When Henry George was writing and speaking about Land Value Taxation, the U.S. was in a period when it had no federal income tax (though there had been one within recent memory, to pay off the costs of the Civil War), but there were tariffs on trade, taxes on sales, taxes on buildings, and other taxes which George recognized as both unjust and destructive to the economy. George sought the underlying cause of the extremes of wealth and poverty he saw in his travels, and came to recognize that it was to be found in our failure to tax economic rent — land rent — except very lightly. He called for the removal of taxes he saw as unjust and destructive, and their replacement with just one tax, on land rent.

Today, with the wide range of things we ask government to do — including many social welfare functions whose goal is to care for those who are impoverished by our existing arrangements — the Single Tax might not alone be sufficient to supply all the revenue needs; we'd have to supplement it with some of the taxes George regarded as unjust and destructive.  But shouldn't we tax fully, first, what it is just to tax, before we begin taxing activities that it is both undesirable and unjust to tax?

A reasonable argument could be made that over time, the need for many of those social welfare programs would be reduced, as the perverse incentives created by the destructive and unjust taxes we rely on now are replaced by the logical incentives that collecting land rent would create. So while initially, we might still need to supplement taxes on land rent with taxes on some other kinds of income, or on sales, or on buildings, we expect that we will be able to reduce them and eventually drop them.

When you read the various proposals that Americans make to the federal tax reform panel, consider them relative to the merits of Land Value Taxation — Henry George's "Single Tax" — even if today it would not be single, just primary.

Henry George: The Condition of Labor — An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII in response to Rerum Novarum (1891)

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? ...

I have said enough to show your Holiness the injustice into which you fall in classing us, who in seeking virtually to abolish private property in land seek more fully to secure the true rights of property, with those whom you speak of as socialists, who wish to make all property common. But you also do injustice to the socialists.

There are many, it is true, who feeling bitterly the monstrous wrongs of the present distribution of wealth are animated only by a blind hatred of the rich and a fierce desire to destroy existing social adjustments. This class is indeed only less dangerous than those who proclaim that no social improvement is needed or is possible. But it is not fair to confound with them those who, however mistakenly, propose definite schemes of remedy.

The socialists, as I understand them, and as the term has come to apply to anything like a definite theory and not to be vaguely and improperly used to include all who desire social improvement, do not, as you imply, seek the abolition of all private property. Those who do this are properly called communists. What the socialists seek is the state assumption of capital (in which they vaguely and erroneously include land), or more properly speaking, of large capitals, and state management and direction of at least the larger operations of industry. In this way they hope to abolish interest, which they regard as a wrong and an evil; to do away with the gains of exchangers, speculators, contractors and middlemen, which they regard as waste; to do away with the wage system and secure general cooperation; and to prevent competition, which they deem the fundamental cause of the impoverishment of labor. The more moderate of them, without going so far, go in the same direction, and seek some remedy or palliation of the worst forms of poverty by government regulation. The essential character of socialism is that it looks to the extension of the functions of the state for the remedy of social evils; that it would substitute regulation and direction for competition; and intelligent control by organized society for the free play of individual desire and effort.

Though not usually classed as socialists, both the trades-unionists and the protectionists have the same essential character. ...

Differing from all these are those for whom I would speak. Believing that the rights of true property are sacred, we would regard forcible communism as robbery that would bring destruction. But we would not be disposed to deny that voluntary communism might be the highest possible state of which men can conceive. Nor do we say that it cannot be possible for mankind to attain it, since among the early Christians and among the religious orders of the Catholic Church we have examples of communistic societies on a small scale. St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Thomas of Aquin and Fra Angelico, the illustrious orders of the Carmelites and Franciscans, the Jesuits, whose heroism carried the cross among the most savage tribes of American forests, the societies that wherever your communion is known have deemed no work of mercy too dangerous or too repellent — were or are communists. Knowing these things we cannot take it on ourselves to say that a social condition may not be possible in which an all-embracing love shall have taken the place of all other motives. But we see that communism is only possible where there exists a general and intense religious faith, and we see that such a state can be reached only through a state of justice. For before a man can be a saint he must first be an honest man.

With both anarchists and socialists, we, who for want of a better term have come to call ourselves single-tax men, fundamentally differ. We regard them as erring in opposite directions — the one in ignoring the social nature of man, the other in ignoring his individual nature. While we see that man is primarily an individual, and that nothing but evil has come or can come from the interference by the state with things that belong to individual action, we also see that he is a social being, or, as Aristotle called him, a political animal, and that the state is requisite to social advance, having an indispensable place in the natural order. Looking on the bodily organism as the analogue of the social organism, and on the proper functions of the state as akin to those that in the human organism are discharged by the conscious intelligence, while the play of individual impulse and interest performs functions akin to those discharged in the bodily organism by the unconscious instincts and involuntary motions, the anarchists seem to us like men who would try to get along without heads and the socialists like men who would try to rule the wonderfully complex and delicate internal relations of their frames by conscious will.

The philosophical anarchists of whom I speak are few in number, and of little practical importance. It is with socialism in its various phases that we have to do battle.

With the socialists we have some points of agreement, for we recognize fully the social nature of man and believe that all monopolies should be held and governed by the state. In these, and in directions where the general health, knowledge, comfort and convenience might be improved, we, too, would extend the functions of the state.

But it seems to us the vice of socialism in all its degrees is its want of radicalism, of going to the root. It takes its theories from those who have sought to justify the impoverishment of the masses, and its advocates generally teach the preposterous and degrading doctrine that slavery was the first condition of labor. It assumes that the tendency of wages to a minimum is the natural law, and seeks to abolish wages; it assumes that the natural result of competition is to grind down workers, and seeks to abolish competition by restrictions, prohibitions and extensions of governing power. Thus mistaking effects for causes, and childishly blaming the stone for hitting it, it wastes strength in striving for remedies that when not worse are futile. Associated though it is in many places with democratic aspiration, yet its essence is the same delusion to which the children of Israel yielded when against the protest of their prophet they insisted on a king; the delusion that has everywhere corrupted democracies and enthroned tyrants — that power over the people can be used for the benefit of the people; that there may be devised machinery that through human agencies will secure for the management of individual affairs more wisdom and more virtue than the people themselves possess.

This superficiality and this tendency may be seen in all the phases of socialism. ...

As for thoroughgoing socialism, which is the more to be honored as having the courage of its convictions, it would carry these vices to full expression. Jumping to conclusions without effort to discover causes, it fails to see that oppression does not come from the nature of capital, but from the wrong that robs labor of capital by divorcing it from land, and that creates a fictitious capital that is really capitalized monopoly. It fails to see that it would be impossible for capital to oppress labor were labor free to the natural material of production; that the wage system in itself springs from mutual convenience, being a form of cooperation in which one of the parties prefers a certain to a contingent result; and that what it calls the “iron law of wages” is not the natural law of wages, but only the law of wages in that unnatural condition in which men are made helpless by being deprived of the materials for life and work. It fails to see that what it mistakes for the evils of competition are really the evils of restricted competition — are due to a one-sided competition to which men are forced when deprived of land. While its methods, the organization of men into industrial armies, the direction and control of all production and exchange by governmental or semi-governmental bureaus, would, if carried to full expression, mean Egyptian despotism.

We differ from the socialists in our diagnosis of the evil and we differ from them as to remedies. We have no fear of capital, regarding it as the natural handmaiden of labor; we look on interest in itself as natural and just; we would set no limit to accumulation, nor impose on the rich any burden that is not equally placed on the poor; we see no evil in competition, but deem unrestricted competition to be as necessary to the health of the industrial and social organism as the free circulation of the blood is to the health of the bodily organism — to be the agency whereby the fullest cooperation is to be secured. We would simply take for the community what belongs to the community, the value that attaches to land by the growth of the community; leave sacredly to the individual all that belongs to the individual; and, treating necessary monopolies as functions of the state, abolish all restrictions and prohibitions save those required for public health, safety, morals and convenience.

But the fundamental difference — the difference I ask your Holiness specially to note, is in this: socialism in all its phases looks on the evils of our civilization as springing from the inadequacy or inharmony of natural relations, which must be artificially organized or improved. In its idea there devolves on the state the necessity of intelligently organizing the industrial relations of men; the construction, as it were, of a great machine whose complicated parts shall properly work together under the direction of human intelligence. This is the reason why socialism tends toward atheism. Failing to see the order and symmetry of natural law, it fails to recognize God.

On the other hand, we who call ourselves single-tax men (a name which expresses merely our practical propositions) see in the social and industrial relations of men not a machine which requires construction, but an organism which needs only to be suffered to grow. We see in the natural social and industrial laws such harmony as we see in the adjustments of the human body, and that as far transcends the power of man’s intelligence to order and direct as it is beyond man’s intelligence to order and direct the vital movements of his frame. We see in these social and industrial laws so close a relation to the moral law as must spring from the same Authorship, and that proves the moral law to be the sure guide of man where his intelligence would wander and go astray. Thus, to us, all that is needed to remedy the evils of our time is to do justice and give freedom. This is the reason why our beliefs tend toward, nay are indeed the only beliefs consistent with a firm and reverent faith in God, and with the recognition of his law as the supreme law which men must follow if they would secure prosperity and avoid destruction. This is the reason why to us political economy only serves to show the depth of wisdom in the simple truths which common people heard gladly from the lips of Him of whom it was said with wonder, “Is not this the Carpenter of Nazareth?”

And it is because that in what we propose — the securing to all men of equal natural opportunities for the exercise of their powers and the removal of all legal restriction on the legitimate exercise of those powers — we see the conformation of human law to the moral law, that we hold with confidence that this is not merely the sufficient remedy for all the evils you so strikingly portray, but that it is the only possible remedy.

Nor is there any other. The organization of man is such, his relations to the world in which he is placed are such — that is to say, the immutable laws of God are such, that it is beyond the power of human ingenuity to devise any way by which the evils born of the injustice that robs men of their birthright can be removed otherwise than by doing justice, by opening to all the bounty that God has provided for all. ... read the whole letter

Henry George: The Wages of Labor

This we propose, not as a cunning device of human ingenuity, but as a conforming of human regulations to the will of God! ...  read the whole article

That is what we propose by what we call the single tax. We propose to abolish all taxes for revenue. In place of all the taxes that are now levied, to impose one single tax, and that a tax upon the value of land. Mark me, upon the value of land alone — not upon the value of improvements, not upon the value of what the exercise of labor has done to make land valuable, that belongs to the individual; but upon the value of the land itself, irrespective of the improvements, so that an acre of land that has not been improved will pay as much tax as an acre of like land that has been improved. So that in a town a house site on which there is no building shall be called upon to pay just as much tax as a house site on which there is a house.  Read the whole speech

Henry George: The Great Debate: Single Tax vs Social Democracy  (1889)

Now if that were done, if the land were let out, those using it paying its premium value to the community, it would amount to precisely the same thing if, instead of calling the payment rent, we called it taxes. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” In an old country, however, there is a very great advantage in calling the rent a tax. In an old country there is a very great advantage in moving on that line. People are used to the payment of taxes. They are not used to the formal ownership of land by the community; and to the letting of it out in that way. Therefore, as society is now constituted, and in our communities as they now exist, we propose to move towards our ideal along the line of taxation. (Hear, hear.)

If we were to take the rent of land for the community, one of the first and best uses which would be commended to us would be that of abolishing of taxes that bear in any way upon production, or in any way hamper industry, or in any way increase the price of those things that people wish to use and can use without injury to others. Therefore, as bringing in the idea of abolishing these taxes we call our measure the Single Tax. (Hear, hear.)

We would abolish all taxation that falls on industry, and raise public revenue by this means, and move to our end, the taking of the full rental value of land for the use of the community, in this way. This name, Single Tax, expresses our method; not our ideal. What we are really is liberty men; what we believe in is perfect freedom: What we wish to do is to give each individual in the community the liberty to exert his powers in any way he pleases, bounded only by the equal liberty of others. (Applause.)

Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a themed collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry George (with links to sources)

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. Nature laughs at a miser. He is like the squirrel who buries his nuts and refrains from digging them up again. Lo! they sprout and grow into trees. In fine linen, steeped in costly spices, the mummy is laid away. Thousands and thousands of years thereafter, the Bedouin cooks his food by a fire of its encasings, it generates the steam by which the traveler is whirled on his way, or it passes into far-off lands to gratify the curiosity of another race. The bee fills the hollow tree with honey, and along comes the bear or the man. — Progress & Poverty — Book IX, Chapter 1, Effects of the Remedy: Of the Effect upon the Production of Wealth

CONSIDER the effect of such a change upon the labor market. Competition would no longer be one-sided, as now. Instead of laborers competing with each other for employment, and in their competition cutting down wages to the point of bare subsistence, employers would everywhere be competing for laborers, and wages would rise to the fair earnings of labor. For into the labor market would have entered the greatest of all competitors for the employment of labor, a competitor whose demand cannot be satisfied until want is satisfied — the demand of labor itself. The employers of labor would not have merely to bid against other employers, all feeling the stimulus of greater trade and increased profits, but against the ability of laborers to become their own employers upon the natural opportunities freely opened to them by the tax which prevented monopolization. — Progress & Poverty — Book IX, Chapter 1, Effects of the Remedy: Of the Effect upon the Production of Wealth

... go to "Gems from George"

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

I. THE SINGLE TAX DEFINED

The practical form in which Henry George puts the idea of appropriating economic rent to common use is "To abolish all taxation save that upon land values."

This is now generally known as "The Single Tax."2 Under its operation all classes of workers, whether manufacturers, merchants, bankers, professional men, clerks, mechanics, farmers, farm-hands, or other working classes, would, as such, be wholly exempt. It is only as men own land that they would be taxed, the tax of each being in proportion, not to the area, but to value of his land. And no one would be compelled to pay a higher tax than others if his land were improved or used while theirs was not, nor if his were better improved or better used than theirs.3 The value of its improvements would not be considered in estimating the value of a holding; site value alone would govern.4 If a site rose in the market the tax would proportionately increase; if that fell, the tax would proportionately diminish.

2. In "Progress and Poverty," book viii, ch. iv, Henry George speaks of "the effect of substituting for the manifold taxes now imposed, a single tax on the value of land"; but the term did not become a distinctive name until 1888.

The first general movement along the lines of "Progress and Poverty" began New York City election of 1886, when Henry George polled 68,110 votes as an independent candidate for mayor, and was defeated by the Democratic candidate, Abram S. Hewitt, by a plurality of only 22,442, the Republican, Theodore Roosevelt, polling but 60,435. Following that election the United Labor Party was formed, the Syracuse Convention in August, 1887, by the exclusion of the Socialists, came to present the central idea of "Progress and Poverty" as distinguished from the Socialistic propaganda which until then was identified with it. Coincident with the organization of the United Labor Party the Anti-Poverty Society was formed; and the two bodies, one representing the political and the other the religious phase of the idea, worked together until President Cleveland's tariff message of 1887 appeared. In this message Mr. George saw the timid beginnings of that open struggle between protection and free trade to which he had for years looked forward as the political movement that must culminate in the abolition of all taxes save those upon land values, and he responded at once to the sentiments of the message. But many protectionists, who had followed him because they supposed he was a land nationalizer, now broke away from his leadership, and the United Labor Party and the Anti-Poverty Society were soon practically dissolved. Those who understood Mr. George's real position regarding the land question readily acquiesced in his views as to political policy. and a considerable movement resulted, which, however, for some time lacked an identifying name. This was the situation when Thomas G. Shearman, Esq., wrote for the Standard an article on taxation in which he illustrated and advocated the land value tax as a fiscal measure. The article had been submitted without a caption, and Mr. George, then the editor of the Standard, entitled it "The Single Tax." This title was at once adopted by the "George men," as they were often called, and has ever since served as the name of the movement it describes.

Though "the single tax" is the English form of "l'impot unique" the name of the French physiocratic doctrine of the eighteenth century, the names have no historical connection, and they stand for different ideas.

3. When it is remembered that some land in cities is worth millions of dollars an acre, that a small building lot in the business center of even a small village is worth more than a whole field of the best farming land in the neighborhood, that a few acres of coal or iron land are worth more than great groups of farms, that the right of way of a railroad company through a thickly settled district or between important points is worth more than its rolling stock, and that the value of workingmen's cottages in the suburbs is trifling in comparison with the value of city residence sites, the absurdity, if not the dishonesty, of the plea that the single tax would discriminate against farmers and small home owners and in favor of the rich is apparent. The bad faith of this plea is emphasized when we consider that under existing systems of taxation the farmer and the poor home owner are compelled to pay in taxes upon improvements, food, clothing, and other objects of consumption, much more than the full annual value of their bare land.

4. The difference between site value and improvement value is much more definite than it is often supposed to be. Even in what would seem at first to be most confusing cases, it is easily distinguished. If in any example we imagine the complete destruction of all the improvements, we may discover in the remaining value of the property — in the price it would after such destruction fetch in the real estate market — the value of the site as distinguished from the value of the improvements. This residuum of value would be the basis of computation for levying the single tax.

The distinction is frequently made in business life. Whenever in the course of ordinary business affairs it becomes necessary to estimate the value of a building lot, or to fix royalties for mining privileges, no difficulty is experienced, and substantial justice is done. And though the exigencies of business seldom require the site value of an improved farm to be distinguished from the value of its improvements, yet it could doubtless be done as easily and justly as with city or mining property. Unimproved land attached to any farm in question, or unimproved land in the neighborhood, if similar in fertility and location, would furnish a sufficiently accurate measure. If neither existed, the value of the contiguous highway would always be available.

It should not be forgotten that land for which the demand is so weak that its site value cannot be easily distinguished from the value of its improvements, is certain to be land of but little value, and almost certain to have no value at all.

The objection that the value of land cannot be distinguished from the value of its improvements is among the most frivolous of the objections that have been raised to the single tax by people with whom the wish that it may be impracticable is father to the thought that it really is so.

The single tax may be concisely described as a tax upon land alone, in the ratio of value, irrespective of improvements or use. ...

Whoever calmly reflects and candidly decides upon the merits of indirect taxation must reject it in all its forms. But to do that is to make a great stride toward accepting the single tax. For the single tax is a form of direct taxation; it cannot be shifted.11 ...

Direct taxes fall into two general classes: (1) Taxes that are levied upon men in proportion to their ability to pay, and (2) taxes that are levied in proportion to the benefits received by the tax-payer from the public. Income taxes are the principal ones of the first class, though probate and inheritance taxes would rank high. The single tax is the only important one of the second class.

There should be no difficulty in choosing between the two. To tax in proportion to ability to pay, regardless of benefits received, is in accord with no principle of just government; it is a device of piracy. The single tax, therefore, as the only important tax in proportion to benefits, is the ideal tax.

But here we encounter two plausible objections. One arises from the mistaken but common notion that men are not taxed in proportion to benefits unless they pay taxes upon every kind of property they own that comes under the protection of government; the other is founded in the assumption that it is impossible to measure the value of the public benefits that each individual enjoys. Though the first of these objections ostensibly accepts the doctrine of taxation according to benefits,12 yet, as it leads to attempts at taxation in proportion to wealth, it, like the other, is really a plea for the piratical doctrine of taxation according to ability to pay. The two objections stand or fall together.

Let it once be perceived that the value of the service which government renders to each individual would be justly measured by the single tax, and neither objection would any longer have weight. We should then no more think of taxing people in proportion to their wealth or ability to pay, regardless of the benefits they receive from government than an honest merchant would think of charging his customers in proportion to their wealth or ability to pay, regardless of the value of the goods they bought of him." 13

13. Following is an interesting computation of the cost and loss to the city of Boston of the present mixed system of taxation as compared with the single tax; The computation was made by James R. Carret, Esq., the leading conveyancer of Boston:

Valuation of Boston, May 1, 1892
Land... ... . .. ... .. ... .. $399,170,175
Buildings ... ... ... ... ..$281,109,700
Total assessed value of real estate $680,279,875
Assessed value of personal estate $213,695,829
.... .... ... ... ... ... ... ... .... .... .... ... .... ... $893,975,704
Rate of taxation, $12.90 per $1000
Total tax levy, May 1, 1892 $11,805,036

Amount of taxes levied in respect of the different subjects of taxation and percentages of the same:
Land .... .... .... .... $5,149,295 43.62%
Buildings .... .... .. $3,626,295 30.72%
Personal estate .. $2,756,676 23.35%
Polls ... .... ... .... .... ...272,750 2.31%

But to ascertain the total cost to the people of Boston of the present system of taxation for the taxable year, beginning May 1, 1892, there should be added to the taxes assessed upon them what it cost them to pay the owners of the land of Boston for the use of the land, being the net ground rent, which I estimate at four per cent on the land value.

Total tax levy, May 1, 1892 ... ... ... ... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..$11,805,036
Net ground rent, four percent, on the land value ($399,170,175)..... ... ... ...$15,966,807
Total cost of the present system to the people of Boston for that year ... $27,771,843

To contrast this with what the single tax system would have cost the people of Boston for that year, take the gross ground rent, found by adding to the net ground rent the taxation on land values for that year, being $12.90 per $1000, or 1.29 per cent added to 4 per cent = 5.29 per cent.

Total cost of present system as above .. .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ....$27,771,843
Single tax, or gross ground rent, 5.29 per cent on $399,170,175 ... ..$21,116,102
Excess cost of present system, which is the sum of
taxes in respect of buildings, personal property, and polls .... ...... .. $6,655,741

But the present system not only costs the people more than the single tax would, but produces less revenue:

Proceeds of single tax ... ... ... ... ..... .... .... ..... .... .... .... ..... ..... .... $21,116,102
Present tax levy ... ... ... ... ... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ....$11,805,036
Loss to public treasury by present system ... .... .... .... .... .. ..... ..$9,311,066

This, however, is not a complete contrast between the present system and the single tax, for large amounts of real estate are exempt from taxation, being held by the United States, the Commonwealth, by the city itself, by religious societies and corporations, and by charitable, literary, and scientific institutions. The total amount of the value of land so held as returned by the assessors for the year 1892 is $60,626,171.

Reasons can be given why all lands within the city should be assessed for taxation to secure a just distribution of the public burdens, which I cannot take the space to enter into here. There is good reason to believe also that lands in the city of Boston are assessed to quite an appreciable extent below their fair market value. As an indication of this see an editorial in the Boston Daily Advertiser for October 3, 1893, under the title, "Their Own Figures."

The vacant lands, marsh lands, and flats in Boston were valued by the assessors in 1892 (page 3 of their annual report) at $52,712,600. I believe that this represents not more than fifty per cent of their true market value.

Taking this and the undervaluation of improved property and the exemptions above mentioned into consideration, I think $500,000,000 to be a fair estimate of the land values of Boston. Making this the basis of contrast, we have:

Proceeds of single tax 5.29 per cent on $500,000,000 ... .... .... .... $26,450,000
Present tax levy ... .... ... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... ..$11,805,036
Loss to public treasury by present system ... ... ... ... .... .... .... ....$14,644,974

3. THE SINGLE TAX FALLS IN PROPORTION TO BENEFITS

To perceive that the single tax would justly measure the value of government service we have only to realize that the mass of individuals everywhere and now, in paying for the land they use, actually pay for government service in proportion to what they receive. He who would enjoy the benefits of a government must use land within its jurisdiction. He cannot carry land from where government is poor to where it is good; neither can he carry it from where the benefits of good government are few or enjoyed with difficulty to where they are many and fully enjoyed. He must rent or buy land where the benefits of government are available, or forego them. And unless he buys or rents where they are greatest and most available he must forego them in degree. Consequently, if he would work or live where the benefits of government are available, and does not already own land there, he will be compelled to rent or buy at a valuation which, other things being equal, will depend upon the value of the government service that the site he selects enables him to enjoy. 14 Thus does he pay for the service of government in proportion to its value to him. But he does not pay the public which provides the service; he is required to pay land-owners.

14. Land values are lower in all countries of poor government than in any country of better government, other things being equal. They are lower in cities of poor government, other things being equal, than in cities of better government. Land values are lower, for example, in Juarez, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, where government is bad, than in El Paso, the neighboring city on the American side, where government is better. They are lower in the same city under bad government than under improved government. When Seth Low, after a reform campaign, was elected mayor of Brooklyn, N.Y., rents advanced before he took the oath of office, upon the bare expectation that he would eradicate municipal abuses. Let the city authorities anywhere pave a street, put water through it and sewer it, or do any of these things, and lots in the neighborhood rise in value. Everywhere that the "good roads" agitation of wheel men has borne fruit in better highways, the value of adjacent land has increased. Instances of this effect as results of public improvements might be collected in abundance. Every man must be able to recall some within his own experience.

And it is perfectly reasonable that it should be so. Land and not other property must rise in value with desired improvements in government, because, while any tendency on the part of other kinds of property to rise in value is checked by greater production, land can not be reproduced.

Imagine an utterly lawless place, where life and property are constantly threatened by desperadoes. He must be either a very bold man or a very avaricious one who will build a store in such a community and stock it with goods; but suppose such a man should appear. His store costs him more than the same building would cost in a civilized community; mechanics are not plentiful in such a place, and materials are hard to get. The building is finally erected, however, and stocked. And now what about this merchant's prices for goods? Competition is weak, because there are few men who will take the chances he has taken, and he charges all that his customers will pay. A hundred per cent, five hundred per cent, perhaps one or two thousand per cent profit rewards him for his pains and risk. His goods are dear, enormously dear — dear enough to satisfy the most contemptuous enemy of cheapness; and if any one should wish to buy his store that would be dear too, for the difficulties in the way of building continue. But land is cheap! This is the type of community in which may be found that land, so often mentioned and so seldom seen, which "the owners actually can't give away, you know!"

But suppose that government improves. An efficient administration of justice rids the place of desperadoes, and life and property are safe. What about prices then? It would no longer require a bold or desperately avaricious man to engage in selling goods in that community, and competition would set in. High profits would soon come down. Goods would be cheap — as cheap as anywhere in the world, the cost of transportation considered. Builders and building materials could be had without difficulty, and stores would be cheap, too. But land would be dear! Improvement in government increases the value of that, and of that alone.

Now, the economic principle pursuant to which land-owners are thus able to charge their fellow-citizens for the common benefits of their common government points to the true method of taxation. With the exception of such other monopoly property as is analogous to land titles, and which in the purview of the single tax is included with land for purposes of taxation, 15 land is the only kind of property that is increased in value by government; and the increase of value is in proportion, other influences aside, to the public service which its possession secures to the occupant. Therefore, by taxing land in proportion to its value, and exempting all other property, kindred monopolies excepted — that is to say, by adopting the single tax — we should be levying taxes according to benefits.16

15. Railroad franchises, for example, are not usually thought of as land titles, but that is what they are. By an act of sovereign authority they confer rights of control for transportation purposes over narrow strips of land between terminals and along trading points. The value of this right of way is a land value.

16. Each occupant would pay to his landlord the value of the public benefits in the way of highways, schools, courts, police and fire protection, etc., that his site enabled him to enjoy. The landlord would pay a tax proportioned to the pecuniary benefits conferred upon him by the public in raising and maintaining the value of his holding. And if occupant and owner were the same, he would pay directly according to the value of his land for all the public benefits he enjoyed, both intangible and pecuniary.

And in no sense would this be class taxation. Indeed, the cry of class taxation is a rather impudent one for owners of valuable land to raise against the single tax, when it is considered that under existing systems of taxation they are exempt. 17 Even the poorest and the most degraded classes in the community, besides paying land-owners for such public benefits as come their way, are compelled by indirect taxation to contribute to the support of government. But landowners as a class go free. They enjoy the protection of the courts, and of police and fire departments, and they have the use of schools and the benefit of highways and other public improvements, all in common with the most favored, and upon the same specific terms; yet, though they go through the form of paying taxes, and if their holdings are of considerable value pose as "the tax-payers" on all important occasions, they, in effect and considered as a class, pay no taxes, because government, by increasing the value of their land, enables them to recover back in higher rents and higher prices more than their taxes amount to. Enjoying the same tangible benefits of government that others do, many of them as individuals and all of them as a class receive in addition a tangible pecuniary benefit which government confers upon no other property-owners. The value of their property is enhanced in proportion to the benefits of government which its occupants enjoy. To tax them alone, therefore, is not to discriminate against them; it is to charge them for what they get.18

17. While the landholders of the City of Washington were paying something less than two per cent annually in taxes, a Congressional Committee (Report of the Select Committee to Investigate Tax Assessments in the District of Columbia, composed of Messrs. Johnson, of Ohio, Chairman, Wadsworth, of New York, and Washington, of Tennessee. Made to the House of Representatives, May 24, 1892. Report No. 1469), brought out the fact that the value of their land had been increasing at a minimum rate of ten per cent per annum. The Washington land-owners as a class thus appear to have received back in higher land values, actually and potentially, about ten dollars for every two dollars that as land-owners they paid in taxes. If any one supposes that this condition is peculiar to Washington let him make similar estimates for any progressive locality, and see if the land-owners there are not favored in like manner.

But the point is not dependent upon increase in the capitalized value of land. If the land yields or will yield to its owner an income in the nature of actual or potential ground rent, then to the extent that this actual or possible income is dependent upon government the landlord is in effect exempt from taxation. No matter what tax he pays on account of his ownership of land, the public gives it back to him to that extent.

18. Take for illustration two towns, one of excellent government and the other of inefficient government, but in all other respects alike. Suppose you are hunting for a place of residence and find a suitable site in the town of good government. For simplicity of illustration let us suppose that the land there is not sold outright but is let upon ground rent. You meet the owner of the lot you have selected and ask him his terms. He replies:

"Two hundred and fifty dollars a year."

"Two hundred and fifty dollars a year!" you exclaim. "Why, I can get just as good a site in that other town for a hundred dollars a year."

"Certainly you can," he will say. "But if you build a house there and it catches fire it will burn down; they have no fire department. If you go out after dark you will be 'held up' and robbed; they have no police force. If you ride out in the spring, your carriage will stick in the mud up to the hubs, and if you walk you may break your legs and will be lucky if you don t break your neck; they have no street pavements and their sidewalks are dangerously out of repair. When the moon doesn't shine the streets are in darkness, for they have no street lights. The water you need for your house you must get from a well; there is no water supply there. Now in our town it is different. We have a splendid fire department, and the best police force in the world. Our streets are macadamized, and lighted with electricity; our sidewalks are always in first class repair; we have a water system that equals that of New York; and in every way the public benefits in this town are unsurpassed. It is the best governed town in all this region. Isn't it worth a hundred and fifty dollars a year more for a building site here than over in that poorly governed town?"

You recognize the advantages and agree to the terms. But when your house is built and the assessor visits you officially, what would be the conversation if your sense of the fitness of things were not warped by familiarity with false systems of taxation? Would it not be something like what follows?

"How much do you regard this house as worth? " asks the assessor.

"What is that to you?" you inquire.

"I am the town assessor and am about to appraise your property for taxation."

"Am I to be taxed by this town? What for?"

"What for?" echoes the assessor in surprise. "What for? Is not your house protected from fire by our magnificent fire department? Are not you protected from robbery by the best police force in the world? Do not you have the use of macadamized pavements, and good sidewalks, and electric street lights, and a first class water supply? Don't you suppose these things cost something? And don't you think you ought to pay your share?"

"Yes," you answer, with more or less calmness; "I do have the benefit of these things, and I do think that I ought to pay my share toward supporting them. But I have already paid my share for this year. I have paid it to the owner of this lot. He charges me two hundred and fifty dollars a year -- one hundred and fifty dollars more than I should pay or he could get but for those very benefits. He has collected my share of this year's expense of maintaining town improvements; you go and collect from him. If you do not, but insist upon collecting from me, I shall be paying twice for these things, once to him and once to you; and he won't be paying at all, but will be making money out of them, although he derives the same benefits from them in all other respects that I do." ...

III. THE SINGLE TAX AS A SOCIAL REFORM.

But the single tax is more than a revenue system. Great as are its merits in this respect, they are but incidental to its character as a social reform.31 And that some social reform, which shall be simple in method but fundamental in character, is most urgently needed we have only to look about us to see.

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

That much of our poverty is involuntary may be proved, if proof be necessary, by the magnitude of charitable work that aims to help only the "deserving poor"; and as to undeserving cases — the cases of voluntary poverty — who can say but that they, if not due to birth and training in the environs of degraded poverty, 35 are the despairing culminations of long-continued struggles for respectable independence? 36 How can we know that they are not essentially like the rest — involuntary and deserving? It is a profound distinction that a clever writer of fiction 37 makes when he speaks of "the hopeful and the hopeless poor." There is, indeed, little difference between voluntary and involuntary poverty, between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor, except that the "deserving" still have hope, while from the "undeserving" all hope, if they ever knew any, has gone.

But it is not alone to objects of charity that the question of poverty calls our attention. There is a keener poverty, which pinches and goes hungry, but is beyond the reach of charity because it never complains. And back of all and over all is fear of poverty, which chills the best instincts of men of every social grade, from recipients of out-door relief who dread the poorhouse, to millionaires who dread the possibility of poverty for their children if not for themselves.38

It is poverty and fear of poverty that prompt men of honest instincts to steal, to bribe, to take bribes, to oppress, either under color of law or against law, and — what is worst than all, because it is not merely a depraved act, but a course of conduct that implies a state of depravity — to enlist their talents in crusades against their convictions. 39 Our civilization cannot long resist such enemies as poverty and fear of poverty breed; to intelligent observers it already seems to yield. 40

But how is the development of these social enemies to be arrested? Only by tracing poverty to its cause, and, having found the cause, deliberately removing it. Poverty cannot be traced to its cause, however, without serious thought; not mere reading and school study and other tutoring, but thought. 41 To jump at a conclusion is very likely to jump over the cause, at which no class is more apt than the tutored class.42 We must proceed step by step from familiar and indisputable premises.... read the book

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

Q1. Do you regard the single tax as a panacea for all social disease?
A. When William Lloyd Garrison announced his conversion to the single tax in a letter to Henry George, he took pains to state that he did not believe it to be a panacea, and Mr. George replied : "Neither do I; but I believe that freedom is." Your question may be answered in the same way. Freedom is the panacea for social wrongs and the ills they breed, and the single tax principle is the tap-root of freedom.

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. ... read the book

Charles B. Fillebrown: A Catechism of Natural Taxation, from Principles of Natural Taxation (1917)

Some years ago when President of the Massachusetts Single Tax League I started a correspondence and series of conferences with a large number of students of political economy including more than 100 professors in the leading colleges and universities of the country. The purpose was to ascertain whether it might be possible to secure agreement of recognized authorities concerning the fundamental economic principles on which the science of taxation must rest. The project met with such cordial approval at the hands of the economists, and proved so interesting and profitable that it finally resulted in a round-table conference at the Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association held at Madison, Wisconsin, in December 1907.1 The final canvass of opinions showed an overwhelmingly majority agreed upon three propositions stated in the following Catechism, No. 39.2

1. See Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, 1907, pp. 117-29; also The A B C of Taxation, pp.187-90.
2. Quoted from an introduction to the edition of the Catechism which was published in the National Magazine for November, 1912.

Q38. What are the three legs of the tripos, the threefold support upon which the single tax rests?
A. They are:

(1) The social origin of ground rent -- that the site value of land is a creation of the community, a public or social value.
(2) The non-shiftability of a land tax -- that no tax, new or old, on the site value of land can be recovered from the tenant or user by raising his rent.
(3) The ultimate burdenlessness of a land tax -- that the selling value of land, reduced as it is by the capitalized tax that is imposed upon it, is an untaxed value. Whatever lowers the income from land lowers proportionately its selling price, so that whether the established tax upon it has been light or heavy, it is no burden upon the new purchaser, who buys it at its net value and thus escapes all part in the tax burden which he should in justice share with those who now bear it all.

Q41. Why would the single tax be an improvement upon present systems of taxation?
A. Because: (1) The taking for public uses of that value which justly belongs to the public is not a tax; (2) it would relieve all workers and capitalists of those taxes by which they are now unjustly burdened, and (3) it would make unprofitable the holding of land idle. ... read the whole article

Upton Sinclair: The Consequences of Land Speculation are Tenantry and Debt on the Farms, and Slums and Luxury in the Cities

... This condition wrecked every empire in the history of mankind, and it is wrecking modern civilization. One of the first to perceive this was Henry George, and he worked out the program known as the Single Tax. Let society as a whole take the full rental value of land, so that no one would any longer be able to hold land out of use. So the value of land would decrease, and everyone could have land, and the community would have a great income to be spent for social ends. ... read the whole article

Charles T. Root — Not a Single Tax! (1925)

The proverb "There is nothing sure but Death and Taxes," is at once a recognition of the tendency to change in all human affairs, and a triumphant assertion of Conservatism that there remain at least two immutable things.

But the tooth of time which respects no mortal institution is boldly at work on even this proverb and threatens to remove Taxes from the meagre list of things permanent. It is the purpose of this booklet to give some account of this startling phenomenon. With this in view let us lay down and briefly defend the proposition that —

Taxation as a means of meeting the proper expenses of government is oppressive, unjust, inexpedient and unnecessary.

This proposition will strike a good many readers as absurd, but all must at least recognize the timeliness of the topic and the importance of any contribution to the discussion of a subject which is agitating the whole civilized world, for the methods, subjects and amounts of taxation are among the pressing problems of every country.

The most obvious question which arises in the mind of anyone who reads for the first time the proposition above laid down is this:

"If taxation is unnecessary, what is to take its place? Government and its functions are increasingly expensive. They require a lot of money. Where is it to come from?" The answer may be placed in the form of a second proposition:

Every community, whatever its political name and extent — village, city, state or province or nation — has its own normal, unfailing income, growing with the growth of the community and always adequate to meet necessary governmental expenditure.

To explain: Every community has an indefeasible original right to the land on which it exists, and to all the natural, unmodified properties and advantages of that particular area of the earth's surface. To this land in its natural state, undrained, unfenced, unfertilized, unplanted and unoccupied, including its waters, its contents and its location, every individual in the community (which may consist of any political unit selected) has an equal right, while all the individuals together have a joint right to the value for use which society has conferred upon these natural advantages.

This value for use is known as "Land Value," or by the not particularly descriptive but generally adopted name of "Economic Rent." ...

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. ...

This principle of economic rent applies to all the users of land, including mining, use of waterpower, and rights of way over or under its surface. Had this principle always been recognized, and the economic rent always been retained by the community, taxation would never have been heard of. When the economic rent is reclaimed by the community, the need of taxation will disappear.

Let us roughly restate the proposition: All members of the community having a joint right to the income which the social advantages of the land will command, they are all partners in this income.

Therefore, when one of their number wishes to take for his private use a parcel of this land, he should buy out his partners, i.e., the rest of the community, by paying regularly into the common treasury the economic rent of that parcel, instead of paying, as at present, the purchase price, i.e., the right to collect the economic rent, in a lump, to some other individual who has no more original right to it than himself. ...

Lapse of time, however, never can transform wrong into right, nor can a buyer acquire any better title than the seller possessed. The economic rent belongs to the community, which can and will begin to reclaim it as soon as the voters thoroughly awake to the facts and the right and wrong of the matter, which are not hard to grasp when the subject is presented in its simplest form.

An illustration has already been given of the case of a piece of farm land. Let us take an example in a large city. Let us take a corner lot centrally located in New York City, the title to which lot is held by, say, Mr. John William Rhinelastor. This lot was a part of an old Dutch farm, and is an heirloom. It did not cost the present owner anything, nor his father nor his grandfather. There is a little old building on it, which has always been rented at a figure ten times as large as the taxes imposed, so that the owner has been handsomely subsidized each year for storing his title-deeds during a period of the city's growth in which the increase in population and the expenditure of public money in that neighborhood have raised the value of this corner location to, say, two hundred times its early value. ...

Reclaim for the community its natural income, making it expensive either to keep needed land vacant or to withhold it from the ready and willing to improve it to the full extent of its possibilities.

Does it require severe intellectual effort to foresee the results? Better and better houses, apartments, tenements, offices and stores, more employment for labor in all enterprises now held back by the shadow of the tax-gatherer, an end of all tax-lying, tax-evasion and tax-injustice, and withal, a public revenue adequate to all real public needs.

What a contrast to the existing plan of pouring public money into the laps of individual landowners to their own moral disadvantage and that of their children, as well as the economic disadvantage of their neighbors, while constantly cudgeling the civic brains, straining the public credit, impoverishing widows and orphans, and increasing the exactions from every citizen and corporation that can be caught, in the effort to raise more and more money to bestow upon the same beneficiaries. ...

Henry George gave the first impulse, and his followers of the Single Tax have continued the good work. There is one objection, however, to the statement of their case by the Single Taxers: the nature of this objection is indicated by their name. Most persons will infer that, under their proposal, whatever portion of the economic rent is taken by the community is taken as a tax on the land.

This seems to the present writer to show a misconception of the nature of the transaction, and one which tends to retard the cause which is being advocated. The amount of economic rent which is taken by the community for public purposes is not a tax paid by the land-holder, but whatever amount of such rent is left in his hands is a gift to him by the community, or else is the compensation which the community allows him for acting as its agent and collector in the matter of economic rent.

This is an important distinction which is necessary to make the facts and the relations clear. It is also highly expedient. Taxation and the idea behind it are abhorrent to men. As a result of long experience the very word Taxation connotes to them injustice, oppression, and antagonism between the individual and the community. To the mass "The Single Tax" means simply rolling into one the manifold injustices and oppressions of the present complex system. Only slow headway can be made by a proposition which at first sight seems to promise merely to shift the burden from one shoulder to the other.

But make it plain to the wayfaring man that taxation can be abolished and will be abolished whenever the voters of any political unit so decree, and a force of hope and purpose will be liberated which must bring nearer the time when the things that are the community's will be rendered to it, and the things which are the individual's will be left in his unmolested possession. The watchword of our friends the Georgeites is "A Single Tax." The true slogan is "Not a Single Tax!"; and the triumph of the cause behind that slogan would cut more of the taproots of poverty, vice and social unrest than any other progressive step which is a legislative possibility. read the whole article

Alanna Hartzok: In the History of Thought: Henry George's "Single Tax"

    One day, while riding horseback in the Oakland hills, merchant seaman and journalist Henry George had a startling epiphany. He realized that speculation and private profiteering in the gifts of nature were the root causes of the unjust distribution of wealth. The insights presented in Progress and Poverty, George's masterwork, launched him to fame. His policy approach was known at that time as the "single tax" - meaning that taxation should be shifted off of labor and onto the socially created surplus value of land and other natural resources. His message reached as far as the great Russian Leo Tolstoy, who was so taken with the idea that he frequently referred to George and "Georgism" in his novel Resurrection....   Read the whole article

Lindy Davies: Land and Justice (a speech delivered at Chattauqua, August 2005)

I'm here today as a "Single Taxer". If you don't recall quite what that is, let me first say that it’s NOT Steve Forbes’s “flat tax!” No. The Single Tax is actually a comprehensive program for economic justice and environmental sustainability. It was stated most memorably by the American economist Henry George in his 1879 book Progress and Poverty — and affirmed by a great many important thinkers, before and since. The idea is for society to collect the rental value of land for public revenue — and to abolish all other taxes on the production and exchange of wealth. It came to be known at the “Single Tax” because of this proposal that the rent of land should be the sole source of public revenue. ...

Eventually, I believe that human society will adopt the biblical and georgist wisdom, and organize itself as it must, to achieve justice, efficiency and sustainability.

Eventually we will have tried everything else. That's how Clarence Darrow — one of the reform's many prominent supporters — saw things. He said this: “The “single tax” is so simple, so fundamental, and so easy to carry into effect that I have no doubt that it will be about the last reform the world will ever get. People in this world are not often logical.”

True enough. Yet I have to believe that eventually the obvious truth will start to dawn on us. read the whole speech

Clarence Darrow: How to Abolish Unfair Taxation (1913)

The single tax theory is that the public should take all the value of land, as it was made by the public. Land value goes up because of population, and not because of the owner of the title deed, and the value should be taken by the community, and thus create a natural fund from which to make improvements for the comfort of all, and thus make life easier. It would abolish poverty, that crime of the century, which has always come with civilization; inequality of wealth, which comes as the world grows older, and which we have never been able to cure, because man wants to hold what he cannot use, and pass on to future generations what they will not use.

... The "single tax" is so simple, so fundamental, and so easy to carry into effect that I have no doubt it will be about the last reform the world will ever get. People in this world are not often logical; in fact, there is never any considerable number of them that are logical. I am pretty sure the people will never get started in the right direction; they will go a long way around. ... read the whole speech

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

One might expect such arguments to have led to the advocacy of land nationalisation. But George thought this unnecessary because a tax on land could be effective in capturing the economic surplus arising from land ownership. This tax would generate all the revenue necessary to fund public expenditures. George thought that such a land tax would permit the removal of other taxes on labour and capital, which he regarded as inherently inefficient. He argued that taxes on incomes, sales, and payrolls, for example, acted as disincentives to production and active endeavour, thereby stifling economic growth and creating a barrier to full employment. A land tax, by contrast, would be both economically efficient and more equitable in its distributional effects.

George’s advocacy of replacing all existing taxes with a single tax on land values was powerful. He argued that this tax would redistribute the wealth that would otherwise accrue to private landowners, forcing them to repay the community for their exclusive use of a public resource. Moreover, such redistribution would reduce wealth inequalities and allow massive improvements in welfare provisions and public services. In addition, removing taxes on labour and capital would boost economic growth and provide a stimulus to employment. Conversely, taxing land values would reduce speculation in land and depress land prices, allowing greater access to landownership while reducing economic instability. ... read the whole article

Bill Batt: The Compatibility of Georgist Economics and Ecological Economics

from http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/tma68/geolib.htm

What Is Geolibertarianism?

Geolibertarians are simply libertarians who take the principle of self-ownership to its logical conclusion: Just as the right to one's self implies the right to the fruit of one's labor (i.e., the right to property), the right to the fruit of one's labor implies the right to labor, and the right to labor implies the right to labor — somewhere. Hence John Locke's proviso that one has "property" in land only to the extent that there is "enough, and as good left in common for others." When there is not, land begins to have rental value. Thus, the rental value of land reflects the extent to which Locke's proviso has been violated, thereby making community-collection of rent, or CCR, a just and necessary means of upholding the Lockean principle of private property. In the late 19th century CCR was known as the "Single Tax"— a term that was (and is) used to denote Henry George's proposal to abolish all taxes save for a single "tax" on the value of land, irrespective of the value of improvements in or on it.

Fred E. Foldvary — The Ultimate Tax Reform: Public Revenue from Land Rent

The concept of taxing land values for public finance is ancient. The Bible declares “the profit of the Earth is for all” (Ecclesiastes 5:9). Land rent financed government in England during the Middle Ages.9 During the 1700s, some French economists proposed an “impöt unique” or single tax on land value. Calling their theory “physiocracy” (the rule of natural law), they outlined a model of economic development that used land value taxes to finance public works, which increased the value of the land (and thus increased taxes paid to the treasury), resulting in an upward spiral of development and prosperity. The principal physiocratic economist, François Quesnay, wrote

Taxes ... should be laid directly on the net product of landed property, and not on men’s wages, or on produce, where they would increase the cost of collection, operate to the detriment of trade, and destroy every year a portion of the nation’s wealth. [Emphasis in the original.]10 ... read the whole document

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

The publication of George’s major treatise, Progress and Poverty, in 1879 stimulated widespread interest. Supporters emerged throughout the Western world, roused by George’s explanation of wealth inequalities and inspired by his proposed solution of a single tax on land. However, this initial wave of interest subsided, and George’s ideas have been almost universally ignored in ‘respectable’ economic circles during the last century. They have been accorded the status of a historical curiosity, at best (see, for example, Heilbroner, 1968: 166-73). But a Georgist movement advocating a land tax has persisted and the last few years have seen a partial resurgence. While still ignored by the economic orthodoxy, interest in George’s work has been stimulated by modern concerns about housing affordability and environmental decay. Such revival of interest recognises that these problems stem, in part, from inadequate policies relating to land. Some members of Green parties, in particular, have embraced Georgist ideas.

Not all those attracted to Georgism embrace the extreme single-tax position. A more pragmatic position emphasises retaining a mix of different taxes but putting more emphasis on land tax revenues and less on income, consumption, payroll and other taxes. In the Australian context a pragmatic Georgism emphasises:

• aligning the rates of land taxes currently levied by the State governments so as to eliminate inter-State variations in the tax scales;
• removing the existing exemption from land tax for owner-occupied property;
• ensuring that all rate revenues generated by local governments are based on unimproved capital values, ie. on land values only, not including the value of any property on that land;
• combining these State and local revenue-raising measures into a more comprehensive nationally uniform land tax system;
• incrementally raising the rate of land tax and making corresponding reductions in taxes on income, consumption, employment, capital gains (other than gains arising from land values) and stamp duties. ... read the whole article

an entry The Single Tax, from The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing: A Manual of Ready Reference, by Joseph Triemens, 1911

This idea was first formulated by Mr. Henry George in 1879, and has grown steadily in favor. Single-tax men assert as a fundamental principle that all men are equally entitled to the use of the earth; therefore, no one should be allowed to hold valuable land without paying to the community the value of the privilege. They hold that this is the only rightful source of public revenue, and they would therefore abolish all taxation — local, state and national — except a tax upon the rental value of land exclusive of its improvements, the revenue thus raised to be divided among local, state and general governments, as the revenue from certain direct taxes is now divided between local and state governments.

The single tax would not fall on all land, but only on valuable land, and on that in proportion to its value. It would thus be a tax, not on use or improvements, but on ownership of land, taking what would otherwise go to the landlord as owner.

In accordance with the principle that all men are equally entitled to the use of the earth, they would solve the transportation problem by public ownership and control of all highways, including the roadbeds of railroads, leaving their use equally free to all.

The single-tax system would, they claim, dispense with a horde of tax-gatherers, simplify government, and greatly reduce its cost; give us with all the world that absolute free trade which now exists between the States of the Union: abolish all taxes on private issues of money; take the weight of taxation from agricultural districts, where land has little or no value apart from improvements, and put it upon valuable land, such as city lots and mineral deposits. It would call upon men to contribute for public expenses in proportion to the natural opportunities they monopolize, and make it unprofitable for speculators to hold land unused or only partly used, thus opening to labor unlimited fields of employment, solving the labor problem and abolishing involuntary poverty.

Weld Carter: An Introduction to Henry George

Notable in George's work is the emphasis he laid on the relation of man to the earth. "The most important of all the material relations of man is his relation to the planet he inhabits." 

George might well be called a land economist, indeed, the foremost land economist. For George, the basic fact of man's physical existence is that he is a land animal, "who can live only on and from land, and can use other elements, such as air, sunshine and water, only by the use of land." "Without either of the three elements, land, air and water, man could not exist; but he is peculiarly a land animal, living on its surface, and drawing from it his supplies."  ...

To recapitulate at this point: man is always dependent upon land for life and living, both as the source of raw materials for his products and as the place on which to fashion, trade, service, and enjoy these products. Private property in land is inexpedient, for by inducing speculation in land in good times, it brings on bad times; however, private property in products is expedient because it provides the incentive to produce. Private property in land is morally wrong, first because it denies land to mankind in general, and second because it provides a primary way for nonproducers to levy toll on producers. However, private property in products is morally right, deriving as it does directly from the right of a man to himself. The taxation of land values is expedient because it stimulates production whereas the taxation of products is inexpedient because it checks production. The taxation of land values is naturally right, for through it the community levies on the precise values community has created. However, the taxation of products is morally wrong because it deprives labor and capital of their just earnings.

This chain of reasoning, demonstrating that both justice and expediency called for the same course of action, inevitably led George to a "simple -- yet sovereign remedy."  That remedy was: "To abolish all taxation save that upon land values." This is the single tax, with which George's name is so largely associated.

If the conclusions at which we have arrived are correct, they will fall under a larger generalization.

Let us, therefore, recommence our inquiry from a higher standpoint, whence we may survey a wider field.

What is the law of human progress?  ...

George saw ours alone among the civilizations of the world as still progressing; all others had either petrified or had vanished. And in our civilization he had already detected alarming evidences of corruption and decay. So he sought out the forces that create civilization and the forces that destroy it.

He found the incentives to progress to be the desires inherent in human nature, and the motor of progress to be what he called mental power. But the mental power that is available for progress is only what remains after nonprogressive demands have been met. These demands George listed as maintenance and conflict.

In his isolated state, primitive man's powers are required simply to maintain existence; only as he begins to associate in communities and to enjoy the resultant economies is mental power set free for higher uses. Hence, association is the first essential of progress:

And as the wasteful expenditure of mental power in conflict becomes greater or less as the moral law which accords to each an equality of rights is ignored or is recognized, equality (or justice) is the second essential of progress.

Thus association in equality is the law of progress. Association frees mental power for expenditure in improvement, and equality, or justice, or freedom -- for the terms here signify the same thing, the recognition of the moral law -- prevents the dissipation of this power in fruitless struggles.

He concluded this phase of his analysis of civilization in these words: "The law of human progress, what is it but the moral law? Just as social adjustments promote justice, just as they acknowledge the equality of right between man and man, just as they insure to each the perfect liberty which is bounded only by the equal liberty of every other, must civilization advance. Just as they fail in this, must advancing civilization come to a halt and recede..." 

However, as the primary relation of man is to the earth, so must the primary social adjustment concern the relation of man to the earth. Only that social adjustment which affords all mankind equal access to nature and which insures labor its full earnings will promote justice, acknowledge equality of right between man and man, and insure perfect liberty to each.

This, according to George, was what the single tax would do. It was why he saw the single tax as not merely a fiscal reform but as the basic reform without which no other reform could, in the long run, avail. This is why he said, "What is inexplicable, if we lose sight of man's absolute and constant dependence upon land, is clear when we recognize it." read the whole article