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

DWARFED into mere revenue reform the harmony and beauty of free trade are hidden; its moral force is lost; its power to remedy social evils cannot be shown, and the injustice and meanness of protection cannot be arraigned. The "international law of God" becomes a mere fiscal question which appeals only to the intellect and not to the heart, to the pocket and not to the conscience, and on which it is impossible to arouse the enthusiasm that is alone capable of contending with powerful interests. — Protection or Free Trade — Chapter 29: Practical Politics - econlib

THEY [the Physiocrats) were — what the so-called "English free-traders" who have followed Adam Smith never yet have been — free traders in the full sense of the term. In their practical proposition, the single tax, they proposed the only means by which the free trade principle can ever be carried to its logical conclusion — the freedom not merely of trade but of all other forms and modes of production, with full freedom of access to the natural element which is essential to all production. They were the authors of the motto that in the English use of the phrase "Laissez faire!" "Let things alone," has been so emasculated and perverted, but which on their lips was "Laissez faire, laissez aller!" "Clear the ways and let things alone." This is said to come from the cry that in medieval tournaments gave the signal for combat, The English motto which I take to come closest to the spirit of the French phrase is, "A fair field and no favor!" — The Science of Political Economy

HERE is a traveler who, beset by robbers, has been left bound, blindfolded, and gagged. Shall we stand in a knot about him and discuss whether to put a piece of court-plaster on his cheek or a new patch on his coat, or shall we dispute with each other as to what road he ought to take, and whether a bicycle, a tricycle, a horse and wagon, or a railway, would best help him on? Should we not rather postpone such discussion until we have cut the man's bonds? Then he can see for himself, speak for himself, and help himself. Though with a scratched cheek and a torn coat, he may get on his feet, and if he cannot find a conveyance to suit him, he will at least be free to walk.

Very much like such a discussion is a good deal of that now going on over "the social problem" — a discussion in which all sorts of inadequate and impossible schemes are advocated to the neglect of the simple plan of removing restrictions and giving Labor the use of its powers. — Protection or Free Trade — Chapter 28: Free Trade and Socialism - econlib -|- abridged 

... go to "Gems from George"

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

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. ... read the book

Fred Foldvary:  The Rent, the Whole Rent, and Nothing but the Rent

• Some geoists think that land rent belongs equally to members of local or global communities, so it should be distributed to the residents in equal shares as a "citizens' dividend" to spend on personal or civic services as the individuals choose.
• Other geoists think that all the natural rent and the rentals due to government civic works and services should be the "single tax" spent primarily on governance and public goods, with any remaining revenues distributed as dividends.
• Anarchist geoists consider the rent and civic rentals as the best source of community revenue, but only among those who choose to belong to such a community network. ... 

• First, there is no rent generated on "marginal" land that is just barely worth using at all.
• Second, and more generally, there is no rent generated by marginal increments of labor and capital applied on any land, from the best to the worst.
• Otherwise, all production on land generates some rent, which is a taxable surplus.

The Physiocratic rule, which may seem novel and subtle in tax discourse, stands out nakedly whenever landowners, public or private, negotiate leases. If a lessee is required to pay a share of his gross sales (a royalty), he compensates by offering that much less on the "bid variable," (often a "bonus" paid up front). Lessors and lessees understand this well: it is central to all their negotiations. Whatever the twists and turns, the rule of compensation applies: take more here, get less there. The lessee is to supply labor and capital at full cost; acquiring use of land will yield him a surplus above costs. That surplus is all he can and will pay for. The maximum of economic surplus is the rent of land in its highest and best legal use. ...

Rifling in is essential. Recall, the Physiocratic rule of compensation says all taxes are shifted to rents anyway; some take that to mean any tax will do. However, "broad-based" taxes like VAT or a general sales tax sterilize lands that would be just marginal before tax. They also abort all marginal and near-marginal activity on all lands, for marginal inputs (where marginal cost equals price) generate no rent. That in turn forces rates to be kept low, to avoid destroying half the economy. Such taxes socialize all the rent from lands that are now made marginal after-tax, but leave most rent untapped on the most rentable lands and resources. Taxes that rifle in on rent, on the other hand, inherently exempt marginal activity. They may be set at very high rates, tapping more of the taxable surplus, or rent. Read the entire article

Mason Gaffney: The Taxable Surplus of Land: Measuring, Guarding and Gathering It

Not only can you have both common land and free markets, you can't have one without the other. They go together, like love and marriage. You need market prices to help identify land's taxable surplus, which is the net product of land after deducting the human costs of using it. At the same time, you must support government from land revenues to have a truly free market, because otherwise you will raise taxes from production, trade, and capital formation, interfering with free markets. If you learn this second point, and act on it, you will have a much freer market than any of the OECD nations that now presume to instruct you, and that are campaigning vigorously to make all nations in the world "harmonize" their taxes to conform with their own abysmal systems.

Mason Gaffney: Full Employment, Growth And Progress On A Small Planet: Relieving Poverty While Healing The Earth

Albert Jay Nock — Henry George: Unorthodox American

Progress and Poverty is the first and only thorough, complete, scientific inquiry ever made into the fundamental cause of industrial depressions and involuntary poverty. The ablest minds of the century attacked and condemned it — Professor Huxley, the Duke of Argyll, Goldwin Smith, Leo XIII, Frederic Harrison, John Bright, Joseph Chamberlain. Nevertheless, in a preface to the definitive edition, George said what very few authors of a technical work have ever been able to say, that he had not met with a single criticism or objection that was not fully anticipated and answered in the book itself. For years he debated its basic positions with any one who cared to try, and was never worsted.

... Like John Bright, nearly every one credited the “American inventor” a brand-new discovery in his idea of confiscating economic rent. George did in fact come by the idea independently, but others whom he had never heard of came by it long before him. Precisely the same proposal had been made in the eighteenth century by men whom Mr. Bright might have thought twice about snubbing — the French school known as the Economists, which included Quesnay, Turgot, du Pont de Nemours, Mirabeau, le Trosne, Gournay. They even used the term l’impot unique, “the single tax,” which George’s American disciples arrived at independently, and which George accepted. The idea of confiscating rent also occurred to Patrick Edward Dove at almost the same time that it occurred to George. It had been broached in England almost a century earlier by Thomas Spence, and again in Scotland by William Ogilvie, a professor at Aberdeen. George’s doctrine of the confiscation of social values was also explicitly anticipated by Thomas Paine, in his pamphlet called Agrarian Justice.

George’s especial merit is not that of original discovery, though his discovery was original — as much so as those of Darwin and Wallace. It was simply not new; Turgot had even set forth the principle on which George formulated the law of wages, though George did not know that any one had done so. George’s great merit is that of having worked out his discovery to its full logical length in a complete system, which none of his predecessors did; not only establishing fundamental economics as a true science, but also discerning and clearly marking out its natural relations with history, politics, and ethics. ...read the whole article

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