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Perverse incentives
Henry George: The Common Sense of Taxation (1881 article)
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)
Henry George: Justice the Object, Taxation the Means
Henry George: Why The Landowner Cannot Shift The Tax on Land Values (1887) A VERY common objection to the
proposition to concentrate all taxes on Land Values is that the
landowner would add the increased tax on the value of his land to the
rent that must be paid by his tenants. It is this notion that increased
Taxation of Land Values would fall upon the users, not upon the owners
of land, that more perhaps than anything else prevents men from seeing
the far-reaching and beneficent effects of doing away with the taxes
that now fall upon labor or the products of labor, and taking for
public use those values that attach to land by reason of the growth and
progress of society.
Henry George: The Crime of Poverty (1885
speech)That taxes levied upon Land Values, or, to use the politico-economic term, taxes levied upon rent, do not fall upon the user of land, and cannot be transferred by the landlord to the tenant is conceded by all economists of reputation. However much they may dispute as to other things, there is no dispute upon this point. Whatever flimsy reasons any of them may have deemed it expedient to give why the tax on rent should not be more resorted to, they all admit that the taxation of rent merely diminishes the profits of the landowner, cannot be shifted on the user of land, cannot add to prices, nor check production. ... The rent of land represents a return to ownership over and above the return which is sufficient to induce use — it is a premium paid for permission to use. To take, in taxation, a part or the whole of this premium in no way affects the incentive to use or the return to use; in no way diminishes the amount of land there is to use, or makes it more difficult to obtain it for use. Thus there is no way in which a tax upon rent or Land Values can be transferred to the user. Whatever the State may demand of this premium simply diminishes the net amount which ownership can get for the use of land, or the price it can demand as purchase money, which is, of course, rent or the expectation of rent, capitalized. ... read the whole article What is the reason for this overcrowding
of cities? There is no natural reason. Take New York, one half its area
is not built upon. Why, then,
must people crowd together as they do there? Simply because of private
ownership of land. There is plenty of room to build houses and plenty
of people who want to build houses, but before anybody can build a
house a blackmail price must be paid to some dog in the manger. It
costs in many cases more to get vacant ground upon which to build a
house than it does to build the house. And then what happens to the man
who pays this blackmail and builds a house? Down comes the tax-gatherer
and fines him for building the house.
Henry George: Thou Shalt Not Steal
(1887
speech)It is so all over the United States — the men who improve, the men who turn the prairie into farms and the desert into gardens, the men who beautify your cities, are taxed and fined for having done these things. Now, nothing is clearer than that the people of New York want more houses; and I think that even here in Burlington you could get along with more houses. Why, then, should you fine a man who builds one? Look all over this country — the bulk of the taxation rests upon the improver; the man who puts up a building, or establishes a factory, or cultivates a farm he is taxed for it; and not merely taxed for it, but I think in nine cases out of ten the land which he uses, the bare land, is taxed more than the adjoining lot or the adjoining 160 acres that some speculator is holding as a mere dog in the manger, not using it himself and not allowing anybody else to use it. ... read the whole speech Today the value of land in New
York city is over a hundred million annually. Who has created that
value? Is it because a few landowners are here that that land is worth
a hundred million a year? Is it not because the whole population of New
York is here? Is it not because this great city is the center of
exchanges for a large portion of the continent? Does not every child
that is born, every one that comes to settle in New York, does it not
add to the value of this land? Ought it not, therefore, get some
portion of the benefit? And is it not wronged when, instead of being
used for that purpose, certain favored individuals are allowed to
appropriate the fund of land values?
Henry George: The Single
Tax: What It Is and
Why We Urge It (1890)We might take this vast fund for common needs; we might with it make a city here such as the world has never seen before — a city spacious, clean, wholesome, beautiful — a city that should be full of parks; a city without tenement houses; and we could do this, not merely without imposing any tax upon production, without interfering with the just rights of property, but while at the same time securing far better than they are now the rights of property, and abolishing the taxes that now weigh on production. We have but to throw off our taxes upon things of human production; to cease to fine a person who puts up a house or makes anything that adds to the wealth of the community; to cease collecting taxes from people who bring goods from abroad or make goods at home; and — in substitution for all these taxes — to collect that enormous revenue due to the growth of the community for the benefit of the community that produced it. ... read the whole article From the Single Tax we
may expect these
advantages:
1. It would dispense with a whole army of tax gatherers and other officials which present taxes require, and place in the treasury a much larger portion of what is taken from people, while by making government simpler and cheaper, it would tend to make it purer. It would get rid of taxes which necessarily promote fraud, perjury, bribery, and corruption, which lead men into temptation, and which tax what the nation can least afford to spare -- honesty and conscience. Since land lies out-of-doors and cannot be removed, and its value is the most readily ascertained of all values, the tax to which we would resort can be collected with the minimum of cost and the least strain on public morals. 2. It would enormously increase the production of wealth-- (a) By the removal of the
burdens that now weigh upon industry and thrift. If we tax houses,
there will be fewer and poorer houses; if we tax machinery, there will
be less machinery; if we tax trade, there will be less trade; if we tax
capital, there will be less capital; if we tax savings, there will be
less savings. All the taxes therefore that we would abolish are those
that repress industry and lessen wealth. But if we tax land values,
there will be no less land. ... read the whole article
Henry George: The Wages of Labor That the value attaching to
land with social growth is
intended for social needs is shown by the final proof. For refusal to
take for public purposes the increasing values that attach to land with
social growth is to necessitate the getting of public revenues by taxes
that lessen production, distort distribution, and corrupt society.
It is to have some to take what justly belongs to all; it is to forego the only means by which it is possible in an advanced civilisation to combine the security of possession that is necessary to improvement with equality of natural opportunity – the most important of all natural rights. It is thus at the basis of all social life to set up an unjust inequality between man and man, compelling some to pay others for the privilege of living, for the chance of working, for the advantages of civilisation, for the gifts of God.... read the whole article Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a themed collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry George (with links to sources)
Charles B. Fillebrown: A Catechism of Natural Taxation, from Principles of Natural Taxation (1917) Fred Foldvary: Geo-Rent: A Plea to Public Economists ... Instead of recognizing the
virtues of tapping geo-rent, they only point
to a possible imperfection, such as that somebody who enjoys a local
park will own a tiny lot nearby and pay a land tax lower than his share
of the cost. This, say Cornes and Sandler (367), is a "perverse
incentive." But such free riding is rampant with income and sales
taxes, in which tax payments have hardly a gossamer relation to any
benefit. Tapping geo-rent is being judged in isolation by the standard
of perfect efficiency, rather than in comparison to other means of
taxing people to pay for collective goods. This “perverse incentive”
proposition is also made in an institutional vacuum. In practice, as
Hamilton (1975) points out, rules can mitigate the problem. City lots
tend to have a uniform size, either with zoning or with covenants.
Moreover, much of the utility of dwellers comes from complementarities,
from the lot and improvements (house and garden) as well as from a set
of civic services, so as analyzed by Ellickson (1971), heterogeneous
utilities are of little empirical significance.... Read
the entire article
Charles T. Root — Not a Single Tax! (1925)
Unused land is far more abundant
than we realize.
End the Public Subsidy of Land Speculation and Sprawl Counterproductive growth limitations and regulations should be abolished. A Strategy for Urban Renewal A Strategy for Economic Development Public Finance by Self-Financing ... If land holders can produce a higher return on investment by not using land for productive purposes but rather hold it for a higher price from those willing and able to pay the higher price in the future, there is a flaw in public policy. Public policy thereby gives speculative, nonproductive investment a higher return than productive investment. Sprawl is subsidized by taxes on production and distribution and the failure to recapture the benefits resulting from public improvements. If we choose to end this subsidy, we would reduce sprawl. One example that I know is that of a friend who bought land within the city but did nothing with it. I asked him why he put good money into an investment that had no visible return? He replied that, by holding the land for future sale or development, his long term return, in capital gains would exceed 18% annually. If he built a building on the site now, his long term return would only be 12% annually, including both net income plus capital gains. Why should he use his land now when it would be more profitable for him to not use it, but to hold it for a larger future gain? Most major cities have a
substantial amount of fully serviced but
unused or underused land sites. ...
What is needed is a continuously self-renewing city and a public policy that can work effectively. Buildings have a limited useful life. Continuous maintenance and frequent retrofitting sometimes extends this life span. Other buildings reach a point where they should be replaced. Some buildings sit vacant for decades even in the city's central business district. Valuable parcels of land are left undeveloped or paved over and used as surface parking lots. The result is a lower tax base and an eyesore. As urban buildings deteriorate, owners often don't renovate, remodel or make repairs because their property tax may rise. Thus the typical property tax creates suburban sprawl and urban decay. Shifting the property tax off buildings and onto land reverses these processes. Taxing land more than buildings usually reduces taxes for homeowners. ... Read the whole article Weld Carter: An Introduction to Henry George However, what is the effect on production of taxes levied on products and of taxes levied on the value of land? Of taxes levied on products, George said: "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 taxcollector 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 anyone 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." Turning to taxation levied on the value of land, George went on to say: For this simple device of placing all taxes on the value of land would be in effect putting up the land at auction to whosoever would pay the highest rent to the state. The demand for land fixes its value, and hence, if taxes were placed so as very nearly to consume that value, the man who wished to hold land without using it would have to pay very nearly what it would be worth to anyone who wanted to use it. And it must be remembered that this would apply, not merely to agricultural land, but to all land. Mineral land would be thrown open to use, just as agricultural land; and in the heart of a city no one could afford to keep land from its most profitable use, or on the outskirts to demand more for it than the use to which it could at the time be put would warrant. Everywhere that land had attained a value, taxation, instead of operating, as now, as a fine upon improvement, would operate to force improvement. A few pages before this he had told us that, "It is sufficiently evident that with regard to production, the tax upon the value of land is the best tax that can be imposed. Tax manufactures, and the effect is to check manufacturing; tax improvements, and the effect is to lessen improvement; tax commerce, and the effect is to prevent exchange; tax capital, and the effect is to drive it away. But the whole value of land may be taken in taxation, and the only effect will be to stimulate industry, to open new opportunities to capital, and to increase the production of wealth." In other words, according to George, taxation of products checks production, whereas taxation of land values stimulates production.... read the whole article Nic Tideman: Basic Tenets of the Incentive Taxation Philosophy Creating a More
Productive Economy
The ideas we espouse are attractive not only for their embodiment of principles of justice, but also because they can be expected to lead to a more productive economy. Economists agree that the imposition of taxes generally retards an economy. The reason for this is that with almost all taxes, it is possible for a tax payer to reduce total tax collections by doing less of whatever is taxed--work less, spend less, save less, etc. This means that taxes generate an incentive to be less productive. With fees for the use of government-assigned opportunities, on the other hand, the only thing that a person can do to reduce the amount of money that he or she pays is to use fewer of these opportunities. But then the opportunities can be used by someone else, who will pay the fees, and total public revenue will be unchanged. There is no possibility reducing total government revenue by being less productive. Thus these fees can be collected without dragging down the economy in the way that existing taxes do. Our ideas provide for the natural financing of any worthwhile public expenditure that makes a particular area more attractive or productive--parks, freeways, subways, sewer systems, etc. These public expenditures raise the rental value of land in their vicinity, and thereby raise the fees that can be collected for using the land. If the activity is worthwhile, the increase in rental values will be sufficient to pay for the activity. Another way in which our ideas promote a more efficient economy is by eliminating the opportunity grow rich by having government promote one's own interest at the expense of others. Such distortions of the political process can occur either by persuading a government agency to spend money in a way that raises the value of land that one owns while others foot the bill, or by persuading a government agency to prohibit others from doing what one is permitted to do. In both kinds of cases, the person who promotes his or her own interest has no reason to take account of the costs that are thereby imposed on others, and typically these costs to others are greater than the self-seeking benefits. This makes the economy less productive. Furthermore, the very possibility of growing rich by manipulating government action draws talented people into the effort to manipulate government decisions, when they could be employed doing something useful. ... Making Housing
Affordable
The implementation of our ideas
would have a dramatic effect in
making housing more affordable. The principal reason why housing
costs have risen so much is that the price of land has risen
enormously. Some increase in the price of access to land is a natural
accompaniment of an increasing population.
But the very great increases of recent years, which have made it nearly impossible for young families to afford houses of their own, have additional causes. The implementation of our ideas would bring down the price of access to land in three ways. First,
much land is held off the market by speculators who may wait
generations do decide to develop it. The introduction of a fee for
holding land, whether used or not, equal to the rental value of the
land, will induce speculators to either develop this land themselves or
turn it over to someone who will.
Second, an important cause of higher prices for access to land by those who wish to build low-cost housing is zoning restrictions. These restrictions are introduced by political factions that already have their houses and do not mind if housing becomes scarcer. It just raises the market value of their homes. But if a rise in land values were accompanied by rises in the fees that existing residents had to pay for the use of the land on which their houses sit, they would have an incentive to do what they could to make land plentiful rather than scarce, and zoning restrictions could be expected to diminish. Third, a person who wishes to own a house must borrow money to cover the price of buying the title to the land on which the house sits as well as the cost of the house itself. If the use of land required the payment of a fee equal to the rental value of land, so that the selling price of land titles became virtually zero, then the amount of money that a family would have to borrow to purchase a house would fall. ... Read the whole article Karl Williams: Land Value Taxation: The Overlooked But Vital Eco-Tax I. Historical overview
II. The problem of sprawl III. Affordable and efficient public transport IV. Agricultural benefits V. Financial concerns VI. Conclusion: A greater perspective Appendix: "Natural Capitalism" -- A Case Study in Blindness to Land Value Taxation LVT's foundation of detailed land use assessments will also help expose the true costs of subsidies for natural resources, which effectively amount to negative eco-taxes. Subsidies come in all shapes and sizes, often barely visible, and urgently need to be exposed and evaluated. Even some harmful subsidies which are labeled land taxes have nothing to do with genuine LVT. Banks gives the example of a Brazilian tax which was levied on unimproved land but was reduced by up to 90% on land used for crops or pasture. Forests were classified as unimproved land and were therefore taxed at the full rate, which induced settlers to chop down the trees to reduce their tax liability." ... The whole field of eco-taxes cannot be viewed in isolation of the fiscal imperatives to raise sufficient public finance, and here we see another of the virtues of LVT. If people were required to pay the rental value of most natural resources they used (as many, in fact, already do - to private owners) an adjustment in patterns of consumption would follow. The environmental goals would be achieved - at the cost of fiscal goals. However, under our present fiscal regime, governments are locked into a dependency on revenue from socially-harmful sources such as tobacco and gambling, and cannot raise the taxes on them to levels that would "kill the golden goose". Would such political realities change with eco-taxes? Because of the inherent problem with most eco-taxes that they reduce consumption of natural resources and therefore the tax base, they give rise to a financial inducement to hold the tax rate at a low enough rate so that a degree of pollution and wasteful consumption can continue. The effects of conventional eco-taxes sharply contrast with LVT which instead is a renewable and naturally-escalating source of revenue which arises when people are willing to pay for the use of land the value of which is enhanced by natural resources which sustain healthy lives. In other words, the success of a cleaner and more secure environment would feed through to the land market, which measures the attraction of the natural environment for living and working. Because people are willing to pay higher rents for such benefits LVT, instead of eroding revenue, expands the public's revenue base so that everybody enjoys the benefits of cleaning up and conserving the natural environment. Under the current system of land tenure, the financial benefits of a cleaner environment accrue to landowners. read the entire article Mason Gaffney: Property Tax: Biases and Reforms What happens when a state
radically
slashes its property tax?
Michiganders are saying they must wait and see, but there is no need
for that: California can show you 17 years of experience. To read
your future, just study our past. Here is what has happened since
California passed Proposition 13 in 1978. ...
It should give one pause. It is the expectable consequence of what the voters did. They rejected the concept of taxing inert wealth in favor of the alternative: taxing liquidity, cash flow, work, production and commerce. The predictable result has been to inhibit economic activity, and encourage holding wealth inert and stagnant. They turned property from a functional concept into a sacred one; from a commission to be enterprising, hire people, produce goods, and pay taxes into a welfare entitlement. The invisible, pervasive change is due to Proposition 13, which makes it possible to hold land at negligible tax cost. In 1945 land was taxed at 3 percent every year, building a fire under holdouts to turn their land to use. Today that same tax cost is well below 1 percent. Using Gwartney's Rule of Thumb (see below under #2, A, "Reassessing Land Frequently") it is about 1/8 of 1 percent: a rate of 1 percent applied to 1/8 of the true value. Landowners are only taxed now if
they use their land to hire
people and produce something useful. Then they are confronted by the
drag of our high business and employment and sales taxes,
necessitated by the fall of property taxes. A handful of
oligopolistic landowners control most of the market; small businesses
are squeezed out. This helps us segue from being at the cutting edge
of industrial progress to a third-world economy - from the NH model
to the AL model - with little relief in sight.
What was different then? We had high property tax rates, but they were more focused on land than now, less on new buildings. Another obvious difference was the lower burdens of sales tax, business tax, and income tax. California was more hospitable to Georgist thinking than perhaps any other state, shown by its long run of Georgist political action in the prior thirty years. Most people today are totally ignnorant of this subject. It has been deleted from our history books. Here is a brief review. ... ... In California, where we used to have good assessment, we now have bad assessment legally mandated by Prop. 13. So long as land is unsold, and/or not newly improved, its assessment rise is capped at 2 percent a year, while market prices soar. ... This is not the result of fractional assessment. In California we assess property at 100 percent when land changes ownership or there is a new building. Rather, this is the result of Prop. 13 and its prohibition of market reassessment until land sells. ... Does this help you understand why California landowners are now so slow to adapt to new demands? In 1945 the assessors were building fires under landowners, so they sought new strategies to meet new circumstances. Today there remains a weak incentive to improve to improve property: tax collectors generally cost them money when they make improvements. Sit still, lie low, hire no one, hang on, produce nothing, and your holding costs are negligible. ... In spite of extreme
underassessment, the assessed value of taxable
land in California is 40 percent of the total real estate value.
Imagine what it would be if assessed values were real values,
"marked-to-market,'' as the law used to stipulate. It would be over
70 percent, as in 1917. "Staying power" would go down; land use, jobs
and production would rise. ... Read the whole article
Urbanologists and the public need to be awakened to the central role
played by taxation. They need to see that loss of our historic land tax
has made speculation our top national sport -- a treacherous one at
that. As Hans Blumenthal wrote in Metropolis...and
Beyond (edited by fellow panelist on this program, architect
Paul Spreiregen):
There is no doubt that the present real property tax...contributes more
to depressing the standard of housing than all government housing
policies combined do to raise it. The current property tax may fairly
be called the upside-down tax. It taxes land values too lightly,
buildings much too heavily. It rewards bad land use, penalizes good
land use. Consider three identical homes and lots:
These all-too-familiar examples
condemn not the assessor but our present tax system. And the same
perverse property tax incentives apply to commercial properties. Is it
any wonder cities are torn apart? The wretched tax on buildings is only
the half of it. The low land tax is the other half. A speculator sees
that the annual increase in his or her land value is greater than the
tax bill. This signals the owner to do nothing, to sit back and collect
the values generated by productive neighbors and the community.
Speculation
feeds on itself. The more land held out of use, the tighter
the supply of available sites. This raises land prices further,
seducing more speculators into the land game, hastening the flight of
residents and businesses from central cities and even small towns. This
is far from the only cause of sprawl, but one of the most potent. It
cannot be stressed too much because it is one of the least recognized
causes. Read the whole article
Walter Rybeck and Ronald Pasquariello: Combating Modern-day Feudalism: Land as God’s Gift The immorality of landlordism. An increasingly small elite is taking possession of the nation’s land, enabling them to squeeze more and more from the landless. This is runaway landlordism, and current public policy fuels its progress. On the federal level, while the wages of ordinary workers find no shelter from the Internal Revenue Service, exemptions and special preferences for landowners whittle down their taxes or turn real estate losses into profits. The 1986 Tax Reform Act aims to reduce these privileges, but landowners’ past ingenuity in avoiding taxation warrants continued vigilance over tax structures. At the local level, the property tax rises for owners who build or improve their homes, rental apartments or commercial buildings, while it is reduced for those who let their land go fallow. Compare the following situation of the Joneses, the Smiths and the Greens.
Overtaxing good land use while under-taxing blight and empty lots invites slumlords and encourages land speculators. This type of landlordism -- or modern feudalism -- is an injustice. It allows individual landowners to siphon off the lion’s share of land values. ... Read the whole article Al Hartheimer: Affordable Housing and the Land Value Tax Perspective: a letter to Asheville, North Carolina Mason Gaffney: The Taxable Capacity of Land The question I am assigned is
whether the taxable
capacity of land without buildings is up to the job of financing
cities, counties, and schools. Will the revenue be enough? The answer
is "yes."
The universal state and local revenue problem today is whether we must cap tax rates to avoid driving business away. It is exemplified by Governor Pete Wilson of the suffering State of California. He keeps repeating we must make a hard choice: cut taxes and public services, or drive out business and jobs. (When a public figure gives you two choices you know they're both bad, and he wants one of them.) The unique, remarkable quality of a property tax based on land ex buildings is that you may raise the rate with no fear of driving away business, construction, people, jobs, or capital! You certainly will not drive away the land. However high the tax rate, not one square foot of it will put on a track shoe and hop out of town. The only bad thing to say about this tax's incentive effects is that it stimulates revitalization, and makes jobs. If some people think that is bad, maybe this attitude is the problem. ... Non-property taxes, you know, mostly have the character that they "shoot anything that moves," penalizing and discouraging economic activity. ... Most California land, on the other hand, is now taxed at well below the allowable max of 1%. Speculators may sit on it at little tax cost, however many highways and water and sewer lines run to and past it, however many policemen are guarding it from trespass. Little wonder that California enterprise, once so dynamic, flexible, and vital, is giving way to stasis and decay. We used to lead the nation in making jobs; now in losing them. We used to lead in school quality; now in jail population.
Please understand, the
proposed tax change will not
produce an untempered rise of land prices. Taxing land at a higher
rate balances and offsets the effect of exempting buildings. It tends
to lower land prices, just as untaxing buildings tends to raise
them.
On balance, however, the positive effects on land prices will
outweigh the negative ones, because of the constructive incentive
effects of changing the tax base to land. Read on.
"What, then, will have changed?", you might be asking. It's a fair question. What's changed is that your property tax is no longer biased against renewal, against replacement of old by new. Neither is it biased against full development of the economic capacity of each site. All the ground rents that are now aborted by deferral of renewal, and by underdevelopment, will be generated by new, full development. Land prices, your new tax base, will be pushed up just by the expectation of new buildings' being tax free. The mere expectation will immediately boost the value of land, your new city tax base, even before the new buildings go up. ... "How about corporate stock?", I hear. "Should we exempt corporate wealth from the property tax?" Actually, almost all jurisdictions already exempt stock and all other "intangible" property. Not to worry, however, you tax corporate assets. When you rank property owners by value of holdings, the top ten on most tax rolls are all corporations. None of their multi-national profit-shifting through layered ownership of foreign subs, and creative transfer pricing, can hide their taxable property on your assessor's maps. This makes sense anyway. Why should you think you can tax a corporation for its business in Malaysia? What concerns you is its property in your town. ... For example, in West Allis, Wisconsin, the southwest corner of the Allis-Chalmers plant occupies the northeast corner of the 100% location, the most valuable commercial site in town. That land, with the same retail potential as the other three corners, is assessed as raw industrial acreage, as though it were in the boonies, with no recognition of its high location value for retail/office use. To make a land tax work, the assessor must be reinstructed to value that land at its highest and best use rather than as ordinary raw acreage. Exempting buildings would create the necessary pressure, thus solving the very problem that otherwise might be taken as a point against it. As noted earlier, the U.S. Census of Governments gives us no data on this point. You, however, can find it easily enough: tax assessments are public records, and you know your own town. ... Another
attractive
feature of land taxation is its
interesting positive effect on the economic base of a city. It
strengthens it by its tendency to hit absentee owners harder than
resident owners. The land fraction in real estate is generally
highest in the CBD of any city, so that is a favorite place for
absentees to buy and hold. They like the steady income, and the
"trophy" quality. The surplus in real estate is what attracts outside
buyers, and land is what yields the surplus. About 2/3 of downtown
Los Angeles is owned by non-resident aliens, for example. In a more
workaday city, Milwaukee, the absentee owners consist of former
residents, or their heirs, who grew too rich to abide the harsh
winters. ... Read the whole article
Mason Gaffney: The Taxable Surplus of Land: Measuring, Guarding and Gathering It 1. Common Property in Land is
Compatible with the Market
Economy.
2. The Net Product of Land is the Taxable Surplus A. To socialize the taxable
surplus, land rent,
effectively, you must define
and identify it carefully, and structure your taxes to
home in on it.
B. Taxable surplus is also what you can tax without driving land into the wrong use. C. To tax rent we must be sure there is rent to tax, and we must adopt public policies to husband and maximize it, and avoid policies that lower and dissipate it. i.
Avoid "perverse subsidies."
ii. Avoid letting lessees of public land conceal their revenues. iii. Avoid letting lessees or taxpayers pad their costs to understate their net revenues. iv. Avoid dissipating rent by allowing open access to resources like fisheries, v. Avoid trying to distribute rents to consumers by capping prices below the market. D. Raising output by removing
tax bias
E. Maximizing public revenue. F. Sustaining the tax base 3. Taxing the Net Product of
Land Permits Untaxing Labor
4. Taxing the Net Product of Land Permits Untaxing Capital 5. Taxing the Net Product of Land Provides Ample Public Revenues: a Master Solution to Many Problems A. Public revenues will support
the ruble.
B. Your public credit will, of course, recover to AAA rating when lenders see that there is a strong flow of revenue to pay public debts. C. Never again need you bend to any "advice" or commands from alien lenders, nor endure patronizing, humiliating homilies from alien bankers, nor beg any foreign power for aid. D. If you again feel the need (as I hope you will not) to rebuild your military, you will of course require strong revenues. E. Strong national revenues are required to unite Russia, and keep it one nation. Summary
1. Common Property in Land is
Compatible with the Market
Economy.
You can enjoy the benefits of a market economy without
sacrificing your common rights to the land of Russia. There is no need
to make a
hard choice between the two. One of the great fallacies that western
economists
and bankers are foisting on you is that you have to give up one to
enjoy the other.
These counselors work through lending and granting agencies that seduce
you with
loans and grants to learn and accept their ideology, which they
variously call
Neo-Classical Economics, or "monetarism," or "liberalization." It is
glitter to distract you and pave the way for aliens to acquire and
control your
resources.
To keep land common while shifting to a market economy, you simply use the tax system. Taxation is the form that common property takes in a monetary, market-oriented economy. To tax is to socialize. It's then just a simple question of what you will socialize through taxation, and how; but in the answers lie success or failure. Not only can you have both common land and free markets, you can't have one without the other. They go together, like love and marriage. You need market prices to help identify land's taxable surplus, which is the net product of land after deducting the human costs of using it. At the same time, you must support government from land revenues to have a truly free market, because otherwise you will raise taxes from production, trade, and capital formation, interfering with free markets. If you learn this second point, and act on it, you will have a much freer market than any of the OECD nations that now presume to instruct you, and that are campaigning vigorously to make all nations in the world "harmonize" their taxes to conform with their own abysmal systems.
The very people who gave us the term laissez-faire -- the
slogan at the core of a
free market economy -- made communizing land rents a
central part of their
program. These were the French economistes of the 18th
Century, sometimes
called "Physiocrats," who were the tutors of Adam Smith,
and who inspired land
reforms throughout Europe. The best-known of them were
François Quesnay and
A.R. Jacques Turgot, who championed land taxation. They
accurately called it the
"co-proprietorship of land by the state."
Since their time we have learned to measure land values, and we have broadened the meaning of "land" to comprise all natural resources. Agrarians will be relieved, and may be surprised, that farmland ranks well down the list in terms of total market value. Thus, a land tax is not primarily a tax on farms; only the very best soils in the best locations yield much taxable surplus. ... Another natural resource (hence part of "land"), whose nature and value the mass of people are only slowly realizing, is the radio spectrum. In this age of communication its value is vaulting skywards even faster than the rockets launching the satellites that direct and relay signals through the spectrum. Each satellite requires a spectrum assignment, or it is nothing but space junk. One minor American entrepreneur, Craig McCaw, collected a bundle of spectrum rights for cell phones, and a few years ago sold them to AT&T for $12 billions. Then Mr. McCaw went partners with Bill Gates, perhaps the richest American, in a firm called Teledesic, to launch hundreds of satellites and amass radio spectrum rights around the entire world, including your part of the world, in the hope of dominating worldwide communications. Radio spectrum is a natural resource, and it belongs to the government, even in the capitalistic U.S.A. When Teledesic comes calling, under the auspices of our Vice President Al Gore, don't sell anything cheap! In fact, don't sell anything at all, but lease it for a limited time, so you may gain from future rises in value. And don't stint on the professional help you should hire to protect your interests: these lease contracts are complex, and are worth Billions if you play your cards right. Hydrocarbons are a third set of valuable resources. The values involved are gigantic. The recent merger of the Exxon and Mobil oil firms was valued at $260 billions, several times greater than the Russian annual budget. Why should private parties make off with all this natural value? Several nations, including some of your neighbors, support themselves entirely from these revenues. Norway pays for a lush welfare state from its oil revenues. Its reserves are so valuable that the mere change in their appraised value in several recent years has exceeded the entire GDP of Norway. And your oil reserves? If they match your production, they may be the largest in the world. World oil prices are down this year, as you know, but there is another side to this. The devaluation of the ruble has raised the value of your oil in Russian terms, because the oil earns "hard" currency abroad. Your government has recognized this by imposing a special tax on the resulting "windfall," but we will see below (Sections 2,C and 2,D) that there is a much more effective way to tax resource rents. The American state of Alaska holds down its other taxes by socializing part of its oil revenues, which otherwise would inure to a handful of the major stockholders of two corporations (ARCO and BP). Alaska not only holds down other taxes, it pays each resident - man, woman, and child - a social dividend of over $1,000 per year. Go thou and do likewise. Your expert, Dmitri Lvov from the Russian Academy of Sciences, a speaker at this meeting, has written that you could cover most of your national budget from your enormous production of oil and gas. Many third-world nations like Venezuela or Nigeria have fabulous mineral oil that they fail to exploit for their own people, letting sophisticated or ruthless foreign corporations, in tandem with weak or corrupt insiders, reap the gains. The question for Russia is whether to follow their bad example and become a poor resource-colony of the west, or whether to assert your own sovereignty over your own resources for the benefit of your own people. You need look no further than Norway for a model. Other subsoil resources have great value, too. Many nations, even backward ones, gain large parts of their national revenue from "hardrock" minerals. Bolivia, Gabon, Jamaica, Liberia, New Caledonia, Papua-New Guinea, Zaire, and Zambia have raised over 25% of their budgets this way in recent years; Chile, Thailand and Malaysia have taken lesser, but substantial amounts. Saskatchewan, a Canadian Province, raises large revenues from potash and uranium; Minnesota, an American state, from iron ore; and so on. Some other nations fail to raise much revenue from fabulous minerals from which others profit, like S. Africa with its gold and diamonds, West Virginia with its coal, or Missouri with its lead mines and reserves. Russia is a treasure-house of untapped mineral wealth that you can and should tax to alleviate the condition of the Russian people. In arid lands, water is life, and the most valuable natural resource is water. For example, in southern California we need water so much we import it from the Feather River 600 miles north of us, pump it uphill through the long San Joaquin Valley, then over the high Tehachapi Mountain range, and tunnel it through the San Bernardino Mountain Range, all at great cost. When it gets here, it supplements and competes with local water that nature provides freely in the Santa Ana, San Jacinto, and other rivers. That local water then has a value equal to the high cost of importing the remote northern water. That value in the local waters is a taxable surplus. However, we have not learned to take that surplus value into the local treasuries; we give the water away, and worse, we actually subsidize people to withdraw water by helping them pay for dams, canals, and pipelines so they can waste water without paying for it. Thus we turn a public asset into a public liability - an extreme form of folly that is called "dissipating rent." In this age of growing water scarcities it is past time we learned to husband and nurture rent, in order to socialize it by taxing the surplus. So should you, in comparable circumstances. Another value from water is to generate power. Again, California witlessly fails to socialize this value, but Canada, our northern neighbor, has shown the way. British Columbia, Newfoundland (the Labrador part), Quebec, and other provinces raise large revenues from charges on the use of falling water. Russia, with some of the world's largest hydro-electric projects, can do the same, or better. Fisheries are another source of value. In the past most nations have let this rent be "dissipated" by overfishing. In recent years the U.S. and Canada have in effect "privatized" fishing in their offshore waters by limiting the number of licenses and boats. This limitation was needed and desirable, overall. It created large rents, where previously there were little or none, by preventing overfishing and the great waste of duplicate, triplicate, and even quintuplicate fishing effort. That is a good example of husbanding and guarding rent, which is necessary before you can collect it. It was not necessary or desirable, however, to give away this net benefit to private parties. The government did not sell these licenses, but simply gave them away to owners of existing boats, and others with political influence. Each license now sells for something like a million dollars, creating a new class of instant millionaires and "parlor fishermen." This giveaway to the few, and takeaway from the many, created an instant class society where before there were equal access and equal opportunities. These privileges are worth so much that there are now documented cases off Alaska where the parlor fisherman takes 70% of the total catch. The captain, the crew, and the owner of the boat, who do the work and bear the dangers and discomforts and financial risks of fishing, must get by with the other 30%. Parlor fishermen are simply leeches; these rents should be socialized, relieving the workers from taxes. ... Avoid "perverse subsidies." These are subsidies that encourage harmful things like
Cape Breton Island, the northern tip of Nova Scotia,
contains the most
polluted area in Canada thanks to years of subsidies
to sustain its
uneconomic, obsolescent coal and steel industries
that employ just a few
people by fouling one of the most scenic jewels in
North America.
We have mentioned how we actually subsidize people to withdraw scarce water from our overdrawn rivers in the arid U.S.A. The so-called water "shortage" in the lower Colorado River is entirely an artifact of such misguided policies: every major agency drawing on the Colorado is actually subsidized to do so, when they should be paying for the privilege. If they paid, they would stop wasting water, and would enrich the Treasury, which could then abate taxes on work, trade, and saving. The U.S. Forest Service has turned a great national asset, our national forestlands, into a drain on the Treasury by subsidizing forest roads in subeconomic areas. It makes money selling good timber in good areas, but then spends $10 on roads into subeconomic areas to get $1 in revenues from sale of timber to private parties, destroying scenic values and watershed protection. Perverse subsidies like those are unspeakably foolish and wasteful. They "dissipate rent" so there is none left to tax. Read the entire article Karl Williams: Social Justice In Australia: INTRODUCTORY KIT Ordinary taxes stifle
honest endeavour. If you work, you get "fined"
through income tax. If you want to put other people to work by
purchasing their goods or services, there's another disincentive in the
form of the GST. Company taxes, bank taxes, payroll taxes, import taxes
- they all penalise production and thereby suppress employment.
But here's a very important point, rarely noticed by professional economists since the advent of so-called neoclassical economics. A tax on land values does not suppress activity on land, but does just the opposite! Land has unique characteristics that work thus: when landholders are assessed for LVT, they are financially compelled to put that land to its optimum use. For, whether landowners do put the land to its optimum use or not, they are still saddled with the same LVT. So landholders must use it productively or pass it on to those who will use it so. ... Read the entire article Mason Gaffney: Full Employment, Growth And Progress On A Small Planet: Relieving Poverty While Healing The Earth Renewal as
intensification. George observed land speculation in California
when it was young and raw. Today, an equally or more baneful aspect
of underusing land is found in older blighted slums, where underuse
takes the form of non-renewal. Thus, land of high capacity is
providing only minimal service and employment. Why do we not get
timely renewal? The most obvious reason is that the sites under old
buildings bear low tax valuations, because assessors mistake the
building for the site and overlook its reuse value, or opportunity
cost. Let the owner renew the site, and taxes shoot up: not only on
the new building, but often on the site as well. Result: nonrenewal.
So capital that should go to renew these sites of high potential
migrates outward instead, to where tax rates are lower and subsidies
are higher, wasting capital in duplicating the infrastructure, and of
course also wasting land.
Many Georgists fail to see that a major part of the problem is underassessment of the land. Land is underassessed when tax-valuers lapse into using the “building-first, land-residual” method of separating land from building values. This results in land valuations so absurdly low that one observes, in many cities and neighborhoods, most of the joint value of land/building being allocated to the building in the very year that the owner chooses to demolish the building, i.e. when the building really no longer has any value at all. Then the assessor raises the land valuation under the new, or replacement building – making the land tax in effect an additional tax on the new building. The correct method is the “land-first, building-residual” method: value the land as though vacant, and give the old building the excess, if any, of the joint value over the land value. Then the land value remains fixed when a new building arises, and the land tax serves, as it should, as a stimulus to rebuilding (Gaffney, 2001). Weight of excess burden of most taxes. Many modern Georgists tend, oddly, to trivialize the power of tax bias to keep land from its best use. They have seized upon a conventional micro-economic device, now generally called the “Harberger Triangle,” in recognition of one Chicago-School expositor. It is based on supply and demand curves, with no reference to land markets at all. Perhaps these Georgists are hoping this will help them get through to ordinary economists; but this device has the effect, by accident or design, of minimizing estimates of the economic losses, or “excess burdens,” that bad taxes cause. The power of tax bias to keep land from its best use is starkly obvious by analyzing the economics of using marginal land. Any tax at all will sterilize such land completely, unless the taxes are so universal that the mobile factors, labor and capital, cannot escape them by moving. “Who cares about marginal land?”, some may say. The distorting power of taxes has been demonstrated inadvertently by Chicago-School economists Gale Johnson and Stephen Cheung. They have shown that sharecropping, as a private arrangement, creates a bias on the part of tenants to substitute land for labor and equipment, almost without limit. This is because extra land costs the cropper nothing, unless it adds to output, so the cropper’s interest is to substitute land, which is free to him, for his labor and capital, which he pays for. Taxes based on gross output affect all landowners the same way the cropshare lease affects croppers. They make every landowner a cropper of the state, giving every landowner a motive to substitute land for labor and capital indefinitely. Private landlords overcome this by limiting how much land to allow each cropper; but the state has no such offsetting control. Thus, each landowner’s motive to acquire excess land runs wild. In conjunction, consider that taxes (other than property taxes) are based solely on cash flows, thus entirely exempting all the imputed income from and imputed consumption of the service flows of land – the “amenities.” Government tells the landed gentry, “Hold land as a totem, an heirloom, a private hunting and riding park, a dream of future retirement, a speculation, a hedge against inflation, an entry into high society, a beach access, a protection against future neighbors, a shooting range, a golf course, a ski hideaway, a drinking club, a private landing strip … anything private and narcissistic or exclusionary or snobbish … and your pleasures are tax exempt. Produce goods and services for others, though, and we will treat you like a sharecropper – and tax your employees, too.” Now hark back to George’s second force holding labor off the better lands (Item A,3,b): holding land as a totem. He noted that tendency in an age before we even had an income tax, or state sales taxes. Our present tax system magnifies the tendency beyond all reason, resulting in the relegation of much of our best land to the indulgences of the landed gentry, old and new.... read the whole article
Jeff Smith and Kris Nelson: Giving Life to the Property Tax Shift (PTS) John Muir is right. "Tug on any
one
thing and find it connected to everything else in the universe." Tug on
the property tax and find it connected to urban slums, farmland loss,
political favoritism, and unearned equity with disrupted neighborhood
tenure. Echoing Thoreau, the more familiar reforms have failed to
address this many-headed hydra at its root. To think that the root
could be chopped by a mere shift in the property tax base -- from
buildings to land -- must seem like the epitome of unfounded faith. Yet
the evidence shows that state and local tax activists do have a
powerful, if subtle, tool at their disposal. The "stick" spurring
efficient use of land is a higher tax rate upon land, up to even the
site's full annual value. The "carrot" rewarding efficient use of land
is a lower or zero tax rate upon improvements. ...
Taxing built-value penalizes construction and maintenance of buildings. This deadweight loss on the local economy constrains housing supply and raises land values, driving speculation. Fewer people can then own parcels for homes and businesses, and debt levels increase. ... A big problem needs a big solution which in turn needs a matching shift of our prevailing paradigm. Geonomics -- advocating that we share the social value of sites and natural resources and untax earnings -- does just that. Read the whole article Herbert J. G. Bab: Property Tax -- Cause of Unemployment (circa 1964) Property taxes shape the pattern
of our cities.
Relatively low taxes on
land and high taxes on improvements will
discourage the owners of vacant lots or underdeveloped land, such as
that used for parking lots, gas stations, hamburger stands, etc., from
improving their land. It will encourage them to keep the land out of
use and to sell later at a profit. This will create an artificial
shortage of land, which in turn will lead to urban blight and
irregular, leapfrog city growth. Read
the whole article
Robert V. Andelson The Earth is the Lord's On another occasion he [Henry
George] wrote:
The tax on 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 (George, P&P, 421). And yet, my friends, in the topsy-turvy world in which we live, this provided fund goes mainly into the pockets of speculators and monopolists, while the body politic meets its needs by extorting from individual producers the fruits of honest toil. If ever there were any doubt about the perversity of human nature, our present system of taxation is the proof! Everywhere about us, we see the ironic spectacle of the community penalizing the individual for his industry and initiative, and taking away from him a share of that which he produces, yet at the same time lavishing upon the non-producer undeserved windfalls which it — the community — produces. And, as Winston Churchill put it, the unearned increment, the socially-produced value of the land, is reaped by the speculator in exact proportion, not to the service, but to the disservice, done. "The greater the injury to society, the greater the reward." We hear constantly a vast clamor
against the abuse of welfare. I
do not for a moment condone such abuse. Yet I ask you, who is the
biggest swiller at the public trough?
Talk about free enterprise! This
isn't free enterprise; this is a
free ride.
Henry George: Justice
the Object -- Taxation the Means (1890)But if that same person were to improve his site — if he were to use it to beautify his neighborhood, or to provide goods for consumers and jobs for workers, or housing for his fellow townsmen — instead of being treated as the public benefactor he had become, he would be fined as if he were a criminal, in the form of heavier taxes. What kind of justice is this, I ask you? How does it comport with the Divine Plan, or with the notion of human rights? Read the whole article ... if we want more wealth — if
we call that country prosperous which is increasing in wealth — is it
not a piece of stupidity that we should tax men for producing wealth?
Yet that is what we are doing today. ...
Here we say we want more manufacturers. The American people submit to enormous taxes for the purpose of building up factories; yet when a man builds a factory, what do we do? Why, we come down and tax him for it. We certainly want more houses. There are a few people who have bigger houses than any one reasonable family can occupy; but the great mass of the American people are underhoused. There, in the city of New York, the plight to which all American cities are tending, you will find that 65 % of the population are living two families or more to the single floor. Yet let a man put a house in any part of the United States, and down comes the tax-gatherer to demand a fine for having put up a house. We say that industry is a good thing, and that thrift is a good thing; and there are some people who say that if a man be industrious, and if a man he thrifty, he can easily accumulate wealth. Whether that be true or not, industry is certainly a good thing, and thrift is certainly a good thing. But what do we do if a man be industrious? If he produces wealth enough, and by thrift accumulates wealth at all, down comes the tax-gatherer to demand a part of it. We say that that is stupid; that we ought not by our taxes to repress the production of wealth; that when a farmer reclaims a strip of the desert and turns it into an orchard and a vineyard, or on the prairie produces crops and feeds fine cattle, that, so far from being taxed and fined for having done these things, we ought to be glad that he has done it; that we ought to welcome all energy; that no man can Produce wealth for himself without augmenting the general stock, without making the whole country richer. We impose some taxes for the purpose of getting rid of things, for the purpose of having fewer of the things that we tax. In most of our counties and States when dogs become too numerous, there is imposed a dog tax to get rid of dogs. Well, we impose a dog tax to get rid of dogs, and why should we impose a house tax unless we want to get rid of houses? Why should we impose a farm tax unless we want fewer farms? Why should we tax any man for having exerted industry or energy in the production of wealth? Tax houses and there will certainly be fewer houses. If you go east to the city of Brooklyn, you may see that demonstrated to the eye. What first surprised me in the city of churches was to see long rows of buildings, of brown-stone houses, two stories in front and three stories behind; or three stories in front and four stories behind; and I thought for a moment what foolish idea ever entered the brains of those men, to have left out half an upper story in that way? I found out by inquiring that it was all on account of tax. In the city of Brooklyn, the assessor is only supposed to look in front, and so by making the house in that way, you can get a three-story building behind with only a two-story front and a two-story tax. So in England, in the old houses, there you may see the result of the window tax. The window tax is in force in France today, and in France there are two hundred thousand houses, according to the census, that have no window at all — in order to escape the tax. So if you tax ships there will be fewer ships. What old San Franciscan cannot remember the day when in this harbour might be seen the graceful forms and lofty spars of so many American ships, the fleetest and best in the world? I well remember the day that no American who crossed to Europe thought of crossing on any other than an American ship. Today, if you wish to cross the Atlantic, you must cross on a British steamer, unless you choose to cross on a German or French steamer. On the high seas of the world the American ship is becoming almost as rare as a Chinese junk. Why? Simply because we have taxed our ships out of existence. There is the proof. Tax buildings, and you
will
have fewer or poorer buildings; tax
farms, and you will have fewer farms and more wilderness; tax ships,
there will be fewer and poorer ships; and tax capital, and there will
he less capital; but you may tax land values all you please and there
will not he a square inch the less land. Tax land values all you
please up to the point of taking the full annual value — up to the
point of making mere ownership in land utterly unprofitable, so that
no one will want merely to own land — what will be the result?
Simply that land will be the easier had by the user. Simply that the
land will become valueless to the mere speculator — to the dog in
the manger, who wants merely to hold and not to use; to the
forestaller, who wants merely to reap where others have sown, to
gather to himself the products of labour, without doing labour. Tax
land values, and you leave to production its full rewards, and you
open to producers natural opportunities. Read the entire article
Dan Sullivan: Are you a Real Libertarian, or a ROYAL Libertarian? Much of the government spending
to which libertarians strenuously
object is made necessary by its taxing productivity instead of land
values.
The property tax falls mostly on improvements, so less housing is built, giving the government an excuse to build public housing. Profits are taxed, leading to less employment and giving government an excuse to spend money on economic stimulus projects. Family income is taxed to the point that they have difficulty buying a house or sending their children to college, so government institutes subsidized mortgages and student loans. Even the indirect effects are substantial. Land speculations gone sour chew up inner cities, so poor people turn to crime (if drug selling and prostitution be crimes) and the government gets an excuse to beef up the police state. Politically connected real estate interests see that they can buy up land in the boondocks for a pittance and then get other taxpayers to build them a superhighway, increasing the value of their holdings by orders of magnitude. With land value tax they would have ultimately paid for their own highway or more likely would not have had it built in the first place. Even welfare increases do not stay in the hands of welfare recipients, but are quickly greeted by higher rent demands from ghetto landlords. (The War on Poverty did little to end poverty, but it did a lot to enrich absentee owners of poor communities.) All goes back to the land, and the land owner is enabled to absorb to himself a share of almost every public and every private benefit, however important or however pitiful those benefits may be. --Winston Churchill ... Read the whole piece Nic Tideman: The Case for Site Value Rating
Bill Batt: Who Says Cities are Poor? They Just Don't Know How to Tax Their Wealth!
Frank Stilwell and Kirrily Jordan: The Political Economy of Land: Putting Henry George in His Place
Bill Batt: Comment on Parts of the NYS Legislative Tax Study Commission's 1985 study “Who Pays New York Taxes?”
Bill Batt: The Nexus of Transportation, Economic Rent, and Land Use ...
The failure to collect site rent leads to a distortion in land use
configurations. If patterns unfolded along the lines of both social
preference and economic efficiency, high value landsites would tend to
have high value buildings, and low value landsites would tend to be
vacant or have very modest buildings. Consistent with this, urban
centers sites would tend to have office and commercial use, surrounded
by lower-value residential land uses, and still further out would be
farms and forests. The ratio of building to land value, land to total
value (or for that matter any other ratio between buildings, land, and
total values) would be relatively constant throughout a region.
Instead, the ratio of land value to total value consistently tends to
reveal a patchwork of random development. This inefficient settlement
of land sites is what we know as sprawl. Thomas Flavin, writing in The Iconoclast, 1897 Now, it is quite true that all taxes of whatever nature are paid out of
the products of labor. But must they be for that reason a tax on labor
products. Let us see.
I suppose you won't deny that a unit of labor applies to different kinds of land will give very different results. Suppose that a unit of labor produces on A's land 4, on B's 3, on C's 2 and on D's 1. A's land is the most, and D's is the least, productive land in use in the community to which they belong. B's and C's represent intermediate grades. Suppose each occupies the best land that was open to him when he entered into possession. Now, B, and C, and D have just as good a right to the use of the best land as A had. Manifestly then, if this be the whole story, there cannot be equality of opportunity where a unit of labor produces such different results, all other things being equal except the land. How is this equality to be secured? There is but one possible way. Each
must surrender for the common use of all, himself included, whatever advantages
accrues to him from the possession of land superior to that which falls
to the lot of him who occupies the poorest.
In the case stated, what the unit of labor produces for D, is what it should produce for A, B and C, if these are not to have an advantage of natural opportunity over D. Hence equity is secured when A pays 3, D, 2 and C, 1 into a common fund
for the common use of all--to be expended, say in digging a well, making
a road or bridge, building a school, or other public utility.
Is it not manifest that here the tax which A, B and C pay into a common fund, and from which D is exempt, is not a tax on their labor products (though paid out of them) but a tax on the superior advantage which they enjoy over D, and to which D has just as good a right as any of them. The result of this arrangement is that each takes up as much of the best land open to him as he can put to gainful use, and what he cannot so use he leaves open for the next. Moreover, he is at no disadvantage with the rest who have come in ahead of him, for they provide for him, in proportion to their respective advantages, those public utilities which invariably arise wherever men live in communities. Of course he will in turn hold to those who come later the same relation that those who came earlier held to him. Suppose now that taxes had been levied on labor products instead of land; all that any land-holder would have to do to avoid the tax is to produce little or nothing. He could just squat on his land, neither using it himself nor letting others use it, but he would not stop at this, for he would grab to the last acre all that he could possibly get hold of. Each of the others would do the same in turn, with the sure result that by and by, E, F and G would find no land left for them on which they might make a living. So they would have to hire their labor to those who had already monopolized the land, or else buy or rent a piece of land from them. Behold now the devil of landlordism getting his hoof on God's handiwork! Exit justice, freedom, social peace and plenty. Enter robbery, slavery, social discontent, consuming grief, riotous but unearned wealth, degrading pauperism, crime breeding, want, the beggar's whine, and the tyrant's iron heel. And how did it all come about? By the simple expedient of taxing labor products in order that precious landlordism might laugh and grow fat on the bovine stupidity of the community that contributes its own land values toward its own enslavement! And yet men vacuously ask, "What difference does it make?" O tempora! O mores! To be as plain as is necessary, it makes this four-fold difference.
This last is a difference that cries to heaven for vengeance, and if it does not always cry in vain, will W. C. Brann be able to draw his robe close around him and with a good conscience exclaim, "It's none of my fault; I am not my brother's keeper."
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