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Two Neighboring Lots
William F. Buckley, Jr. Henry George and the Single Tax (on C-SPAN's Book Notes)
The effect of this would be that if you have a
parking lot and the Empire State Building next to it,
the tax on the parking lot should be the same as the
tax on the Empire State Building, because you shouldn't
encourage land speculation. Henry George: The Land for the
People (1889 speech)
That is what we propose by what
we call the single tax. We propose to abolish
all taxes for revenue. In place of all the taxes that
are now levied, to impose one single tax, and that a
tax upon the value of land. Mark me, upon the value of
land alone -- not upon the value of improvements, not
upon the value of what the exercise of labor has done
to make land valuable, that belongs to the individual;
but upon the value of the land itself, irrespective of
the improvements, so that an acre of
land that has not been improved will pay as much tax as
an acre of like land that has been improved. So that in
a town a house site on which there is no building shall
be called upon to pay just as much tax as a house site
on which there is a house. Read the whole speech Henry George: Thou
Shalt Not Steal (1887 speech)
What we propose to do is to divide up the rent
that comes from land; and that is a very easy
thing.
We need not disturb anybody in possession, we need not interfere with anybody’s building or anybody’s improvement. We only need to remit taxes on all improvements, on all forms of wealth, and put the tax on the value of the land, exclusive of the improvements, so that the dog-in-the-manger who is holding a piece of vacant land will have to pay the same amount of tax for it as land of similar value with a building or other improvements upon it. In that way we would treat the whole land of such a community as being the common estate of the whole people of the community. ... read the whole article Charles B. Fillebrown: A Catechism of Natural Taxation, from Principles of Natural Taxation (1917) Bill Batt: How Our Towns Got That Way (1996 speech)
Failure to recapture publicly-created land rents
through the tax mechanism provided the incentive to
speculators to buy land, not to use it in production
but to hold it for the rise. In this way, choice
parcels remain undeveloped or underdeveloped relative
to the full extent that their values warrant and
development occurs instead in remote areas where
opportunity for profit is more immediate. The result
was low density development what we know as
sprawl.
To some people this may be counter-intuitive. It may not be obvious that increasing taxes on a parcel of land will foster its improvement. Consider, however, the possibility that there are two parcels of land in roughly the same location and of equal size. You own a vacant parcel and another next to it has a twenty-story building. If only the land-value is taxed you will be paying the same tax revenue as your neighbor. What are you likely to do with your parcel? If you are rational, you will either build a twenty-story building or else sell the land to someone who will. In this way improvements tend to be clustered in high-land-value areas except where it is prohibited, perhaps for a park. ... read the whole article Louis Post: Outlines of Louis F. Post's Lectures, with Illustrative Notes and Charts (1894) — Appendix: FAQ
see also Bill Batt:
How the Railroads Got Us On the Wrong Economic
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Wealth and Want
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