent to overpass the limit where production would cease, is, I think, shown by recurring seasons of industrial paralysis." — Progress and Poverty, book iv, ch. iv.

105. As Puck once put it, "the man who makes two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before, must not be surprised when ordered to 'keep off the grass.' "

They in fact do both, and the incidental disturbances of general readjustment are what we call "hard times." 106 These culminate in forcing unused land into the market, thereby reducing Rent and reviving industry. Thus increase of labor force, a lowering of the scale of living, and depression of Rent, co-operate to bring on what we call "good times." But no sooner do "good times" return than renewed demands for land set in, Rent rises again, Wages fall again, and "hard times" duly reappear. The end of every period of "hard times" finds Rent higher and Wages lower than at the end of the previous period.107

106. "That a speculative advance in rent or land values invariably precedes each of these seasons of industrial depression is everywhere clear. That they bear to each other the relation of cause and effect, is obvious to whoever considers the necessary relation between land and labor." — Progress and Poverty, book v, ch. i.

107. What are called "good times" reach a point at which an upward land market sets in. From that point there is a downward tendency of wages (or a rise in the cost of living, which is the same thing) in all departments of labor and with all grades of laborers. This tendency continues until the fictitious values of land give way. So long as the tendency is felt only by that class which is hired for wages, it is poverty merely; when the same tendency is felt by the class of labor that is distinguished as "the business interests of the country," it is "hard times." And "hard times" are periodical because land values, by falling, allow "good times" to set it, and by rising with "good times" bring "hard times" on again. The effect of "hard times" may be overcome, without much, if any, fall in land values, by sufficient increase in productive power to overtake the fictitious value of land.

The dishonest and disorderly system under which society confiscates Rent from common to individual uses, produces this result. That maladjustment is the fundamental cause of poverty. And progress, so long as the maladjustment continues, instead of tending to remove poverty as naturally it should, actually generates and intensifies it. Poverty persists with increase of productive power because land values, when Rent is privately appropriated, tend to even greater increase. There can be but one outcome if this continues: for individuals suffering and degradation, and for society destruction. ...

Q46. How can it be possible that speculative land values cause business depressions when, as any business man will tell you, the whole item of land value — whether ground rent or interest on purchase money — is one of the smallest items in every business?
A. You overlook the fact that the item of speculative rent is the only item which the business man does not get back again. The cost of his goods, the expense of clerk hire, the rent of his building, the wear and tear of implements, are all received back, in the course of normal business, in the prices of his goods. Even his ground rent, to the extent that it is normal (i.e., what it would be if the supply of land were determined alone by land in use, and not affected by the land that is held out of use for higher values), comes back to him in the sense that his aggregate profits are that much greater than they would be where ground rent was less. But the extra ground rent which he is obliged to pay, in consequence of the abnormal scarcity of land, is a dead weight; it does not come back to him. Therefore, even if infinitesimal in amount, as compared with the other expenses of his business — and that is by no means admitted — it is the one expense which may break a thriving business down. Besides, it is not alone the ground rent paid by the business man for his location that bears down upon his business prosperity; the weight of abnormally high land values in general presses upon business in general, and by obstructing the flow of trade forces the weaker business units to the wall. It is not altogether safe to deduce general economic principles from the ledgers of particular business houses.... read the book

Alanna Hartzok: Earth Rights Democracy: Public Finance based on Early Christian Teachings

• As our system of economic development proceeds, land values rise faster than wages increase, until inevitably the price paid for access to land consumes increasing amounts of a worker's wages. In classical economics, this dilemma is called the "law of rent" and has been mostly ignored by mainstream economists. The predictability of the "law of rent" - that land values will continually rise - fuels frenzies of land speculation and the inevitable bust that follows the boom. A recent Fortune cover story informs us that there are big gains and huge risks in housing speculation in about 30 predominantly coastal markets that encompass 100 million people. Since 2000, home prices in New York, Washington, and Boston have surged 56% to 61%. Prices jumped 58% in Miami and Los Angeles and 76% in San Diego where the median home price county-wide is $582,000. The gap between home prices and fundamentals like job growth and incomes is greater than ever.[7]
• The second form of the Land Problem is the fact that in most countries, including the United States, a small minority of people own and control a disproportionately large amount of land and natural resources. Data suggests that about 3% of the population owns 95% of the privately held land in the US. Less than 600 companies control 22% of our private land, a land mass the size of Spain. Those same companies land interests worldwide comprise a total area larger than that of Europe - almost 2 billion acres.[8]

• In Florida, 1% owns 77% of the land.
• Other states where the top 1% own over two-thirds of the land are Maine, Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Oregon.

• In Brazil, 2% of landowners hold 60% of the arable land while close to 70% of rural households have little or none. Just 342 farm properties in Brazil cover 183,397 square miles - an area larger than California.
• In Venezuela, 77% of the farmland is owned by 3% of the people. In Spain, 70 per cent of the land is owned by 0.2 per cent of the people.
• In Britain, 69 per cent of the land is owned by 0.6 per cent of the population. Just 158,000 families own 41 million acres of land while 24 million families live on four million acres.[9]

  The question I am assigned is whether the taxable capacity of land without buildings is up to the job of financing cities, counties, and schools. Will the revenue be enough? The answer is "yes."

 The universal state and local revenue problem today is whether we must cap tax rates to avoid driving business away. It is exemplified by Governor Pete Wilson of the suffering State of California. He keeps repeating we must make a hard choice: cut taxes and public services, or drive out business and jobs. (When a public figure gives you two choices you know they're both bad, and he wants one of them.)

 The unique, remarkable quality of a property tax based on land ex buildings is that you may raise the rate with no fear of driving away business, construction, people, jobs, or capital! You certainly will not drive away the land. However high the tax rate, not one square foot of it will put on a track shoe and hop out of town. The only bad thing to say about this tax's incentive effects is that it stimulates revitalization, and makes jobs. If some people think that is bad, maybe this attitude is the problem.

 There is the answer to Governor Wilson' dilemma. I hope here in The Empire State you will supply a practical demonstration of the answer, one we may then use to inspire The Golden State. California now, following Proposition 13, has become a morality play, a gruesome object lesson in what happens when the property tax is pushed down toward zero. It forces higher taxes on production and exchange. Non-property taxes, you know, mostly have the character that they "shoot anything that moves," penalizing and discouraging economic activity. New buildings gain by having a lower property tax burden, it is true; but they bear the brunt of these new taxes and impost fees up front, at the time they are built. These offset the benefits of their lower property tax rate. ...

An American counterpart of Vancouver's "University Endowment Lands" is Beverly Hills, California, where land value composes some 80% of residential values, and the mean parcel is worth something like a million dollars. Beverly Hills, with its great wealth and mansions, is known as "Tear-down City." Every year many a grand old palace that once sheltered some renowned matinee idol, and rang to scandalous parties, is torn down to salvage its site for the next, grander one. In a land boom, such as crested in 1989, half the city goes to the brink of demolition and replacement. ...

The adequacy of a tax base must be judged over the cycle of boom and bust, a cycle we are now learning is still much alive. How stable is the base? Capital comes and goes; land is fixed. When they finally close that plant and move the work to Mexico, at present we reward them by lowering their taxable valuation -- reward them and punish ourselves, as city revenues fall. On the other hand, if we taxed just their land, the valuation would remain about the same. They will squeal, cajole, and threaten, but no way can they move their land to Mexico. They will just have to find a new use for it. Meantime, you will have made it more likely there are profitable new uses by removing the tax threat against whatever new capital they might invest in your town to employ your people.

 Land prices boom and bust too, jeopardizing revenue stability. That can be a problem, but land taxation contains a built-in contra-cyclical factor. When a land boom reaches its manic phase, as it did in California before 1989, growth expectations rise so high that they offset interest costs: people think they are holding land with no net carrying cost. Your home is expected not just to shelter you, but pay off its own mortgage, upkeep, and maintenance by appreciating. Call it irrational, but it happens. In this phase, the fast-moving tax assessor is an equilibrating force. The quicker he follows such a market, the quicker he showers it with cold water, by imposing a sobering cash drain on the participants. This is an excellent time for local governments, if they have the wit, to pay their debts, fix their potholes, and fill the fiscal reservoir against the next drought.  

 It was the lack of a tax stabilizer that took the cap off land prices. When my lot rose to $240,000, it was still assessed at $10,000, and capped there by constitutional law! Taxes were 1% of $10,000 - that's right, $100/year, 1/24 of 1% of the market value. Was I in a strong bargaining position? You bet, and I loved it, just as you might. Now we are paying the price, or beginning to, as our public services collapse and our criminals outgun our police. This year they are cutting faculty salaries (that's me) 5%, and raising college tuition (that's my three children) 100%. I'll pay all right. All tax rates other than property are headed north; land prices south. Our once-vibrant economy is dying; our unemployment rate leads the nation. Our largest city was torched last year by the frustrated unemployed. Our once-leading schools trail the nation; our murder rate leads it. Those are the economic consequences of Howard Jarvis. Like Tokyo and London and Faust, we signed with Mephistopheles. He showed us a grand time, but now his bill is due. To paraphrase Kipling, "Be warned of our lot, which I dread you may not, and learn about Jarvis from me."   Read the whole article

• Land values fall to affordable levels again
• The efficiency of labour and technology increases
• Labour and capital are forced to accept cuts in wages and interest.

If we are to sustain our selves, our civilization, and our eco-system, we must make some hard choices about property. What we decide to do with rent, whether we let it reward our exploiting or our attaining eco-librium, matters. Imagine society waking up to the public nature of rent. Then it would collect and share its surplus that manifests as the market value of sites, resources, the spectrum, and government-granted privileges. Then we could forego taxing labor and capital. On such a level playing field, this freed market would favor efficiency -- the compact city -- not waste -- the mall and automobile. ...

Noticing rent, realizing its social nature, accepting that it's to be shared, and understanding that wages and interest should not be expropriated, for most people that's a new way of thinking. Thinking such thoughts leads to a new way of conceiving economics, too. Ecological economics becomes not just a branch of economics but a whole new discipline, needing a new name. In geonomics we maintain the distinction between items bearing exchange value that come into being by human effort - wealth - and those that don't - land. Keeping this distinction in the forefront makes it obvious and non-controversial that speculating in land drives sprawl, that hoarding land retards Third World development, that borrowing to buy land plus buildings engorges banks, that so-called "interest" is quasi-rent, that the cost of land inflates faster than the price of produced goods and services, that over half of corporate profit, says the Urban Land Institute, is from real estate.

Summing up these analyses, geonomists offer a Grand Unifying Theory, that the flow of rent pulls all other indicators in its wake. Geonomics differs from economics as chemistry from alchemy, as astronomy from astrology. The acid test of any science is prediction, a test that economics fails and geonomics passes. Plugging in the land price cycle of 17+ years lets geonomists crank out predictions more accurate than those generated by "the experts" who missed, for example, the collapse of mighty Japan. When the land of the Rising Sun was on the market for four times the assessed value of all America, that's when a few geonomists, like voices in the wilderness, countered conventional wisdom by proclaiming that the Japanese boom would bust. According to these geonomic prognosticators, don't expect America's next downturn for at least another five years, despite the tech wreck or any other stock market fluctuations. ...

(1)  Getting more rent, people work less, so output drops.
(2)  Less output lowers land values and deflates the rent-share.
(3)  Getting less rent, people work more.
(4) More output raises site values and swells the rent-share.
(1) Again, ad infinitum.

Thus, production is put into balance with consumption and work with play. Geonomics yields a policy that's not at war with but aligned with nature as model. Perhaps the most central feature of economics is price. Price is to production what DNA is to reproduction, the guides to growth. Rather than distort price with taxes and subsidies, with license (so-called "externalities") and rent-retention, geonomics respects the integrity of price, allowing it to accurately reflect our costs and values, by sharing rent. Then economies ("geonomies") can operate without the deadweight losses of taxation and rent seeking.

Frank Stilwell and Kirrily Jordan: The Political Economy of Land: Putting Henry George in His Place

George saw land as a community resource provided by nature, to which every human being had an equal right. He argued that, since land was fixed in supply, the system of private land ownership allowed the wealthy few to enjoy exclusive rights to land and its benefits, while alienating the poorer majority from land ownership and forcing them to pay rent to landowners in order to access this necessary resource. Moreover, the collection of rents by landowners allowed them to increase their wealth without contributing to the productive efforts of society. As the population grew, so too did the demand for land, forcing rents and land values ever higher. In addition, increases in land value resulting from publicly-funded developments, such as roads and public transport systems, unduly benefited landowners at the expense of the community. Such unearned gains from landownership encouraged speculation in land, pushing prices even higher, while exposing the economy to the risks of speculative ‘booms’ and ‘busts’. ...

Georgists have also frequently claimed to be able to explain and ameliorate, even resolve, the cyclical character of the capitalist economy. George argued that a higher uniform land tax could reduce the severity of booms and busts in the housing market by reducing the speculative investment in land. This would produce more stable economic conditions throughout the economy, removing the boom-bust cycle to which capitalism is otherwise prone. It is an argument that has contemporary Australian relevance because the boom-bust character of the urban property market is clearly a significant factor in overall cyclical economic instability. An earlier article on Australian land price trends by Kavanagh (2001) has illustrated this connection, demonstrating that, while the property market is more volatile than the economy as a whole, there has been a clear temporal connection between the two patterns of cyclical behaviour over the last half century. Property booms and busts have typically coincided with swings in overall national economic performance. The policy implication is that, by smoothing out cycles in the housing market, a uniform land tax could help to avoid periodic crises in capitalist economies more generally.

However, the argument needs to be kept in perspective. Periodic economic recessions cannot be solely attributed to speculation in land.

Inadequate levels of aggregate demand, problems of overproduction, and problems of instability in financial markets are among other causes of interruptions to the process of capital accumulation. Land tax cannot feasibly claim to redress all the systemic contradictions and malfunctions of a capitalist economy. Additional counter-cyclical policies are necessary. These include macroeconomic stabilisers, such as monetary and fiscal policies, that can contribute to reducing the cyclical tendency to which the economy is otherwise prone, along with incomes policy and the more radically interventionist ‘socialisation of investment’ that Keynes (1936: 378) advocated. So here, too, land tax seems to have the status of a necessary but not sufficient condition for progressive economic reform. ... read the whole article

Bill Batt: How Our Towns Got That Way   (1996 speech)

Stability refers to the ability of a tax to produce revenue in the face of changing economic circumstances. Income and sales taxes, for example, vary greatly according to phases in the economic cycle; the property tax, in contrast, is highly stable regardless of the state of the economy. Followers of economist John Maynard Keynes believe that revenues should be inverse to the cycles of the economy; i.e., that the government should be used to stabilize or boost the economy as occasions require. I should add as an aside that there are some theorists who believe that, were revenue sources completely based on land value, economic cycles would disappear.

In assessing the value of a tax it is also important, of course, to understand its potential to bring in revenue for the purposes of government. This is usually deemed revenue sufficiency. Income, sales and property taxes, along with corporation taxes to a lesser extent, have come to be regarded as the workhorses of the American revenue structure. But, as anti-tax politicians are quick to note, the higher these taxes are, the more they impose a drag on the economy. This is why one should ponder whether to consider raising taxes which have demonstrable distorting effects. In contrast, if you take the time to look at a tax on land value alone, it measures up so well that it looks like the perfect tax!... read the whole article

In addition, George differentiated sharply between land itself and the products -- or wealth, as he termed them -- which labor made from the land. "In producing wealth, labor, with the aid of natural forces, but works up, into the forms desired, pre-existing matter, and, to produce wealth, must, therefore, have access to this matter and to these forces -- that is to say, to land. The land is the source of all wealth. It is the mine from which must be drawn the ore that labor fashions. It is the substance to which labor gives the form."

George saw, as between land and products, certain elementary differences. "In every essential, land differs from those things which... [are] the product of human labor. ...It is the creation of God; they are produced by man. It is fixed in quantity; they may be increased illimitably. It exists, though generations come and go; they in a little while decay and pass again into the elements."

Writing of industrial depressions, he said, "When, with the desire to consume more, there coexist the ability and willingness to produce more, industrial and commercial paralysis cannot be charged either to overproduction or to overconsumption. Manifestly, the trouble is that production and consumption cannot meet and satisfy each other .

"How does this inability arise? It is evidently and by common consent the result of speculation. But of speculation in what?

"Certainly not of speculation in things which are the products of labor ...for the effect of speculation in such things, as is well shown in current treatises that spare me the necessity of illustration, is simply to equalize supply and demand, and to steady the interplay of production and consumption by an action analogous to that of a fly-wheel in a machine."  In other words, the tendency of speculation in products is to increase the demand for products and therefore to increase the price of products. This increased price will induce more production, which, increasing the supply, will tend to lower the price. Throughout this cycle, there has been a stimulating effect on production in general.

He continued, "Therefore, if speculation be the cause of these industrial depressions, it must be speculation in things not the production of labor, but yet necessary to the exertion of labor in the production of wealth -- of things of fixed quantity; that is to say, it must be speculation in land." 

How can this be? How can speculation in land cause industrial depression? George explains, "...that there is a connection between the rapid construction of railroads and industrial depression, anyone who understands what increased land values mean, and who has noticed the effect which the construction of railroads has upon land speculation, can easily see. Wherever a railroad was built or projected, lands sprang up in value under the influence of speculation, and thousands of millions of dollars were added to the nominal values which capital and labor were asked to pay outright, or to pay in installments, as the price of being allowed to go to work and produce wealth. The inevitable result was to check production. .." 

The tendency of speculation in land is similar to that of speculation in products; it increases the demand for land and thereby increases the price of land. However, here the similarity ends. The supply of land is fixed; as successive units of land become priced beyond the level at which labor and capital can profitably engage in production, an increasing (though artificial) scarcity of land develops. "The inevitable result was to check production." 

Judge Samuel Seabury: An Address delivered upon the 100th anniversary of the birth of Henry George

WE are met to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Henry George. We meet, therefore, in a spirit of joy and thanksgiving for the great life which he devoted to the service of humanity. To very few of the children of men is it given to act the part of a great teacher who makes an outstanding contribution toward revealing the basic principles to which human society must adhere if it is to walk in the way which leads to freedom. This Henry George did, and in so doing he expressed himself with a clarity of thought and diction which has rarely been surpassed. ...

The most serious threat to democracy which exists is that the democracies themselves have not as yet achieved social justice for their own people. If they would achieve it, they would have nothing to fear from the dictatorship states. In this country we have approximately eleven million unemployed and are now in the tenth year of an acute economic depression. We certainly cannot claim to have achieved social justice. True, we offer many advantages over what the despotisms offer, but in any country people will submit to regimentation and political and social despotism rather than go without food and shelter. In such circumstances, ignorant of the value of the liberty they surrender, they will sell their birthright for a mess of pottage.

Instead of addressing ourselves seriously to the task of establishing social justice — the most momentous task which has ever confronted this country in all its history — we have wasted our energies and resources in adopting shallow and superficial measures not in harmony with the realities of social life and which ignore its natural laws; erecting great bureaucracies which have attempted to regiment our people, while the mass of regulations which they have prescribed have served only to demoralize industry, prevent its recovery and obstruct the cooperation between labor, capital and consumer which the interests of all require. ... read the whole speech