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| Wealth and Want | |||||||
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Anticipating Population Growth
But while the Taxation of Land Values cannot raise
rents, it would, especially in a country like this, where
there is so much valuable land unused, tend strongly to
lower them. In all our cities, and
through all the country, there is much land which is not
used, or not put to its best use, because it is held at
high prices by men who do not want to, or who cannot, use
it themselves, but who are holding it in expectation of
profiting by the increased value which the growth of
population will give to it in the future. Now the
effect of the Taxation of Land Values would be to compel
these men to seek tenants or purchasers. Land upon which
there is no taxation even a poor man can easily hold for
higher prices, for land eats nothing. But put heavy
taxation upon it, and even a rich man will be driven to
seek purchasers or tenants, and to get them he will have
to put down the price he asks, instead of putting it up;
for it is by asking less, not by asking more, that those
who have anything they are forced to dispose of must seek
customers. Rather than continue to pay heavy taxes upon
land yielding him nothing, and from the future increase
in value of which he could have no expectation of profit,
since increase in value would mean increased taxes, he
would be glad to give it away or let it revert to the
State. Thus the dogs in the manger, who all over the
country are withholding land that they cannot use
themselves from men who would be glad to use it, would be
forced to let go their grasp. To tax Land Values up to
anything like their full amount would be to utterly
destroy speculative values, and to diminish all rents
into which this speculative element enters. And how
groundless it is to think that landlords who have tenants
could shift a tax on Land Values upon their tenants can
be readily seen from the effect upon landlords who have
no tenants. It is when tenants seek for land, not when
landlords seek for tenants, that rent goes up.
To put the matter in a form in which
it can be easily understood, let us take two cases. The
one, a country where the available land is all in use, and
the competition of tenants has carried rents to a point at
which the tenant pays the landlord all he can possibly earn
save just enough to barely live. The other, a country where
all the available land is not in use and the rent that the
landlord can get from the tenant is limited by the terms on
which the tenant can get access to unused land. How, in
either case, if the tax were imposed upon Land Values (or
rent), could the landlord compel the tenant to pay
it? ...read
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