He
Who Produces
This speaks both to labor and to capital;
each can be attributed to individual producers. Land is different: it is
provided by God, by nature, and its
value grows for reasons that don't relate to individual effort, so
none of us is more entitled to its value than anyone else. This distinction
is the basis of property rights and justice, and it is one that we currently
fail to honor. Henry George made the distinction clear, and described a
simple way to honor that distinction, via taxing land value.
In allowing those who own choice land to privatize the economic rent,
we force ourselves into taxing things we have no right to tax in order
to support community spending.
Henry George: The Condition
of Labor — An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII in response to Rerum
Novarum (1891)
As to the right of ownership, we hold: That —
Being created individuals, with individual wants and powers, men are
individually entitled (subject of course to the moral obligations that
arise from such relations as that of the family) to the use of their
own powers and the enjoyment of the results. There thus arises, anterior
to human law, and deriving its validity from the law of God, a right
of private ownership in things produced by labor — a right that
the possessor may transfer, but of which to deprive him without his
will is theft.
This right of property, originating in the right of the individual
to himself, is the only full and complete right of property. It attaches
to things produced by labor, but cannot attach to things created by
God.
Thus, if a man take a fish from the ocean he acquires a right
of property in that fish, which exclusive right he may transfer by
sale or gift. But he cannot obtain a similar right of property in the ocean, so that
he may sell it or give it or forbid others to use it.
Or, if he set up a windmill he acquires a right of property
in the things such use of wind enables him to produce. But he cannot claim
a right of property in the wind itself, so that he may sell it or forbid
others to use it.
Or, if he cultivate grain he acquires a right of property
in the grain his labor brings forth. But he cannot obtain
a similar right of property in the sun which ripened it or the soil
on which it grew. For these
things are of the continuing gifts of God to all generations of men,
which all may use, but none may claim as his alone.
To attach to things created by God the same right of private ownership
that justly attaches to things produced by labor is to impair and deny
the true rights of property. For a man who out of the proceeds of his
labor is obliged to pay another man for the use of ocean or air or
sunshine or soil, all of which are to men involved in the single term
land, is in this deprived of his rightful property and thus robbed. ...
God’s laws do not change. Though their applications may alter
with altering conditions, the same principles of right and wrong that
hold when men are few and industry is rude also hold amid teeming populations
and complex industries. In our cities of millions and our states of
scores of millions, in a civilization where the division of labor has
gone so far that large numbers are hardly conscious that they are land-users,
it still remains true that we are all land animals and can live only
on land, and that land is God’s bounty to all, of which no one
can be deprived without being murdered, and for which no one can be
compelled to pay another without being robbed. But even in a state
of society where the elaboration of industry and the increase of permanent
improvements have made the need for private possession of land wide-spread,
there is no difficulty in conforming individual possession with the
equal right to land. For as soon as any piece of land will yield to
the possessor a larger return than is had by similar labor on other
land a value attaches to it which is shown when it is sold or rented.
Thus, the value of the land itself, irrespective of the value of any
improvements in or on it, always indicates the precise value of the
benefit to which all are entitled in its use, as distinguished from
the value which, as producer or successor of a producer, belongs to
the possessor in individual right.
To combine the advantages of private possession with the justice of
common ownership it is only necessary therefore to take for common
uses what value attaches to land irrespective of any exertion of labor
on it. The principle is the same as in the case referred to, where
a human father leaves equally to his children things not susceptible
of specific division or common use. In that case such things would
be sold or rented and the value equally applied.
It is on this common-sense principle that we, who term ourselves single-tax
men, would have the community act.
We do not propose to assert equal rights to land by keeping land common,
letting any one use any part of it at any time. We do not propose the
task, impossible in the present state of society, of dividing land
in equal shares; still less the yet more impossible task of keeping
it so divided.
We propose — leaving land in the private possession of individuals,
with full liberty on their part to give, sell or bequeath it — simply
to levy on it for public uses a tax that shall equal the annual value
of the land itself, irrespective of the use made of it or the improvements
on it. And since this would provide amply for the need of public
revenues, we would accompany this tax on land values with the repeal
of all taxes
now levied on the products and processes of industry — which
taxes, since they take from the earnings of labor, we hold to be infringements
of the right of property.
This we propose, not as a cunning device of human ingenuity, but as
a conforming of human regulations to the will of God.
God cannot contradict himself nor impose on his creatures laws that
clash.
If it be God’s command to men that they should not steal — that
is to say, that they should respect the right of property which each
one has in the fruits of his labor;
And if he be also the Father of all men, who in his common bounty
has intended all to have equal opportunities for sharing;
Then, in any possible stage of civilization, however elaborate, there
must be some way in which the exclusive right to the products of industry
may be reconciled with the equal right to land.
If the Almighty be consistent with himself, it cannot be, as say those
socialists referred to by you, that in order to secure the equal participation
of men in the opportunities of life and labor we must ignore the right
of private property. Nor yet can it be, as you yourself in the Encyclical
seem to argue, that to secure the right of private property we must
ignore the equality of right in the opportunities of life and labor.
To say the one thing or the other is equally to deny the harmony of
God’s laws.
But, the private possession of land, subject to the payment to the
community of the value of any special advantage thus given to the individual,
satisfies both laws, securing to all equal participation in the bounty
of the Creator and to each the full ownership of the products of his
labor. ...
Nor do we hesitate to say that this way of securing the equal right
to the bounty of the Creator and the exclusive right to the products
of labor is the way intended by God for raising public revenues. For
we are not atheists, who deny God; nor semi-atheists, who deny that
he has any concern in politics and legislation.
It is true as you say — a salutary truth too often forgotten — that “man
is older than the state, and he holds the right of providing for the
life of his body prior to the formation of any state.” Yet, as
you too perceive, it is also true that the state is in the divinely
appointed order. For He who foresaw all things and provided for all
things, foresaw and provided that with the increase of population and
the development of industry the organization of human society into
states or governments would become both expedient and necessary.
No sooner does the state arise than, as we all know, it needs revenues.
This need for revenues is small at first, while population is sparse,
industry rude and the functions of the state few and simple. But with
growth of population and advance of civilization the functions of the
state increase and larger and larger revenues are needed.
Now, He that made the world and placed man in it, He that pre-ordained
civilization as the means whereby man might rise to higher powers and
become more and more conscious of the works of his Creator, must have
foreseen this increasing need for state revenues and have made provision
for it. That is to say: The increasing need for public revenues with
social advance, being a natural, God-ordained need, there must be a
right way of raising them — some way that we can truly say is
the way intended by God. It is clear that this right way of raising
public revenues must accord with the moral law.
Hence:
-
It must not take from individuals what rightfully belongs to individuals.
-
It must not give some an advantage over others, as by increasing the
prices of what some have to sell and others must buy.
-
It must not lead men into temptation, by requiring trivial oaths,
by making it profitable to lie, to swear falsely, to bribe or to take
bribes.
-
It must not confuse the distinctions of right and wrong, and weaken
the sanctions of religion and the state by creating crimes that are
not sins, and punishing men for doing what in itself they have an undoubted
right to do.
-
It must not repress industry. It must not check commerce. It must
not punish thrift. It must offer no impediment to the largest production
and the fairest division of wealth.
Let me ask your Holiness to consider the taxes on
the processes and products of industry by which through the
civilized world public revenues
are collected — the octroi duties that surround
Italian cities with barriers; the monstrous customs duties
that hamper intercourse
between so-called Christian states; the taxes on occupations,
on earnings, on investments, on the building of houses, on
the cultivation of fields,
on industry and thrift in all forms. Can these be the ways
God has intended that governments should raise the means they
need? Have any
of them the characteristics indispensable in any plan we can
deem a right one?
All these taxes violate the moral law.
-
They take by force what belongs
to the individual alone;
-
they give to the unscrupulous an advantage
over the scrupulous;
-
they have the effect, nay
are largely intended, to increase the price of what some have to
sell and
others must buy;
they corrupt government;
-
they make oaths
a mockery; they shackle commerce;
-
they fine industry and thrift;
-
they lessen the
wealth
that men might
enjoy, and enrich some
by impoverishing others.
Yet what most strikingly shows how opposed to Christianity is this
system of raising public revenues is its influence on thought.
Christianity teaches us that all men are brethren; that their true
interests are harmonious, not antagonistic. It gives us, as the golden
rule of life, that we should do to others as we would have others do
to us. But out of the system of taxing the products and processes of
labor, and out of its effects in increasing the price of what some
have to sell and others must buy, has grown the theory of “protection,” which
denies this gospel, which holds Christ ignorant of political economy
and proclaims laws of national well-being utterly at variance with
his teaching. This theory
-
sanctifies national hatreds;
-
it inculcates
a universal war of hostile tariffs;
-
it teaches
peoples that their prosperity lies in imposing on the productions
of other peoples restrictions they
do not wish imposed on their own; and
-
instead
of the Christian doctrine of man’s brotherhood it makes injury of
foreigners a civic virtue.
“By their fruits ye shall know them.” Can anything more
clearly show that to tax the products and processes of industry is
not the way God intended public revenues to be raised?
But to consider what we propose — the raising of public revenues
by a single tax on the value of land irrespective of improvements — is
to see that in all respects this does conform to the moral law.
Let me ask your Holiness to keep in mind that the value we propose
to tax, the value of land irrespective of improvements, does not come
from any exertion of labor or investment of capital on or in it — the
values produced in this way being values of improvement which we would
exempt. The value of land irrespective of improvement is the value
that attaches to land by reason of increasing population and social
progress. This is a value that always goes to the owner as owner, and
never does and never can go to the user; for if the user be a different
person from the owner he must always pay the owner for it in rent or
in purchase-money; while if the user be also the owner, it is as owner,
not as user, that he receives it, and by selling or renting the land
he can, as owner, continue to receive it after he ceases to be a user.
Thus, taxes on land irrespective of improvement
cannot lessen the rewards of industry, nor add
to prices,* nor in any way take from the
individual what belongs to the individual. They can take only the value
that attaches to land by the growth of the community, and which therefore
belongs to the community as a whole.
* As to this point it may be well to add that all
economists are agreed that taxes on land values irrespective of
improvement or use — or what in the terminology of political
economy is styled rent, a term distinguished from the ordinary
use of the word rent by being applied solely to payments for the
use of land itself — must be paid by the owner and cannot
be shifted by him on the user. To explain in another way the reason
given in the text: Price is not determined by the will of the seller
or the will of the buyer, but by the equation of demand and supply,
and therefore as to things constantly demanded and constantly produced
rests at a point determined by the cost of production — whatever
tends to increase the cost of bringing fresh quantities of such
articles to the consumer increasing price by checking supply, and
whatever tends to reduce such cost decreasing price by increasing
supply. Thus taxes on wheat or tobacco or cloth add to the price
that the consumer must pay, and thus the cheapening in the cost
of producing steel which improved processes have made in recent
years has greatly reduced the price of steel. But land has no cost
of production, since it is created by God, not produced by man.
Its price therefore is fixed —
1 (monopoly rent), where land is held in close
monopoly, by what the owners can extract from the users under
penalty of deprivation and consequently of starvation, and amounts
to all that common labor can earn on it beyond what is necessary
to life;
2 (economic rent proper), where there is no special monopoly, by what the
particular land will yield to common labor over and above what may be had
by like expenditure and exertion on land having no special advantage and
for which no rent is paid; and,
3 (speculative rent, which is a species of monopoly rent, telling particularly
in selling price), by the expectation of future increase of value from
social growth and improvement, which expectation causing landowners to
withhold land at present prices has the same effect as combination.
Taxes on land values or economic rent can therefore
never be shifted by the landowner to the land-user, since they
in no wise increase the demand for land or enable landowners to
check supply by withholding land from use. Where rent depends on
mere monopolization, a case I mention because rent may in this
way be demanded for the use of land even before economic or natural
rent arises, the taking by taxation of what the landowners were
able to extort from labor could not enable them to extort any more,
since laborers, if not left enough to live on, will die. So, in
the case of economic rent proper, to take from the landowners the
premiums they receive, would in no way increase the superiority
of their land and the demand for it. While, so far as price is
affected by speculative rent, to compel the landowners to pay taxes
on the value of land whether they were getting any income from
it or not, would make it more difficult for them to withhold land
from use; and to tax the full value would not merely destroy the
power but the desire to do so.
To take land values for the state, abolishing all taxes on the products
of labor, would therefore leave to the laborer the full produce of
labor; to the individual all that rightfully belongs to the individual.
It would impose no burden on industry, no check on commerce, no punishment
on thrift; it would secure the largest production and the fairest distribution
of wealth, by leaving men free to produce and to exchange as they please,
without any artificial enhancement of prices; and by taking for public
purposes a value that cannot be carried off, that cannot be hidden,
that of all values is most easily ascertained and most certainly and
cheaply collected, it would enormously lessen the number of officials,
dispense with oaths, do away with temptations to bribery and evasion,
and abolish man-made crimes in themselves innocent.
But, further: That God has intended the state to obtain the revenues
it needs by the taxation of land values is shown by the same order
and degree of evidence that shows that God has intended the milk of
the mother for the nourishment of the babe.
See how close is the analogy. In that primitive condition ere the
need for the state arises there are no land values. The products of
labor have value, but in the sparsity of population no value as yet
attaches to land itself. But as increasing density of population and
increasing elaboration of industry necessitate the organization of
the state, with its need for revenues, value begins to attach to land.
As population still increases and industry grows more elaborate, so
the needs for public revenues increase. And at the same time and from
the same causes land values increase. The connection is invariable.
The value of things produced by labor tends to decline with social
development, since the larger scale of production and the improvement
of processes tend steadily to reduce their cost. But the value of land
on which population centers goes up and up. Take Rome or Paris or London
or New York or Melbourne. Consider the enormous value of land in such
cities as compared with the value of land in sparsely settled parts
of the same countries. To what is this due? Is it not due to the density
and activity of the populations of those cities — to the very
causes that require great public expenditure for streets, drains, public
buildings, and all the many things needed for the health, convenience
and safety of such great cities? See how with the growth of such cities
the one thing that steadily increases in value is land; how the opening
of roads, the building of railways, the making of any public improvement,
adds to the value of land. Is it not clear that here is a natural law — that
is to say a tendency willed by the Creator? Can it mean anything else
than that He who ordained the state with its needs has in the values
which attach to land provided the means to meet those needs?
That it does mean this and nothing else is confirmed if we look deeper
still, and inquire not merely as to the intent, but as to the purpose
of the intent. If we do so we may see in this natural law by which
land values increase with the growth of society not only such a perfectly
adapted provision for the needs of society as gratifies our intellectual
perceptions by showing us the wisdom of the Creator, but a purpose
with regard to the individual that gratifies our moral perceptions
by opening to us a glimpse of his beneficence.
Consider: Here is a natural law by which as society
advances the one thing that increases in value
is land — a natural law by virtue
of which all growth of population, all advance of
the arts, all general improvements of whatever
kind, add to a fund that both the commands
of justice and the dictates of expediency prompt
us to take for the common uses of society. Now,
since increase in the fund available for
the common uses of society is increase in the gain
that goes equally to each member of society, is
it not clear that the law by which land
values increase with social advance while the value
of the products of labor does not increase, tends
with the advance of civilization
to make the share that goes equally to each member
of society more and more important as compared
with what goes to him from his individual
earnings, and thus to make the advance of civilization
lessen relatively the differences that in a ruder
social state must exist between the
strong and the weak, the fortunate and the unfortunate?
Does it not show the purpose of the Creator to
be that the advance of man in civilization
should be an advance not merely to larger powers
but to a greater and greater equality, instead
of what we, by our ignoring of his intent,
are making it, an advance toward a more and more
monstrous inequality? ...
Your use, in so many passages of your Encyclical,
of the inclusive term “property” or “private” property,
of which in morals nothing can be either affirmed
or denied, makes your meaning, if we take isolated
sentences, in many places ambiguous. But reading
it as a whole, there can be no doubt of your
intention that private property in land shall
be understood when you speak merely of private
property. With this interpretation, I find that
the reasons you urge for private property in
land are eight. Let us consider them in order
of presentation. You urge:
1. That what is bought with rightful property
is rightful property. (RN, paragraph 5) ...
2. That private property in land proceeds from
man’s gift of reason. (RN, paragraphs 6-7.)
...
3. That private property in land deprives no one
of the use of land. (RN, paragraph 8.) ...
4. That Industry expended on land gives ownership
in the land itself. (RN, paragraphs 9-10.) ...
5. That private property in land has the support
of the common opinion of mankind, and has conduced
to peace and tranquillity, and that it is sanctioned
by Divine Law. (RN, paragraph 11.) ...
6. That fathers should provide for their children
and that private property in land is necessary
to enable them to do so. (RN, paragraphs 14-17.)
...
7. That the private ownership of land stimulates
industry, increases wealth, and attaches men to
the soil and to their country. (RN, paragraph 51.)
...
8. That the right to possess private property in
land is from nature, not from man; that the state
has no right to abolish it, and that to take the
value of landownership in taxation would be unjust
and cruel to the private owner. (RN, paragraph
51.) ...
4. That Industry expended on land gives
ownership in the land itself. (9-10.)
Your Holiness next contends that industry expended
on land gives a right to ownership of the land,
and that the improvement of land creates benefits
indistinguishable and inseparable from the land
itself.
This contention, if valid, could only justify
the ownership of land by those who expend industry
on it. It would not justify private property in
land as it exists. On the contrary, it would justify
a gigantic no-rent declaration that would take
land from those who now legally own it, the landlords,
and turn it over to the tenants and laborers. And
if it also be that improvements cannot be distinguished
and separated from the land itself, how could the
landlords claim consideration even for improvements
they had made?
But your Holiness cannot mean what your words
imply. What you really mean, I take it, is that
the original justification and title of landownership
is in the expenditure of labor on it. But neither
can this justify private property in land as it
exists. For is it not all but universally true
that existing land titles do not come from use,
but from force or fraud?
Take Italy! Is it not true that the greater part
of the land of Italy is held by those who so far
from ever having expended industry on it have been
mere appropriators of the industry of those who
have? Is this not also true of Great Britain and
of other countries? Even in the United States,
where the forces of concentration have not yet
had time fully to operate and there has been some
attempt to give land to users, it is probably true
today that the greater part of the land is held
by those who neither use it nor propose to use
it themselves, but merely hold it to compel others
to pay them for permission to use it.
And if industry give ownership to land what are
the limits of this ownership? If a man may acquire
the ownership of several square miles of land by
grazing sheep on it, does this give to him and
his heirs the ownership of the same land when it
is found to contain rich mines, or when by the
growth of population and the progress of society
it is needed for farming, for gardening, for the
close occupation of a great city? Is it on the
rights given by the industry of those who first
used it for grazing cows or growing potatoes that
you would found the title to the land now covered
by the city of New York and having a value of thousands
of millions of dollars?
But your contention is not valid. Industry
expended on land gives ownership in the fruits
of that industry,
but not in the land itself, just as industry expended
on the ocean would give a right of ownership to
the fish taken by it, but not a right of ownership
in the ocean. Nor yet is it true that private ownership
of land is necessary to secure the fruits of labor
on land; nor does the improvement of land create
benefits indistinguishable and inseparable from
the land itself. That secure possession is necessary
to the use and improvement of land I have already
explained, but that ownership is not necessary
is shown by the fact that in all civilized countries
land owned by one person is cultivated and improved
by other persons. Most of the cultivated land in
the British Islands, as in Italy and other countries,
is cultivated not by owners but by tenants. And
so the costliest buildings are erected by those
who are not owners of the land, but who have from
the owner a mere right of possession for a time
on condition of certain payments. Nearly the whole
of London has been built in this way, and in New
York, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Sydney and
Melbourne, as well as in continental cities, the
owners of many of the largest edifices will be
found to be different persons from the owners of
the ground. So far from the value of improvements
being inseparable from the value of land, it is
in individual transactions constantly separated.
For instance, one-half of the land on which the
immense Grand Pacific Hotel in Chicago stands was
recently separately sold, and in Ceylon it is a
not infrequent occurrence for one person to own
a fruit-tree and another to own the ground in which
it is implanted.
There is, indeed, no improvement of land, whether
it be clearing, plowing, manuring, cultivating,
the digging of cellars, the opening of wells or
the building of houses, that so long as its usefulness
continues does not have a value clearly distinguishable
from the value of the land. For land having such
improvements will always sell or rent for more
than similar land without them.
If, therefore, the state levy a tax equal to what
the land irrespective of improvement would bring,
it will take the benefits of mere ownership, but
will leave the full benefits of use and improvement,
which the prevailing system does not do. And since
the holder, who would still in form continue to
be the owner, could at any time give or sell both
possession and improvements, subject to future
assessment by the state on the value of the land
alone, he will be perfectly free to retain or dispose
of the full amount of property that the exertion
of his labor or the investment of his capital has
attached to or stored up in the land.
Thus, what we propose would secure, as
it is impossible in any other way to secure,
what you properly say
is just and right — “that the results
of labor should belong to him who has labored.” But
private property in land — to allow the holder
without adequate payment to the state to take for
himself the benefit of the value that attaches
to land with social growth and improvement — does
take the results of labor from him who has labored,
does turn over the fruits of one man’s labor
to be enjoyed by another. For labor, as the active
factor, is the producer of all wealth. Mere ownership
produces nothing. A man might own a world, but
so sure is the decree that “by the sweat
of thy brow shalt thou eat bread,” that without
labor he could not get a meal or provide himself
a garment. Hence, when the owners of land, by virtue
of their ownership and without laboring themselves,
get the products of labor in abundance, these things
must come from the labor of others, must be the
fruits of others’ sweat, taken from those
who have a right to them and enjoyed by those who
have no right to them.
The only utility of private ownership
of land as distinguished from possession is the
evil utility
of giving to the owner products of labor he does
not earn. For until land will yield to its owner
some return beyond that of the labor and capital
he expends on it — that is to say, until
by sale or rental he can without expenditure of
labor obtain from it products of labor, ownership
amounts to no more than security of possession,
and has no value. Its importance and value
begin only when, either in the present or prospectively,
it will yield a revenue — that is to say,
will enable the owner as owner to obtain products
of labor without exertion on his part, and thus
to enjoy the results of others’ labor.
What largely keeps men from realizing the robbery
involved in private property in land is that in
the most striking cases the robbery is not of individuals,
but of the community. For, as I have before explained,
it is impossible for rent in the economic sense — that
value which attaches to land by reason of social
growth and improvement — to go to the user.
It can go only to the owner or to the community.
Thus those who pay enormous rents for the use of
land in such centers as London or New York are
not individually injured. Individually they get
a return for what they pay, and must feel that
they have no better right to the use of such peculiarly
advantageous localities without paying for it than
have thousands of others. And so, not thinking
or not caring for the interests of the community,
they make no objection to the system.
It recently came to light in New York that a man
having no title whatever had been for years collecting
rents on a piece of land that the growth of the
city had made very valuable. Those who paid these
rents had never stopped to ask whether he had any
right to them. They felt that they had no right
to land that so many others would like to have,
without paying for it, and did not think of, or
did not care for, the rights of all. ...
8. That the right to possess private property
in land is from nature, not from man; that the
state has no right to abolish it, and that to take
the value of landownership in taxation would be
unjust and cruel to the private owner. (51.)
This, like much else that your Holiness says,
is masked in the use of the indefinite terms “private
property” and “private owner” — a
want of precision in the use of words that has
doubtless aided in the confusion of your own thought.
But the context leaves no doubt that by private
property you mean private property in land, and
by private owner, the private owner of land.
The contention, thus made, that private property
in land is from nature, not from man, has no other
basis than the confounding of ownership with possession
and the ascription to property in land of what
belongs to its contradictory, property in the proceeds
of labor. You do not attempt to show for it any
other basis, nor has any one else ever attempted
to do so. That private property in the
products of labor is from nature is clear, for
nature gives
such things to labor and to labor alone. Of every
article of this kind, we know that it came into
being as nature’s response to the exertion
of an individual man or of individual men — given
by nature directly and exclusively to him or to
them. Thus there inheres in such things a right
of private property, which originates from and
goes back to the source of ownership, the maker
of the thing. This right is anterior to the state
and superior to its enactments, so that, as we
hold, it is a violation of natural right and an
injustice to the private owner for the state to
tax the processes and products of labor. They do
not belong to Caesar. They are things that God,
of whom nature is but an expression, gives to those
who apply for them in the way he has appointed — by
labor.
But who will dare trace the individual ownership
of land to any grant from the Maker of land? What
does nature give to such ownership? how does she
in any way recognize it? Will any one show from
difference of form or feature, of stature or complexion,
from dissection of their bodies or analysis of
their powers and needs, that one man was intended
by nature to own land and another to live on it
as his tenant? That which derives its existence
from man and passes away like him, which is indeed
but the evanescent expression of his labor, man
may hold and transfer as the exclusive property
of the individual; but how can such individual
ownership attach to land, which existed before
man was, and which continues to exist while the
generations of men come and go — the unfailing
storehouse that the Creator gives to man for “the
daily supply of his daily wants”?
Clearly, the private ownership of land is from
the state, not from nature. Thus, not merely can
no objection be made on the score of morals when
it is proposed that the state shall abolish it
altogether, but insomuch as it is a violation of
natural right, its existence involving a gross
injustice on the part of the state, an “impious
violation of the benevolent intention of the Creator,” it
is a moral duty that the state so abolish it.
So far from there being anything unjust in taking
the full value of landownership for the use of
the community, the real injustice is in leaving
it in private hands — an injustice that amounts
to robbery and murder.
And when your Holiness shall see this I have no
fear that you will listen for one moment to the
impudent plea that before the community can take
what God intended it to take — before men
who have been disinherited of their natural rights
can be restored to them, the present owners of
land shall first be compensated.
For not only will you see that the single tax
will directly and largely benefit small landowners,
whose interests as laborers and capitalists are
much greater than their interests as landowners,
and that though the great landowners — or
rather the propertied class in general among whom
the profits of landownership are really divided
through mortgages, rent-charges, etc. — would
relatively lose, they too would be absolute gainers
in the increased prosperity and improved morals;
but more quickly, more strongly, more peremptorily
than from any calculation of gains or losses would
your duty as a man, your faith as a Christian,
forbid you to listen for one moment to any such
paltering with right and wrong.
Where the state takes some land for public uses
it is only just that those whose land is taken
should be compensated, otherwise some landowners
would be treated more harshly than others. But
where, by a measure affecting all alike, rent is
appropriated for the benefit of all, there can
be no claim to compensation. Compensation in such
case would be a continuance of the same in another
form — the giving to landowners in the shape
of interest of what they before got as rent. Your
Holiness knows that justice and injustice are not
thus to be juggled with, and when you fully realize
that land is really the storehouse that God owes
to all his children, you will no more listen to
any demand for compensation for restoring it to
them than Moses would have listened to a demand
that Pharaoh should be compensated before letting
the children of Israel go.
Compensated for what? For giving up what has been
unjustly taken? The demand of landowners for compensation
is not that. We do not seek to spoil the Egyptians.
We do not ask that what has been unjustly taken
from laborers shall be restored. We are willing
that bygones should be bygones and to leave dead
wrongs to bury their dead. We propose to let those
who by the past appropriation of land values have
taken the fruits of labor to retain what they have
thus got. We merely propose that for the future
such robbery of labor shall cease — that
for the future, not for the past, landholders shall
pay to the community the rent that to the community
is justly due. ...
It seems to us that your Holiness misses its real
significance in intimating that Christ, in becoming
the son of a carpenter and himself working as a
carpenter, showed merely that “there is nothing
to be ashamed of in seeking one’s bread by
labor.” To say that is almost like saying
that by not robbing people he showed that there
is nothing to be ashamed of in honesty. If you
will consider how true in any large view is the
classification of all men into working-men, beggar-men
and thieves, you will see that it was morally impossible
that Christ during his stay on earth should have
been anything else than a working-man, since he
who came to fulfil the law must by deed as well
as word obey God’s law of labor.
See how fully and how beautifully Christ’s
life on earth illustrated this law. Entering our
earthly life in the weakness of infancy, as it
is appointed that all should enter it, he lovingly
took what in the natural order is lovingly rendered,
the sustenance, secured by labor, that one generation
owes to its immediate successors. Arrived at maturity,
he earned his own subsistence by that common labor
in which the majority of men must and do earn it.
Then passing to a higher — to the very highest — sphere
of labor, he earned his subsistence by the teaching
of moral and spiritual truths, receiving its material
wages in the love-offerings of grateful hearers,
and not refusing the costly spikenard with which
Mary anointed his feet. So, when he chose his disciples,
he did not go to landowners or other monopolists
who live on the labor of others, but to common
laboring-men. And when he called them to a higher
sphere of labor and sent them out to teach moral
and spiritual truths, he told them to take, without
condescension on the one hand or sense of degradation
on the other, the loving return for such labor,
saying to them that “the laborer is worthy
of his hire,” thus showing, what we hold,
that all labor does not consist in what is called
manual labor, but that whoever helps to add to
the material, intellectual, moral or spiritual
fullness of life is also a laborer.*
* Nor should it be forgotten
that the investigator, the philosopher, the
teacher, the artist, the
poet, the priest, though not engaged in the production
of wealth, are not only engaged in the production
of utilities and satisfactions to which the production
of wealth is only a means, but by acquiring and
diffusing knowledge, stimulating mental powers
and elevating the moral sense, may greatly increase
the ability to produce wealth. For man does not
live by bread alone. . . . He who by any exertion
of mind or body adds to the aggregate of enjoyable
wealth, increases the sum of human knowledge,
or
gives to human life higher elevation or greater
fullness — he is, in the large meaning of
the words, a “producer,” a “working-man,” a “laborer,” and
is honestly earning honest wages. But he who without
doing aught to make mankind richer, wiser, better,
happier, lives on the toil of others — he,
no matter by what name of honor he may be called,
or how lustily the priests of Mammon may swing
their censers before him, is in the last analysis
but a beggar-man or a thief. — Protection
or Free Trade, pp. 74-75.
In assuming that laborers, even ordinary manual
laborers, are naturally poor, you ignore the fact
that labor is the producer of wealth,
and attribute to the natural law of the Creator
an injustice
that comes from man’s impious violation of
his benevolent intention. In the rudest stage of
the arts it is possible, where justice prevails,
for all well men to earn a living. With the labor-saving
appliances of our time, it should be possible for
all to earn much more. And so, in saying that poverty
is no disgrace, you convey an unreasonable implication. For
poverty ought to be a disgrace, since in a condition
of social justice, it would, where unsought
from religious motives or unimposed by unavoidable
misfortune, imply recklessness or laziness. ... read the whole
letter
H.G. Brown: Significant
Paragraphs from Henry George's Progress & Poverty,
Chapter 6: The Remedy (in the unabridged: Books VI:
The Remedy and VII:
Justice of the Remedy)
Poverty deepens as wealth increases, and wages are forced down while
productive power grows, because land, which is the source of all wealth
and the field of all labor, is monopolized. To extirpate poverty, to
make wages what justice commands they should be, the full earnings of
the laborer, we must therefore substitute for the individual ownership
of land a common ownership. [footnote omitted]
This right of ownership that springs from labor excludes the possibility
of any other right of ownership. If a man be rightfully entitled to the
produce of his labor, then no one can be rightfully entitled to the ownership
of anything which is not the produce of his labor, or the labor of some
one else from whom the right has passed to him. For the right to the
produce of labor cannot be enjoyed without the right to the free use
of the opportunities offered by nature, and to admit the right of property
in these is to deny the right of property in the produce of labor. When
nonproducers can claim as rent a portion of the wealth created by producers,
the right of the producers to the fruits of their labor is to that extent
denied.
A house and the lot on which it stands are alike property, as being
the subject of ownership, and are alike classed by the lawyers as real
estate. Yet in nature and relations they differ widely.
- The one is produced by human labor, and belongs to the class in
political economy styled wealth.
- The other is a part of nature, and belongs to the class in political
economy styled land.
The essential character of the one class of things is that they embody
labor, are brought into being by human exertion, their existence or nonexistence,
their increase or diminution, depending on man. The essential character
of the other class of things is that they do not embody labor, and exist
irrespective of human exertion and irrespective of man; they are the
field or environment in which man finds himself; the storehouse from
which his needs must be supplied, the raw material upon which and the
forces with which alone his labor can act.
The moment this distinction is realized, that moment is it seen that
the sanction which natural justice gives to one species of property is
denied to the other. ... read
the whole chapter
H.G. Brown: Significant
Paragraphs from Henry George's Progress & Poverty:
10. Effect of Remedy Upon Wealth Production (in the unabridged P&P: Part
IX — Effects of the Remedy: Chapter 1 — Of the effect upon the
production of wealth)
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. ...
Consider the effect upon the production of wealth.
To abolish the taxation which, acting and reacting, now hampers every wheel
of exchange and presses upon every form of industry, would be like removing
an immense weight from a powerful spring. Imbued with fresh energy, production
would start into new life, and trade would receive a stimulus which would be
felt to the remotest arteries. The present method of taxation operates upon
exchange like artificial deserts and mountains;
- it costs more to get goods through a custom house than it does to carry
them around the world.
- It operates upon energy, and industry, and skill, and thrift, like a
fine upon those qualities.
- If I have worked harder and built myself a good house while you have
been contented to live in a hovel, the taxgatherer now comes annually to
make
me pay a penalty for my energy and industry, by taxing me more than
you.
- If I have saved while you wasted, I am mulct, while you are exempt.
- If a man build a ship we make him pay for his temerity, as though he
had done an injury to the state;
- if a railroad be opened, down comes the tax collector upon it, as though
it were a public nuisance;
- if a manufactory be erected we levy upon it an annual sum which would
go far toward making a handsome profit.
- We say we want capital, but if any one accumulate it, or bring it among
us, we charge him for it as though we were giving him a privilege.
- We punish with a tax the man who covers barren fields with ripening
grain,
- we fine him who puts up machinery, and him who drains a swamp.
How heavily these taxes burden production only those realize who have attempted
to follow our system of taxation through its ramifications, for, as I have
before said, the heaviest part of taxation is that which falls in increased
prices.
To abolish these taxes would be to lift the whole enormous weight of taxation
from productive industry. The needle of the seamstress and the great manufactory;
the cart horse and the locomotive; the fishing boat and the steamship;
the farmer's plow and the merchant's stock, would be alike untaxed. All would
be
free to make or to save, to buy or to sell, unfined by taxes, unannoyed
by the taxgatherer. Instead of saying to the producer, as it does now, "The
more you add to the general wealth the more shall you be taxed!" the state
would say to the producer, "Be as industrious, as thrifty, as enterprising
as you choose, you shall have your full reward! You shall not be fined
for making two blades of grass grow where one grew before; you shall not
be taxed
for adding to the aggregate wealth."
And will not the community gain by thus refusing to kill the goose that lays
the golden eggs; by thus refraining from muzzling the ox that treadeth out
the corn; by thus leaving to industry, and thrift, and skill, their natural
reward, full and unimpaired? For there is to the community also a natural reward.
The law of society is, each for all, as well as all for each. No one can keep
to himself the good he may do, any more than he can keep the bad. Every productive
enterprise, besides its return to those who undertake it, yields collateral
advantages to others. If a man plant a fruit tree, his gain is that he gathers
the fruit in its time and season. But in addition to his gain, there is a gain
to the whole community. Others than the owner are benefited by the increased
supply of fruit; the birds which it shelters fly far and wide; the rain which
it helps to attract falls not alone on his field; and, even to the eye which
rests upon it from a distance, it brings a sense of beauty. And so with everything
else. The building of a house, a factory, a ship, or a railroad, benefits others
besides those who get the direct profits.
Well may the community leave to the individual producer all that prompts him
to exertion; well may it let the laborer have the full reward of his labor,
and the capitalist the full return of his capital. For the more that labor
and capital produce, the greater grows the common wealth in which all may share.
And in the value or rent of land is this general gain expressed in a definite
and concrete form. Here is a fund which the state may take while leaving to
labor and capital their full reward. With increased activity of production
this would commensurately increase.
And to shift the burden of taxation from production and exchange to the value
or rent of land would not merely be to give new stimulus to the production
of wealth; it would be to open new opportunities. For under this system no
one would care to hold land unless to use it, and land now withheld from use
would everywhere be thrown open to improvement. ... read the whole chapter
H.G. Brown: Significant
Paragraphs from Henry George's Progress & Poverty:
11 Effect of Remedy Upon the Sharing of Wealth (in the unabridged P&P: Part
IX Effects of the Remedy — Chapter 2: Of the Effect Upon Distribution
and Thence Upon Production
But great as they thus appear, the advantages of a transference of all public
burdens to a tax upon the value of land cannot be fully appreciated until we
consider the effect upon the distribution of wealth.
Tracing out the cause of the unequal distribution of wealth which appears
in all civilized countries, with a constant tendency to greater and greater
inequality as material progress goes on, we have found it in the fact that,
as civilization advances, the ownership of land, now in private hands, gives
a greater and greater power of appropriating the wealth produced by labor and
capital.
Thus, to relieve labor and capital from all taxation, direct and indirect,
and to throw the burden upon rent, would be, as far as it went, to counteract
this tendency to inequality, and, if it went so far as to take in taxation
the whole of rent, the cause of inequality would be totally destroyed. Rent,
instead of causing inequality, as now, would then promote equality. Labor and
capital would then receive the whole produce, minus that portion taken by the
state in the taxation of land values, which, being applied to public purposes,
would be equally distributed in public benefits.
That is to say, the wealth produced in every community would be divided into
two portions.
- One part would be distributed in wages and interest between individual
producers, according to the part each had taken in the work of production;
- the other part would go to the community as a whole, to be distributed
in public benefits to all its members.
In this all would share equally — the weak with the strong, young children
and decrepit old men, the maimed, the halt, and the blind, as well as the vigorous.
And justly so — for while one part represents the result of individual
effort in production, the other represents the increased power with which
the community as a whole aids the individual.
Thus, as material progress tends to increase rent, were rent taken by the
community for common purposes the very cause which now tends to produce inequality
as material progress goes on would then tend to produce greater and greater
equality. ... read the whole chapter
H.G. Brown: Significant
Paragraphs from Henry George's Progress & Poverty:
12. Effect of Remedy Upon Various Economic Classes (in the unabridged P&P: Part
IX: Effects of the Remedy — Chapter 3. Of the effect upon individuals
and classes)
When it is first proposed to put all taxes upon the value of land, all landholders
are likely to take the alarm, and there will not be wanting appeals to
the fears of small farm and homestead owners, who will be told that this
is a proposition
to rob them of their hard-earned property. But a moment's reflection will
show that this proposition should commend itself to all whose interests as
landholders
do not largely exceed their interests as laborers or capitalists, or both.
And further consideration will show that though the large landholders may
lose relatively, yet even in their case there will be an absolute gain. For,
the
increase in production will be so great that labor and capital will gain
very much more than will be lost to private landownership, while in these
gains,
and in the greater ones involved in a more healthy social condition, the
whole community, including the landowners themselves, will share.
- It is manifest, of course, that the change I propose will greatly benefit
all those who live by wages, whether of hand or of head -- laborers,
operatives, mechanics, clerks, professional men of all sorts.
- It is manifest, also, that it will benefit all those who live partly
by wages and partly by the earnings of their capital -- storekeepers, merchants,
manufacturers, employing or undertaking producers and exchangers of
all sorts
from the peddler or drayman to the railroad or steamship owner -- and
- it is likewise manifest that it will increase the incomes of those whose
incomes are drawn from the earnings of capital.
Take, now, the case of the homestead owner -- the mechanic, storekeeper, or
professional man who has secured himself a house and lot, where he lives, and
which he contemplates with satisfaction as a place from which his family cannot
be ejected in case of his death. He will not be injured; on the contrary, he
will be the gainer. The selling value of his lot will diminish -- theoretically
it will entirely disappear. But its usefulness to him will not disappear. It
will serve his purpose as well as ever. While, as the value of all other lots
will diminish or disappear in the same ratio, he retains the same security
of always having a lot that he had before. That is to say, he is a loser only
as the man who has bought himself a pair of boots may be said to be a loser
by a subsequent fall in the price of boots. His boots will be just as useful
to him, and the next pair of boots he can get cheaper. So, to the homestead
owner, his lot will be as useful, and should he look forward to getting a larger
lot, or having his children, as they grow up, get homesteads of their own,
he will, even in the matter of lots, be the gainer. And in the present, other
things considered, he will be much the gainer. For though he will have more
taxes to pay upon his land, he will be released from taxes upon his house and
improvements, upon his furniture and personal property, upon all that he and
his family eat, drink and wear, while his earnings will be largely increased
by the rise of wages, the constant employment, and the increased briskness
of trade. His only loss will be, if he wants to sell his lot without getting
another, and this will be a small loss compared with the great gain.
...In short, the working farmer is both a laborer and a capitalist, as well
as a landowner, and it is by his labor and capital that his living is made.
His
loss would be nominal; his gain would be real and great. In varying degrees
is this true of all landholders. Many landholders are laborers of one sort
or another. This measure would make no one poorer but such as could be made
a great deal poorer without being really hurt. It would cut down great fortunes,
but it would impoverish no one.
Wealth would not only be enormously increased; it would be equally distributed.
I do not mean that each individual would get the same amount of wealth. That
would not be equal distribution, so long as different individuals have different
powers and different desires. But I mean that wealth would be distributed in
accordance with the degree in which the industry, skill, knowledge, or prudence
of each contributed to the common stock. The great cause which concentrates
wealth in the hands of those who do not produce, and takes it from the hands
of those who do, would be gone. The inequalities that continued to exist would
be those of nature, not the artificial inequalities produced by the denial
of natural law. The nonproducer would no longer roll in luxury while the producer
got but the barest necessities of animal existence. ... read the whole chapter
Henry George: Salutatory, from
the first issue of The Standard (1887)
I begin the publication of this paper in response to many urgent requests,
and because I believe that there is a field for a journal that shall serve
as a focus for news and opinions relating to the great movement, now beginning,
for the emancipation of labor by the restoration of natural rights.
The generation that abolished chattel slavery is passing away, and the political
distinctions that grew out of that contest are becoming meaningless. The work
now before us is the abolition of industrial slavery.
What God created for the use of all should be utilized for the benefit of
all; what is produced by the individual belongs rightfully to the individual. The neglect of these simple principles has brought upon us the curse of widespread
poverty and all the evils that flow from it. Their recognition will abolish
poverty, will secure to the humblest independence and leisure, and will lay
abroad and strong foundation on which all other reforms may be based. To secure
the full recognition of these principles is the most important task to which
any man can address himself today. It is in the hope of aiding in this work
that I establish this paper.
I believe that the Declaration of Independence is not a mere string of glittering
generalities. I believe that all men are really created equal, and that the
securing of those equal natural rights is the true purpose and test of government.
And against whatever law, custom or device that restrains men in the exercise
of their natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness I shall
raise my voice. ... read the whole column
Henry George: The
Crime of Poverty (1885 speech)
... Nature gives to labour, and to
labour alone; there must be human work before any article of wealth can
be produced; and in the natural state of things the man who toiled honestly
and well would be the rich man, and he who did not work would be poor.
We have so reversed the order of nature that we are accustomed to think
of the workingman as a poor man.
And if you trace it out I believe you will
see that the primary cause of this is that we compel those who work to pay
others for permission to do so. You may buy a coat, a horse, a house; there
you are paying the seller for labour exerted, for something that he has produced,
or that he has got from the man who did produce it; but when you pay a man
for land, what are you paying him for? You are paying for something that
no man has produced; you pay him for something that was here before man was,
or for a value that was created, not by him individually, but by the community
of which you are a part. What is the reason
that the land here, where we stand tonight, is worth more than it was twenty-five
years ago? What is the reason that land in the centre of New York, that once
could be bought by the mile for a jug of whiskey, is now worth so much that,
though you were to cover it with gold, you would not have its value? Is it
not because of the increase of population? Take away that population,
and where would the value of the land be? Look at it in any way you please. ... read the whole speech
Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a
themed collection of
excerpts from the writings of Henry George (with links to sources)
THE term Labor includes all human exertion in the production of wealth,
whatever its mode. In common parlance we often speak of brain labor and hand
labor as though they were entirely distinct kinds of exertion, and labor
is often spoken of as though it involved only muscular exertion. But in reality
any form of labor, that is to say, any form of human exertion in the production
of wealth above that which cattle may be applied to doing, requires the human
brain as truly as the human hand, and would be impossible without the exercise
of mental faculties on the part of the laborer. Labor in fact is only physical
in external form. In its origin it is mental or on strict analysis spiritual. — The
Science of Political Economy unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 16: The Production of Wealth, The Second Factor of Production — Labor • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 10: Order of the Three Factors of Production
IT seems to us that your Holiness misses its real significance in intimating
that Christ in becoming the son of a carpenter and Himself working as a carpenter
showed merely that "there is nothing to be ashamed of in seeking one's bread
by labor." To say that is almost like saying that by not robbing people He showed
that there is nothing to be ashamed of in honesty. If you will consider how true
in any large view is the classification of all men into working-men, beggar-men
and thieves, you will see that it was morally impossible that Christ during His
stay on earth should have been anything else than a working-man, since He who
came to fulfill the law must by deed as well as word obey God's law of labor.
See how fully and how beautifully Christ's life on earth illustrated this law.
Entering our earthly life in the weakness of infancy, as it is appointed that
all should enter it, He lovingly took what in the natural order is lovingly rendered,
the sustenance, secured by labor, that one generation owes to its immediate successors.
Arrived at maturity, He earned His own subsistence by that common labor in which
the majority of men must and do earn it. Then passing to a higher — to
the very highest-sphere of labor. He earned His subsistence by the teaching of
moral and spiritual truths, receiving its material wages in the love offerings
of grateful hearers, and not refusing the costly spikenard with which Mary anointed
his feet. So, when He chose His disciples, He did not go to land-owners or other
monopolists who live on the labor of others but to common laboring men. And when
He called them to a higher sphere of labor and sent them out to teach moral and
spiritual truths He told them to take, without condescension on the one hand,
or sense of degradation on the other, the loving return for such labor, saying
to them that the "laborer is worthy of his hire," thus showing, what we hold,
that all labor does not consist in what is called manual labor, but that whoever
helps to add to the material, intellectual, moral, or spiritual fulness of life
is also a laborer. - The Condition
of Labor
NOR should it be forgotten that the investigator, the philosopher, the teacher,
the artist, the poet, the priest, though not engaged in the production of wealth,
are not only engaged in the production of utilities and satisfactions to which
the production of wealth is only a means, but by acquiring and diffusing knowledge,
stimulating mental powers and elevating the moral sense, may greatly increase
the ability to produce wealth. For man does not live by bread alone. He is not
an engine, in which so much fuel gives so much power. On a capstan bar or a topsail
halyard a good song tells like muscle, and a "Marseillaise" or a "Battle Hymn
of the Republic" counts for bayonets. A hearty laugh, a noble thought, a perception
of harmony, may add to the power of dealing even with material things.
He who by any exertion of mind or body adds to the aggregate of enjoyable wealth,
increases the sum of human knowledge or gives to human life higher elevation
or greater fulness — he is, in the large meaning of the words, a "producer," a "working-man," a "laborer," and
is honestly earning honest wages. But he who without doing aught to make mankind
richer, wiser, better, happier, lives on the toil of others — he, no matter
by what name of honor he may be I called, or how lustily the priests of Mammon
may swing their censers before him, is in the last analysis but a beggarman or
a thief. — Protection or Free Trade, Chapter 7 econlib
NATURE acknowledges no ownership or control in man save as the result
of exertion. In no other way can her treasures be drawn forth, her
powers directed, or her forces utilized or controlled. She makes
no discriminations
among men,
but is to all absolutely impartial. She knows no distinction between
master and slave, king and subject, saint and sinner. All men to
her stand upon an equal footing and have equal rights. She recognizes
no
claim but that of labor, and recognizes that without respect to the
claimant. If a pirate spread his sails, the wind will fill them as
well as it will fill those of a peaceful merchantman or missionary
bark; if
a king and a common man be thrown overboard, neither can keep his
head above the water except by swimming; birds will not come to be
shot
by the proprietor of the soil any quicker than they will come to
be shot by the poacher; fish will bite or will not bite at a hook in
utter
disregard as to whether it is offered them by a good little boy who
goes to Sunday school, or a bad little boy who plays truant; grain
will grow only as the ground is prepared and the seed is sown; it
is only
at the call of labor that ore can be raised from the mine; the sun
shines and the rain falls alike upon just and unjust. The laws of
nature are
the decrees of the Creator. There is written in them no recognition
of any right save that of labor; and in them is written broadly and
clearly the equal right of all men to the use and enjoyment of nature;
to apply to her by their exertions, and to receive and possess her
reward. Hence, as nature gives only to labor, the exertion of labor
in production is the only title to exclusive possession. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 1, Justice of the Remedy: Injustice of private property
in land
PRIVATE property is not of one species, and moral sanction can no more be
asserted universally of it than of marriage. That proper marriage conforms
to the law of God does not justify the polygamic or polyandric or incestuous
marriages that are in some countries permitted by the civil law. And as there
may be immoral marriage, so may there be immoral private property. — The
Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
THAT any species of property is permitted by the State, does not of itself
give it moral sanction. The State has often made things property that are not
justly property but involve violence and robbery. — The
Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
TO attach to things created by God the same right of private ownership that
justly attaches to things produced by labor, is to impair and deny the true
rights of property. For a man, who out of the proceeds of his labor is obliged
to pay another man for the use of ocean or air or sunshine or soil, all of
which are to men involved in the single term land, is in this deprived of his
rightful property, and thus robbed. — The
Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
HOW then is it that we are called deniers of the right of property? It is for
the same reason that caused nine-tenths of the good people in the United
States, north as well as south, to regard abolitionists as deniers of the right
of property; the same reason that made even John Wesley look on a smuggler
as a kind of robber, and on a custom-house seizer of other men's goods as a
defender of law and order. Where violations of the right of property
have been long sanctioned by custom and law, it is inevitable that those
who really assert the right of property will at first be thought to deny it. For
under such circumstances the idea of property becomes confused, and that is
thought to be property which is in reality a violation of property. — A
Perplexed Philosopher (The
Right Of Property And The Right Of Taxation)
LANDLORDS must elect to try their case either by human law or by moral law. If
they say that land is rightly property because made so by human law, they cannot
charge those who would change that law with advocating robbery. But if
they charge that such change in human law would be robbery, then they must
show that land is rightfully property irrespective of human law. — The
Reduction to Iniquity (a reply to the Duke of Argyll), The Nineteenth
Century, July, 1884
THE tax upon land values is 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. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VIII, Chapter 3, Application of the Remedy: The Proposition Tried by the Canons
of Taxation
HERE is a provision made by natural law for the increasing needs of social growth;
here is an adaptation of nature by virtue of which the natural progress of society
is a progress toward equality not toward inequality; a centripetal force tending
to unity growing out of and ever balancing a centrifugal force tending to diversity.
Here is a fund belonging to society as a whole, from which without the degradation
of alms, private or public, provision can be made for the weak, the helpless,
the aged; from which provision can be made for the common wants of all as a matter
of common right to each. — Social
Problems — Chapter
19, The First Great Reform
NOT only do all economic considerations point to a tax on land values as
the proper source of public revenues; but so do all British traditions. A
land tax of four shillings in the pound of rental value is still nominally
enforced in England, but being levied on a valuation made in the reign of
William III, it amounts in reality to not much over a penny in the pound.
With the abolition of indirect taxation this is the tax to which men would
naturally turn. The resistance of landholders would bring up the question
of title, and thus any movement which went so far as to propose the substitution
of direct for indirect taxation must inevitably end in a demand for the restoration
to the British people of their birthright. — Protection or Free
Trade— Chapter 27: The Lion in the Way - econlib
THE feudal system, which is not peculiar to Europe but seems to be the natural
result of the conquest of a settled country by a race among whom equality and
individuality are yet strong, clearly recognized, in theory at least, that
the land belongs to society at large, not to the individual. Rude outcome of
an age in which might stood for right as nearly as it ever can (for the idea
of right is ineradicable from the human mind, and must in some shape show itself
even in the association of pirates and robbers), the feudal system yet admitted
in no one the uncontrolled and exclusive right to land. A fief was essentially
a a trust, and to enjoyment was annexed obligation. The sovereign, theoretically
the representative of the collective power and rights of the whole people,
was in feudal view the only absolute owner of land. And though land was granted
to individual possession, yet in its possession were involved duties, by which
the enjoyer of its revenues was supposed to render back to the commonwealth
an equivalent for the benefits which from the delegation of the common right
he received. — Progress &Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 4, Justice of the Remedy: Private Property in Land Historically
Considered
THE abolition of the military tenures in England by the Long Parliament,
ratified after the accession of Charles II, though simply an appropriation
of public revenues by the feudal landowners, who thus got rid of the consideration
on which they held the common property of the nation, and saddled it on the
people at large in the taxation of all consumers, has been long characterized,
and is still held up in the law books, as a triumph of the spirit of freedom.
Yet here is the source of the immense debt and heavy taxation of England.
Had the form of these feudal dues been simply changed into one better adapted
to the changed times, English wars need never have occasioned the incurring
of debt to the amount of a single pound, and the labor and capital of England
need not have been taxed a single farthing for the maintenance of a military
establishment. All this would have come from rent, which the landholders
since that time have appropriated to themselves — from the tax which
land ownership levies on the earnings of labor and capital. The landholders
of England got their land on terms which required them even in the sparse
population of Norman days to put in the field, upon call, sixty thousand
perfectly equipped horsemen, and on the further condition of various fines
and incidents which amounted to a considerable part of the rent. It would
probably be a low estimate to put the pecuniary value of these various services
and dues at one-half the rental value of the land. Had the landholders been
kept to this contract and no land been permitted to be inclosed except upon
similar terms, the income accruing to the nation from English land would
today be greater by many millions than the entire public revenues of the
United Kingdom. England today might have enjoyed absolute free trade. There
need not have been a customs duty, an excise, license or income tax, yet
all the present expenditures could be met, and a large surplus remain to
be devoted to any purpose which would conduce to the comfort or well-being
of the whole people. — Progress &Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 4, Justice of the Remedy: Private Property in Land Historically
Considered
"THE poor ye have always with you." If ever a scripture has been wrested to the
devil's service, this is that scripture. How often have these words been distorted
from their obvious meaning to soothe conscience into acquiescence in human misery
and degradation — to bolster that blasphemy, the very negation and denial
of Christ's teachings, that the All Wise and Most Merciful, the Infinite Father,
has decreed that so many of His creatures must be poor in order that others
of His creatures to whom He wills the good things of life should enjoy the please
and virtue of doling out alms! "The poor ye have always with you," said
Christ; but all His teachings supply the limitation, "until the coming of the
Kingdom." In that kingdom of God on earth,
that kingdom of justice and love for which He taught His followers to strive
and pray, there will be no poor. — Social
Problems — Chapter 8: That We All Might Be Rich.
WE naturally despise poverty; and it is reasonable that we should. I do not say — I
distinctly repudiate it — that the people who are poor are poor always
from their own fault, or even in most cases; but it ought to be so. If any good
man or woman had the power to create a world, it would be a sort of a world in
which no one would be poor unless he was lazy or vicious. But that is just precisely
the kind of a world that this is; that is just precisely, the kind of a world
that the Creator has made. Nature gives to labor, and to labor alone;
there must be human work before any article of wealth can be produced; and, in
a natural
state of things, the man who toiled honestly and well would be the rich man,
and he who did not work would be poor. We have so reversed the order of nature,
that we are accustomed to think of a working-man as a poor man. — The
Crime of Poverty
... go to "Gems from George"
Louis Post: Outlines of Louis F. Post's
Lectures, with Illustrative Notes and Charts (1894)
Thus all artificial objects external to man — Wealth, are found to
have their ultimate source in the conjunction of man's activities — Labor,
with natural objects external to man — Land. ...
Wealth is produced solely by the application of Labor to Land.51
50. It may at first seem like a great waste of time and space to have gone
through this long analysis for no other purpose at last than to demonstrate
the self-evident fact that land and labor are the sole original factors in
the production of Wealth. But it will have been no waste if it enables the
reader to firmly grasp the fact. Nothing is more obvious, to be sure. Nothing
is more readily assented to. Yet by layman and college professor and economic
author alike, this simple truth is cast adrift at the very threshold of argument
or investigation, with results akin to what might be expected in physics
if after recognizing the law of gravitation its effects should be completely
ignored.
51. There is ample authority among economic writers for this conclusion.
Professor Ely enumerates Nature, Labor, and Capital as
the factors of production, but he describes Capital as a combination
of Nature and Labor — Ely's
Introduction, part ii, ch. iii.
Say describes industry as " nothing more or less than human employment
of natural agents." — Say's Trea., book i, ch. ii.
And though John Stuart Mill and numerous others speak of Land, Labor, and
Capital as the three factors of production, as does Professor Jevons, most
of them, like Jevons, recognize the fact, though in their reasoning they
often fail to profit by it, that Capital is not a primary but a secondary
requisite. See Jevons's Pol. Ec., secs. 16, 19.
Henry George says: "Land, labor, and capital are the factors of production.
The term land includes all natural opportunities or forces; the term labor,
all human exertion; and the term capital, all wealth used to produce more
wealth. . . Capital is not a necessary factor in production. Labor exerted
upon land can produce wealth without the aid of capital, and in the necessary
genesis of things must so produce wealth before capital can exist." — Progress
and Poverty, book iii, ch. i.
Also : "The complexities of production in the civilized state, in which
so great a part is borne by exchange, and so much labor is bestowed upon
materials after they have been separated from the land, though they may to
the unthinking disguise, do not alter the fact that all production is still
the union of the two factors, land and labor."— Id., ch. viii.
By intelligent observers no authority is needed. In all the phenomena of
human life, whether primitive or civilized, the lesson of the chart stands
out in bold relief. Nothing can be produced without Labor and Land, and nothing
can be named which under any circumstances enters into productive processes
that is not resolvable into either the one or the other. To satisfy all human
wants mankind requires nothing but human labor and natural material, and
each of them is indispensable.
This is the final analysis. In the union of Labor, which includes all human
effort,52 with Land, which includes the whole material universe outside of
man,53 we discover the ultimate source of Wealth, which includes all the
material things that satisfy want.54 And that is the first great truth upon
which the single tax philosophy is built.
52. The term labor includes all human exertion in the
production of wealth." — Progress
and Poverty, book i, ch. ii.
53. "The term land necessarily includes, not merely the surface of
the earth as distinguished from the water and the air, but the whole material
universe outside of man himself, for it is only by having access to land,
from which his very body is drawn, that man can come in contact with or use
nature." — Progress and Poverty, book i, ch. ii.
54. "As commonly used the word 'wealth ' is applied to anything having
exchange value. But ... wealth, as alone the term can be used in political
economy, consists of natural products that have been secured, moved, combined,
separated, or in other ways modified by human exertion, so as to fit them
for the gratification of human desires." — Progress and Poverty,
book i, ch ii.
...
c. Significance of the Upward Tendency of Rent
Now, what is the meaning of this tendency of Rent to rise with social progress,
while Wages tend to fall? Is it not a plain promise that if Rent be treated
as common property, advances in productive power shall be steps in the direction
of realizing through orderly and natural growth those grand conceptions of
both the socialist and the individualist, which in the present condition
of society are justly ranked as Utopian? Is it not likewise a plain warning
that if Rent be treated as private property, advances in productive power
will be steps in the direction of making slaves of the many laborers, and
masters of a few land-owners? Does it not mean that common ownership of Rent
is in harmony with natural law, and that its private appropriation is disorderly
and degrading? When the cause of Rent and the tendency illustrated in the
preceding chart are considered in connection with the self-evident truth
that God made the earth for common use and not for private monopoly, how
can a contrary inference hold? Caused and increased by social growth, 97
the benefits of which should be common, and attaching to land, the just right
to which is equal, Rent must be the natural fund for public expenses. 98
97. Here, far away from civilization, is a solitary settler.
Getting no benefits from government, he needs no public revenues, and
none of the land about him has any value. Another settler comes, and
another, until a village appears. Some public revenue is then required.
Not much, but some. And the land has a little value, only a little; perhaps
just enough to equal the need for public revenue. The village becomes
a town. More revenues are needed, and land values are higher. It becomes
a city. The public revenues required are enormous, and so are the land
values.
98. Society, and society alone, causes Rent. Rising with
the rise, advancing with the growth, and receding with the decline of
society, it measures the earning power of society as a whole as distinguished
from that of the individuals. Wages, on the other hand, measure
the earning power of the individuals as distinguished from that of society
as a whole. We have distinguished the parts into which Wealth is distributed as Wages
and Rent; but it would be correct, indeed it is the same thing, to regard
all wealth as earnings, and to distinguish the two kinds as Communal
Earnings and Individual Earnings. How, then, can there be any question
as to the fund from which society should be supported? How can it be
justly supported in any other way than out of its own earnings?
If there be at all such a thing as design in the universe — and who
can doubt it? — then has it been designed that Rent, the earnings of
the community, shall be retained for the support of the community, and that
Wages, the earnings of the individual, shall be left to the individual in
proportion to the value of his service. This is the divine law, whether we
trace it through complex moral and economic relations, or find it in the
eighth commandment. ...
Q52. Is not the right of ownership of a gold ring the same as the ownership
of a gold mine? and if the latter is wrong is not the former also wrong?
A. If it be wrong for you to own the spring of water which you and your fellows
use, is it therefore wrong for you to own the water that you lift from the
spring to drink? If so how do you propose to slake your thirst? If you argue
in reply that it is not wrong for you to own the spring, then how shall your
fellows slake their thirst when you treat them, as you would have a right
to, as trespassers upon your property? To own the source of labor products
is to own the labor of others; to own what you produce from that source is
to own only your own labor. Nature furnishes gold mines, but men fashion
gold rings. The right of ownership is radically different.
Q53. Is it true that men are equally entitled to land? Are they not
entitled to it in proportion to their use of it?
A. Yes, they are entitled to it in proportion to their use of it and it is this
title that the single tax would secure. It would allow every one to possess as
much land as he wished, upon the sole condition that if it has a value he shall
account to the community for that value and for nothing else; all that he produces
from the land above its value being absolutely his, free even from taxation.
The single tax is the method best adapted to our circumstances, and to orderly
conditions, for limiting possession of land to its use. By making it unprofitable
to hold land except for use, or to hold more than can be used to advantage, it
constitutes every man his own judge of the amount and the character of the land
that he can use.
Q57. If land and labor are equally indispensable factors of production,
why are they not equally entitled to the product?
A. The laborer justly owns his labor, but the land-owner cannot justly own
his land. The question is not one of the relative rights of men and land,
but of men and men. ... read the book
Charles B. Fillebrown: A Catechism
of Natural Taxation, from Principles of
Natural Taxation (1917)
Q1. What is a tax?
A. A tax is a compulsory contribution of individual product or the value of such
product toward the needs of government.
Q13. What is meant by the right of property?
A. As to the grain a man raises, or the house that he builds, it means ownership
full and complete. As to land, it means legal title, tenure, "estate in
land," perpetual right of exclusive possession, a right not absolute,
but superior to that of any other man.
Q39. Is not land peculiar in that it is a gift of the Creator, and is not
a product of labor?
A. Yes, that is true of land itself, but not of the value of land.
Q46. Would it not be confiscation so to increase the tax on land?
A. What would be confiscated? No land would be taken, no right of occupancy,
or use, or improvement, or sale, or devise; nothing would be taken that is
conveyed or guaranteed by the title deed.
Q47. What is the distinction between taxation and confiscation?
A. The sovereign state may appropriate private property of its citizens in
two ways: (1) by confiscation; (2) by taxation. When one particular man by
treason or otherwise has forfeited his rights as a citizen, the land and
houses and personalty of this one man may all be "forfeit to the crown," while
the validity and sanctity of 9,999 other men's rights are in no way infringed.
This is confiscation. On the other hand, when the state, in order to obtain
the revenue to meet the expenses of government, levies tribute upon its 10,000
citizens impartially, this is taxation.
Q48. But would it not be an injustice to the landowner?
A. If it be an injustice to tax hard-earned incomes (wages) to maintain an
unearned income (net economic rent) that bears no tax burden, how can it
be an injustice to stop doing so? There can be no injustice in taking for
the benefit of the community the value that is created by the community.
... read the whole article
Hanno Beck: What The Polluter
Pays Principle Implies
"Ah," says
Vernon. "I see what you mean. I have to
pay for the effects of my polluting actions or else I'd be robbing
someone else. Okay, I believe the Polluter Pays Principle now." ...
"But the funny thing is, you don't really
believe it
yourself," says Vernon. "You aren't being consistent. You say goods and
services that we produce belong to the producers and no one else. But
you support the income tax and the sales tax. Those taxes take away
from the producer, without his or her consent, part of what he or she
produced. So it doesn't seem that you really believe your own claims.
Why should people support the Polluter Pays Principle that says they
are stuck with negative products they produce, when at the same time
you wouldn't allow them to keep the positive products they produce?
Sounds like an uneven deal."
Sara is shocked. But she has to admit Vernon
has a
point. "Hmm, I guess this might be part of why the Polluter Pays
Principle doesn't excite as much support as it should. If we lived in a
world where people get to keep the full value of whatever their labor
and their investment yields, then pollution would stand out in sharp
contrast, as a crime against innocent people and their property. The
Polluter Pays Principle would be totally obvious then."
"And instead," says Vernon, "we're surrounded
by
cases of theft by income tax, by sales tax, and so on. Well then, no
wonder people aren't shocked when the Polluter Pays Principle isn't
applied. And no wonder some people don't even see the wisdom of it. "
The bottom line question is this -- can a
person
support the Polluter Pays Principle and support involuntary taxation
both, or is that inconsistent? Your opinion, please! ... read the whole article
Fred E. Foldvary — The
Ultimate Tax Reform:
Public Revenue from Land Rent
We still need to judge whether it is fair for only landowners to pay the taxes,
rather than to spread the burden on all who get income or spend money or have
wealth.
Natural-law philosophers such as John Locke have reasoned that all human
beings have a natural ownership right to their labor and the products of
that labor.
The fundamental equality of humanity means it is fundamentally wrong for
some to take away the labor done by others.31 That notion is almost universally
recognized today with respect to slavery, and some folks are beginning
to recognize
that the current tax system—which taxes our earnings and taxes how we
invest or spend those earnings—also violates man’s natural
right to the fruits of his labor.
If taking the fruit of one’s labor is fundamentally unjust, how can
a community raise the monies needed to build essential infrastructure and provide
public services? Land value taxation takes into account not only the value
of the land due to nature, such as soil and climate, but also the great increase
in land values that result from population, commerce, security and other civic
services, and public works—elements beyond the activity of the property
owner. The windfall increase in the rental or land value of the land, contended
Henry George and others, is a surplus that can be tapped by the community.32
Those suggesting positive consequences of shifting taxation to rent have
been accused of exaggerating its beneficial effects.33 Freedom from punitive
taxation
is not a panacea, but the infliction of arbitrary costs on enterprise and
the skewing of market signals such as prices and profits is indeed a universal
and major cause of economic woes. It is not an exaggeration to propose
that
removing these would have many beneficial results, just as one’s
health improves considerably if one stops taking poison. ... read
the whole document
Charles T. Root — Not a Single Tax! (1925)
Briefly defined the land value or economic rent of any piece of ground is
the largest annual amount voluntarily offered for the exclusive use of that
ground, or of an equivalent parcel, independent of improvements thereon. Every
holder or user of land pays economic rent, but he now pays most of it to the
wrong party. The aggregate economic rent of the territory occupied by any political
unit is, as has been stated above, always sufficient, usually more than sufficient,
for the legitimate expenses of the government of that unit. As also stated
above, the economic rent belongs to the community, and not to individual landowners.
On the other hand, the result of every utilization or enhancement of the natural
advantages of land (such as farm profits, the rent and selling value of buildings
and other improvements), when accomplished by an individual, belongs wholly
to that individual, and should never, and need never, be taken from him by
taxation. ...
To illustrate simply, let us suppose a state which has never parted with
its natural income but is supported by its own economic rent. A farmer wishes
to
take up a tract or [sic] government land in this state and offers an economic
rent of fifty cents per year per acre in its raw condition. The government
(i.e., the community) accepts this rent, subject to re-adjustment every
five years. The farmer then gets his deed without other cost than that of
drawing
and recording the instrument, or a nominal price of, say, one dollar an
acre.
He works his new property vigorously, clears, fences, drains and plants it,
and puts up his buildings and stocks them. He has no taxes to pay, and at the
end of his first five-year period he is making $10 per acre per year. Will
his economic rent for the next five-year period be raised because he has prospered
or because he has invested money in buildings and improvements? Not a penny.
All the results of his own capital and labor belong to him and not to the community.
If the neighborhood has not grown much, and fifty cents an acre is still all
that is bid as economic rent for the same kind of raw ground as our farmer
originally took, then his rent for the second five years will be the same as
the first. ... read the whole article
Joseph Fels: True Christianity and
My Own Religious Beliefs
I believe that the Creator
freely gave the earth to all of His
children, that all may have equal rights to its use. Do you agree to
that?
I believe that the injunction, "In the sweat of thy brow shalt
thou eat
bread," necessarily implies, "Thou shalt not eat bread in the sweat of
thy brother's brow." Do you agree?
I believe that all are violating the divine law who live in
idleness on
wealth produced by others, since they eat bread in the sweat of their
brothers' brows. Do you agree?
I believe that no man should have power to take wealth he has
not
produced or earned unless freely given to him by the producer. Do you
agree?
I believe that brotherhood requires giving an equivalent for
every
service received from a brother. Do you agree?
I believe it is blasphemous to assert or insinuate that God has
condemned some of His children to hopeless poverty, and to the Crimea,
want, and misery resulting therefrom, and has, at the same time,
awarded to others lives of ease and luxury, without labor. Do you agree?
I believe that involuntary poverty and involuntary idleness are
unnatural, and are due to the denial by some of the right of others to
use freely the gift of God to all. Do you agree?
Since labor products are needed to sustain life, and since labor
must
be applied to land in order to produce, I believe that every child
comes into life with divine permission to use land without the consent
of any other child of God. Do you agree?
Where men congregate in organized society, land has a value
apart from
the value of things produced by labor; as population and industry
increase, the value of land increases, but the value of labor products
does not. That increase in land value is community-made value. Inasmuch
as your power to labor is a gift of God, all the wealth produced by
your labor is yours, and no man nor collection of men has a right to
take any of it from you. Do you agree to that?
I believe the community-made value of land belongs to the
community,
just as the wealth produced by you belongs to you. Do you agree to that?
Therefore, I believe that the fundamental evil, the great
God-denying
crime of society, is the iniquitous system under which men are
permitted to put into their pocket, confiscate, in fact, the
community-made values of land, while organized society confiscates for
public purposes a part of the wealth created by individuals. Do you
agree to that?
Using a concrete illustration: I own in the city of Philadelphia
11-1/2
acres of land, for which I paid 32,500 dollars a few years ago. On
account of increase of population and industry in Philadelphia, that
land is now worth about 125,000 dollars. I have expended no labor or
money upon it. So I have done nothing to cause that increase of 92,500
dollars in a few years. My
fellow-citizens in Philadelphia created it,
and I believe it therefore belongs to them, not to me. I believe that
the man-made law which gives to me and other landlords values we have
not created is a violation of the divine law. I believe that
Justice
demands that these community-made values be taken by the community for
common purposes instead of taxing enterprise and industry. Do you
agree? ... read the whole letter
Weld Carter: An
Introduction to Henry George
The Ethics of Taxation
It was but a short step from the ethics of property to the ethics of taxation.
George's position here was that as labor and capital rightfully and unconditionally
own what they produce, no one can rightfully appropriate any of their earnings;
nor can the State. On the other hand, land value is always a socially created
value, never the result of action by the owner of the land. Therefore this
is a value that must be taken by society; otherwise, those who comprise
the social whole are deprived of what is rightfully theirs. Furthermore,
to charge the owner for this value, in the form of taxation, is only to
collect from him the precise value of the benefit he receives from society.
As to the justice of taxes on products,
George spoke of "...all taxes now levied on the products and processes
of industry -- which taxes, since they take from the earnings of labor,
we hold to be infringements of the right of property."
Of the
justice of taxes on land values, he said, "Adam Smith speaks of incomes
as 'enjoyed under the protection of the state'; and this is the ground
upon which the equal taxation of all species of property is commonly
insisted upon -- that it is equally protected by the state. The basis
of this idea is evidently that the enjoyment of property is made possible
by the state -- that there is a value created and maintained by the community,
which is justly called upon to meet community expenses. Now of what values
is this true? Only of the value of land. This is a value that does not
arise until a community is formed, and that, unlike other values, grows
with the growth of the community. It exists only as the community exists.
Scatter again the largest community, and land, now so valuable, would
have no value at all. With every increase of population the value of
land rises; with every decrease it falls. ...
"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, that value which is the creation of the community.
It is the application the common property to common uses." ...read the whole article
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