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| Wealth and Want | |||||||
| ... because democracy alone is not enough to produce widely shared prosperity. | |||||||
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Weld Carter: An Introduction to Henry George
Another area in which George applied these
inherent differences between land and products was the
field of taxation. To determine the incidence of
taxation, George had to know what was to be taxed,
products or the value of land. In each case he traced out
the effect from the essential nature of the thing to be
taxed: "...all taxes upon things of unfixed quantity
increase prices, and in the course of exchange are
shifted from seller to buyer, increasing as they go.
...If we impose a tax upon buildings, the users of
buildings must finally pay it, for the erection of
buildings will cease until building rents become high
enough to pay the regular profit and the tax besides.
...In this way all taxes which add to prices are shifted
from hand to hand, increasing as they go, until they
ultimately rest upon consumers, who thus pay much more
than is received by the government. Now, the way taxes
raise prices is by increasing the cost of production, and
checking supply. But land is not a thing of human
production, and taxes upon...[land value] cannot check
supply. Therefore, though a tax on...[land value] compels
the land owners to pay more, it gives them no power to
obtain more for the use of their land, as it in no way
tends to reduce the supply of land. On the contrary, by
compelling those who hold land on speculation to sell or
let for what they can get, a tax on land values tends to
increase the competition between owners, and thus to
reduce the price of land."
Here, then is another derivative difference between land and products, according to George: taxation on products causes an increase in the price of products; taxation on the value of land causes a drop in the price of land. ... read the whole article |
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Wealth and Want
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... because democracy alone hasn't yet led to a society
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