Unearned Increment

in economics, the increase in value of land not due to improvements. The application of the term may be understood in connection with a vacant city lot. Improvements on other lots and the general thrift and growth of the city cause this lot to increase in value, even though the owner make no improvements on it. It is held that this increase is due to the effort of the community, and that, so far as the owner is concerned, the increment in value is "unearned." We may illustrate by means of wild farm land. A buys a tract at $10 an acre. He brings the land under cultivation, erects buildings, plants an orchard, and otherwise improves his property. B purchases a tract similar in quality and similarly situated. He also pays $10 an acre but allows his land to lie unimproved. We may suppose that, owing to the building of roads and railroads, the growth of towns, the improvement of farms in the neighborhood, and increased population, at the end of twenty years B's farm will sell for $30 an acre. Leaving out of account taxes and other costs of holding, the increase of $20 per acre, in the case of B's land, is called an unearned increment because B did not personally earn it. A's land, we will suppose, may be sold for $60 an acre or $30 an acre more than B's land. Inasmuch as this difference is due to A's labor and improvements, it is called an earned increment. The remaining $20 of increase is due to a general rise in the price of land and, as in the case of B, it is an unearned increment. John Stuart Mill and other thinkers have insisted that the unearned increment belongs to the community, not to the individual, and that the government should take the unearned increment for the benefit of all citizens. This course would, of course, put a stop to all speculation in land. If the increase in value is to belong to the government and the people, there is no object in buying land and holding it for a rise in value. In that case buyers would care to obtain only as much land as they need to use, and the rest would be left for those who need it. In 1909 David Lloyd George, British chancellor of the exchequer, presented the annual budget to Parliament. This is a measure which authorizes the expenditure of money for the coming year and determines how it shall be raised. This particular budget proposed that land be revalued each five years, and that the holder be required to pay a special tax equal to one-fifth of the unearned increment. The budget was agreed to by the House of Commons, but the Lords declared the bill confiscatory, revolutionary, and insisted on a new election that the voters might indicate by a choice of a new House of Commons whether they were in favor of exacting a fifth of the unearned increment for British holders of real estate.

Unicorn (unus, one; cornu, horn), a fabulous animal with a single long horn. In heraldry, the unicorn is represented with the body of a horse, the tail of a lion, and a long straight horn growing out of the forehead between the ears. The hoofs are cloven. Aside from its horn, the traditional unicorn resembles the African gnu quite remarkably.