Single Tax

in political economy, a tax on land only. The principle was enunciated by Turgot and other French writers known as the school of physiocrats of a century ago. The chief American apostle of the single tax theory was Henry George, an American journalist. His ideas, advocated in the press and on the platform, were put forth in systematic form in Progress and Poverty, 1879. The features of the single tax may be summarized: 1. The abolition of all other forms of taxation. 2. The taxation of land irrespective of improvements. 3. The conversion of taxation to a land rent paid the state. 4. The abolition of the assessors and tax gatherers for all forms of personal property, buildings, factories, moneys, and merchandise. 5. The removal of temptation to conceal, undervalue, bribe, and corrupt in connection with assessment of improvements and movable property. 6. The removal of burdens from industry, productivity, and thrift. The exemption of a house from taxation is an encouragement to build one. 7. The removal of the motive to hold more land than is required for a home and tillage, sites of factories, right of way, etc. 8. The consequent availability of land for those who desire to till it.

A few sentences chosen from Mr. George's writing give the gist of his argument:

It would enormously increase the production of wealth:

A. By the removal of the burdens that now weigh upon industry and thrift. If we tax houses, there will be fewer and poorer houses; if we tax machinery, there will be less machinery; if we tax trade, there will be less trade; if we tax capital, there will be less capital; if we tax savings, there will be less savings. All the taxes, therefore, that we would abolish are taxes that repress industry and lessen wealth. But if we tax land values, there will be no less land.

B. On the contrary, the taxation of land values has the effect of making land more easily available by industry, since it makes it more difficult for owners of valuable land, which they themselves do not care to use, to hold it idle for a larger future price. While the abolition of taxes on labor and the products of labor would free the active element of production, the taxing of land values in taxation would free the passive element by destroying speculative land values and preventing the holding out of use of land needed for use. If any one will but look around today and see the unused or but half-used land, the idle labor, the unemployed or poorly employed capital, he will get some idea of how enormous would be the production of wealth were all the forces of production free to engage.

C. The taxation of the processes and products of labor on the one hand, and the insufficient taxation of land values on the other, produces an unjust distribution of wealth which is building up in the hands of a few fortunes more monstrous than the world has ever before seen, while the masses of our people are steadily becoming relatively poorer. These taxes necessarily fall on the poor more heavily than on the rich; by increasing prices, they necessitate larger capital in all businesses, and consequently give an advantage to large capitals; and they give, and in some cases are designed to give, special advantages and monopolies to combinations and trusts. On the other hand, the insufficient taxation of land values enables men to make large fortunes by land speculation and the increase in ground values--fortunes which do not represent any addition by them to the general wealth of the community, but merely the appropriation by some of what the labor of others creates.

This unjust distribution of wealth develops on the one hand a class idle and wasteful, because they are too rich, and on the other hand a class idle and wasteful, because they are too poor--it deprives men of capital and opportunities which would make them more efficient producers. It thus greatly diminishes production.

D. The unjust distribution which is giving us the hundredfold millionaire on the one side, and the tramp and the pauper on the other, generates thieves, gamblers, social parasites of all kinds, and requires large expenditure of money and energy in watchmen, policemen, courts, and prisons, and other means of defense and repression. It kindles a greed of gain and a worship of wealth, and produces a bitter struggle for existence which fosters drunkenness, increases insanity, and causes men whose energies ought to be devoted to honest production to spend their time and strength in cheating and grabbing from each other. Besides the moral loss, all this involves an enormous economic loss which the single tax would save.

E. The taxes we would abolish fall most heavily on the poorer agricultural districts, and thus tend to drive population and wealth from them to the great cities. The tax we would increase would destroy that monopoly of land which is the great cause of that distribution of population which is crowding people too closely together in some places and scattering them too far apart in other places. Families live on top of one another in cities, because of the enormous speculative prices at which vacant lots are held. In the country they are scattered too far apart for social intercourse and convenience, because, instead of each taking what land he can use, every one who can grabs all he can get, in the hope of profiting by the increase of value, and the next man must pass farther on. Thus we have scores of families living under a single roof, and other families living in dugouts on the prairies afar from neighbors--some living too close to each other for moral, mental, or physical health, and others too far separated for the stimulating and refining influences of society. The waste in health, in mental vigor, and in unnecessary transportation results in great economic losses which the single tax would save.

When we tax houses, crops, money, furniture, capital, or wealth in any of its forms, we take from individuals what rightfully belongs to them. We violate the right of property, and in the name of the State commit robbery. But when we tax ground values we take from individuals what does not belong to them, but belongs to the community, and which cannot be left to individuals without the robbery of other individuals.