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Usufruct
Google gathers these definitions of USUFRUCT:
- The right to enjoy other goods with the obligation to
preserve them, except where the law authorises otherwise.
www.gruposantander.com/pagina/indice/0,,659_3_2,00.html
- (Legal-Civil Law) The right of enjoying a thing, the
property of which is vested in another, and to draw from
the same all the profit, utility, and advantage which it
may produce, provided it be without altering the
substance of the thing. For example, in Nevada, the
state's water belongs to the people, but is permitted,
through the water rights permitting process, to be used
beneficially by other individuals or entities. www.nalms.org/glossary/lkword_u.htm
- a legal term from the Roman Empire (in Latin,
usufructus), meaning "using the fruit" of land claimed by
the State without injuring or destroying the ecological
infrastructure.
www.maquah.net/We_Have_The_Right_To_Exist/WeHaveTheRight_26Glossary.html
- Usufruct is the legal right to use and derive profit
from property that belongs to another person, as long as
the property is not damaged. In many legal systems of
property, buyers of property may only purchase the
usufruct of the property. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usufruct
Henry George: The
Common Sense of Taxation (1881 article)
The true purposes of government are well stated in the
preamble to the Constitution of the United States, as
they are in the Declaration of Independence. To insure
the general peace, to promote the general welfare, to
secure to each individual the inalienable rights to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — these are
the proper ends of government, and are therefore the ends
which in every scheme of taxation should be kept in
mind.
As to amount of taxation, there is no principle which
imposes any arbitrary limit. Heavy taxation is better for
any community than light taxation, if the increased
revenue be used in doing by public agencies things which
could not be done, or could not be as well and
economically done, by private agencies. Taxes could be
lightened in the city of New York by dispensing with
street-lamps and disbanding the police force. But would a
reduction in taxation gained in this way be for the
benefit of the people of New York and make New York a
more desirable place to live in? Or if it should be found
that heat and light could be conducted through the
streets at public expense and supplied to each house at
but a small fraction of the cost of supplying them by
individual effort, or that the city railroads could be
run at public expense so as to give every one
transportation at very much less than it now costs the
average resident, the increased taxation necessary for
these purposes would not be increased burden, and in
spite of the larger taxation required, New York would
become a more desirable place to live in. It is a mistake
to condemn taxation as bad merely because it is high; it
is a mistake to impose by constitutional provision, as in
many of our States has been advocated, and in some of our
States has been done, any restriction upon the amount of
taxation. A restriction upon the incurring of public
indebtedness is another matter. In nothing is the
far-reaching statesmanship of Jefferson more clearly
shown than in his proposition that all public obligations
should be deemed void after a certain brief term —
a proposition which he grounds upon the self-evident
truth that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living,
and that the dead have no control over it, and can give
no title to any part of it. But restriction upon
public debts is a very different thing from restriction
upon the power of taxation, and reasons which urge the
one do not apply to the other. Nor is increased taxation
necessarily proof of governmental extravagance. Increase
in taxation is in the order of social development, for
the reason that social development tends to the doing of
things collectively that in a ruder state are done
individually, to the giving to government of new
functions and the imposing of new duties. Our public
schools and libraries and parks, our signal service and
fish commissions and agricultural bureaus and grasshopper
investigations, are evidences of this.
But while no limit can be properly fixed for the
amount of taxation, the method of taxation is of supreme
importance. A horse may be anchored by fastening to his
bridle a weight which he will not feel when carried in a
buggy behind him. The best ship may be made utterly
unseaworthy by the bad stowage of a cargo which properly
placed would make her the stiffer and more weatherly. So
enterprise may be palsied, industry crushed, accumulation
prevented, and a prosperous country turned into a desert,
by taxation which rightly levied would hardly be felt.
... read the whole
article
Henry George: The
Crime of Poverty (1885 speech)
Yet that is not any more absurd than our land
titles. From whom do they come? Dead man after dead
man. Suppose you get on the cars here going to Council
Bluffs or Chicago. You find a passenger with his baggage
strewn over the seats. You say: "Will you give me a seat,
if you please, sir?" He replies: "No; I bought this
seat." "Bought this seat? From whom did you buy it?" I
bought it from the man who got out at the last station,"
That is the way we manage this earth of ours.
Is it not a self-evident truth, as
Thomas Jefferson said, that "the land belongs in
usufruct to the living," and
that they who have died have left it, and have no power to
say how it shall be disposed of? Title to land! Where can a
man get any title which makes the earth his property? There
is a sacred right to property — sacred because
ordained by the laws of nature, that is to say, by the laws
of God, and necessary to social order and civilisation.
That is the right of property in things produced by labour;
it rests on the right of a man to himself. That which a man
produces, that is his against all the world, to give or to
keep, to lend, to sell or to bequeath; but how can he get
such a right to land when it was here before he came?
Individual claims to land rest only on appropriation. I
read in a recent number of the "Nineteenth
Century," possibly some of you may have read it, an
article by an ex-prime minister of Australia in which there
was a little story that attracted my attention. It was of a
man named Galahard, who in the early days got up to the top
of a high hill in one of the finest parts of western
Australia. He got up there, looked all around, and made
this proclamation: "All the land that is in
my sight from the top of this hill I claim for myself; and
all the land that is out of sight I claim for my son
John." ... read the
whole speech Henry George: The Wages of Labor
The equality we would bring about is not the
equality of fortune, but the equality of natural
opportunity; the equality that reason and religion alike
proclaim – the equality in usufruct of all His
children to the bounty of Our Father Who art in Heaven!
... read
the whole article
Henry George: The Land for the
People (1889 speech)
... We start out with these two principles, which
I think are clear and self-evident: that which a man
makes belongs to him and can by him be given or sold to
anyone that he pleases. But that which existed before man
came upon the earth, that which was not produced by man,
but which was created by God -- that belongs equally to
all men. As no man made the land, so no man can claim a
right of ownership in the land. As God made the land, and
as we know both from natural perception and from revealed
religion, that God the Creator is no respecter of
persons, that in His eyes all men are equal, so also do
we know that He made this earth equally for all the human
creatures that He has called to dwell upon it. We start
out with this clear principle that as all men are here by
the equal permission of the Creator, as they are all here
under His laws equally requiring the use of land, as they
are all here with equal right to live, so they are all
here with equal right to the enjoyment of His
bounty.
We claim that the land of
Ireland, like the land of every country, cannot
justly belong to any class, whether that class be large
or small; but that the land of Ireland, like the land of
every other country, justly belongs in
usufruct to the whole people of
that country equally, and that no man and no class of men
can have any just right in the land that is not equally
shared by all others. ...
THESE are the plain, simple principles for
which we contend, and our practical measure for restoring
to all men of any country their equal rights in the land
of that country is simply to abolish other taxes, to put
a tax upon the value of land, irrespective of the
improvements, to carry that tax up as fast as we can,
until we absorb the full value of the land, and we say
that that would utterly destroy the monopoly of land and
create a fund for the benefit of the entire
community. How easy a way that is to go from an
unjust situation like the present to an ideally just
situation may be seen among other things in this. Where
you propose to take land for the benefit of the whole
people you are at once met by the demands of the
landlords for compensation. Now, if you tax them, no one
ever heard of such an idea as to compensate a people for
imposing tax.
In that easy way the land can again
be made the property in usufruct of
the whole people, by a gentle and gradual process.
...Read
the whole speech The Most Rev.
Dr Thomas Nulty, Roman Catholic Bishop of Meath (Ireland):
Back to the Land
(1881)
Distinction Between Individual Rights
and Community Rights.
Usufruct, therefore, is the highest form of property that
individuals can hold in land. On the other hand, I
have shown that the cultivator's right of property in the
produce of the land, in the improvements he has made in
the productiveness of the land, and in its undisturbed
occupation as long as he continues to improve it -- that
these various rights are all founded on the strictest
principles of justice, and that their recognition and
protection by the State will secure for the land the
highest culture and improvement it is capable of
receiving, and will draw from it, without fail, the
largest returns of human food it is capable of
yielding.
On these immutable principles of
justice and right, the order, progress and welfare of
society depend. They allow free scope and hold out the
highest encouragement to the fullest development of the
energy and activity of human industry and enterprise, by
securing to everyone the full fruits of his labour, and
recognising in him a right of property to all that his
hands produce. They guarantee to him immunity and
protection from disturbance as long as he devotes himself
with earnestness and zeal to his industrial
pursuits.
On the other hand, if a man, through
indolence or incompetence, allows his land to run wild, to
return to its primitive sterility and barrenness, so as to
produce nothing at all, or at all events, much less than it
is capable of yielding, it is no hardship to that man if
these principles call on him to surrender a trust which he
held from society, and which, to the great detriment of
society, he has so grievously abused.
Finally, it is no injustice to refuse
the remuneration of labour to those who have not laboured
at all. This usufruct, therefore,
is a right of property in land, which is held mainly for
the benefit of the public and for the advancement of the
general interests of the community. And yet the general
interests of the community art hardly distinguishable from
the private interests of the usufructuary. The larger the
amount of permanent improvements made in the soil, and the
richer and more abundant returns it will yield, the better
will it be for both interests.
Public and Private
Interests.
An usufructuary or farmer
who labours might and main for his own self-interests,
labours with the same amount of earnestness and zeal for
the interests of the public as well. But it is the
consideration of the public interests that will determine
the continuity of his occupancy. The continuity of his
occupancy entirely depends on the continuity of its real,
practical effectiveness for the advancement of the
interests of the public. The moment it ceases to be
useful and beneficial to the public welfare, that moment
it ceases to have a right to exist any longer. If
individuals could have a right of Private Property in
Land, that right would not be fettered by these
responsibilities; in fact, it would not be liable to any
responsibility at all. ....
How Political Economists Define
Rent
Adam Smith says: "Rent may be considered as the
produce of those powers of nature the use of which the
landlord lends to the farmer. It is the work of nature
which remains after deducting or compensating all that
can be regarded as the work of man. It is seldom less
than a fourth, and frequently more than a third of the
whole produce." The part then of the agricultural
products of the land which is the result of the
operations of the powers of nature is sometimes more than
a third of the whole -- and that is the Rent of the
landlord.
Ricardo, the inventor of the
celebrated theory of Rent, called after his name (Ricardo's
"Theory of Rent"), defines Rent to be: "That portion of the
produce of the earth which is paid to the landlord for the
use of the original and indestructible powers of the soil.
It is often confounded with the interest and profit of
capital… In the future pages of this work, then,
whenever I speak of the Rent of land, I wish to be
understood as speaking of the compensation which is paid to
the owner of the land for the use of its original and
indestructible properties."
Scrope writes of it: "The value of
land and its power of yielding a Rent are due to two
circumstances. 1. The appropriation of its natural power.
2. The labour applied to its amelioration. Under the first
of these relations Rent is a monopoly. It restricts our
usufruct and enjoyment of the gifts
which God has given to men for the satisfaction of their
wants."
Senior thus speaks of Rent: "The
instruments of production are labour and natural agents.
Natural agents having been appropriated, proprietors charge
for their use under the form of Rent, which is the
recompense of no sacrifice whatever, and is received by
those who have neither laboured nor put by, but who merely
hold out their hands to accept the offerings of the rest of
the community."
McCulloch defines it: "What is
properly termed Rent is the sum paid for the use of the
natural and inherent powers of the soil. It is entirely
distinct from the sum paid for the use of buildings,
enclosures, roads or other ameliorations." Rent is, then,
always a monopoly.
Lastly, Mill says: "The land is the
principal of the natural agents which are capable of being
appropriated, and the consideration paid for its use is
called Rent. . . .It is at once evident that Rent is the
effect of a monopoly."
Landlords Sow Not, But They Reap.
...
... The prices, therefore, of "the
raw products" thus ranging very high, the value of the
soil which produced them also rises enormously; indeed,
the vast sums which the nation pays for its food, for
nearly all the necessaries and many of the luxuries of
life, pass directly, and with little expense or trouble,
into the hands of those who hold the ownership of the
land, with the single deduction of the remuneration due
to the usufructuaries or farmers. Read the whole
letter
Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a themed
collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry
George (with links to sources)
NATURE acknowledges no ownership or control in man
save as the result of exertion. In no other way can her
treasures be drawn forth, her powers directed, or her
forces utilized or controlled. She makes no
discriminations among men, but is to all absolutely
impartial. She knows no distinction between master and
slave, king and subject, saint and sinner. All men to her
stand upon an equal footing and have equal rights. She
recognizes no claim but that of labor, and recognizes
that without respect to the claimant. If a pirate spread
his sails, the wind will fill them as well as it will
fill those of a peaceful merchantman or missionary bark;
if a king and a common man be thrown overboard, neither
can keep his head above the water except by swimming;
birds will not come to be shot by the proprietor of the
soil any quicker than they will come to be shot by the
poacher; fish will bite or will not bite at a hook in
utter disregard as to whether it is offered them by a
good little boy who goes to Sunday school, or a bad
little boy who plays truant; grain will grow only as the
ground is prepared and the seed is sown; it is only at
the call of labor that ore can be raised from the mine;
the sun shines and the rain falls alike upon just and
unjust. The laws of nature are the decrees of the
Creator. There is written in them no recognition of any
right save that of labor; and in them is written broadly
and clearly the equal right of all men to the use and
enjoyment of nature; to apply to her by their exertions,
and to receive and possess her reward. Hence, as nature
gives only to labor, the exertion of labor in production
is the only title to exclusive possession. —
Progress & Poverty
— Book VII, Chapter 1, Justice of the Remedy:
Injustice of private property in land
PRIVATE property is not of one species, and moral
sanction can no more be asserted universally of it than
of marriage. That proper marriage conforms to the law of
God does not justify the polygamic or polyandric or
incestuous marriages that are in some countries permitted
by the civil law. And as there may be immoral marriage,
so may there be immoral private property. —
The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo
XIII
THAT any species of property is permitted by the State,
does not of itself give it moral sanction. The State has
often made things property that are not justly property
but involve violence and robbery. —
The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo
XIII
TO attach to things created by God the same right of
private ownership that justly attaches to things produced
by labor, is to impair and deny the true rights of
property. For a man, who out of the proceeds of his labor
is obliged to pay another man for the use of ocean or air
or sunshine or soil, all of which are to men involved in
the single term land, is in this deprived of his rightful
property, and thus robbed. —
The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo
XIII
HOW then is it that we are called deniers of the right of
property? It is for the same reason that caused
nine-tenths of the good people in the United States,
north as well as south, to regard abolitionists as
deniers of the right of property; the same reason that
made even John Wesley look on a smuggler as a kind of
robber, and on a custom-house seizer of other men's goods
as a defender of law and order. Where violations of
the right of property have been long sanctioned by
custom and law, it is inevitable that those who really
assert the right of property will at first be thought to
deny it. For under such circumstances the idea of
property becomes confused, and that is thought to be
property which is in reality a violation of property.
—
A Perplexed Philosopher
(The Right Of Property And The Right Of
Taxation)
LANDLORDS must elect to try their case either by human
law or by moral law. If they say that land is
rightly property because made so by human law, they
cannot charge those who would change that law with
advocating robbery. But if they charge that such
change in human law would be robbery, then they must show
that land is rightfully property irrespective of human
law. — The Reduction to Iniquity (a reply to
the Duke of Argyll), The Nineteenth Century, July,
1884
... go to "Gems from
George"
Louis Post: Outlines
of Louis F. Post's Lectures, with Illustrative Notes and
Charts (1894) — Appendix: FAQ
Q32. Is not ownership of land necessary to induce
its improvement? Does not history show that private
ownership is a step in advance of common
ownership?
A. No. Private use was doubtless a step in advance of
common use. And because private use seems to us to have
been brought about under the institution of private
ownership, private ownership appears to the superficial
to have been the real advance. But a little observation
and reflection will remove that impression. Private
ownership of land is not necessary to its private use.
And so far from inducing improvement, private ownership
retards it. When a man owns land he may accumulate wealth
by doing nothing with the land, simply allowing the
community to increase its value while he pays a merely
nominal tax, upon the plea that he gets no income from
the property. But when the possessor has to pay the value
of his land every year, as he would have to under the
single tax, and as ground renters do now, he must improve
his holding in order to profit by it. Private possession
of land, without profit except from use, promotes
improvement; private ownership, with profit regardless of
use, retards improvement. Every city in the world, in its
vacant lots, offers proof of the statement. It is the
lots that are owned, and not those that are held upon
ground-lease, that remain vacant.
Q53. Is it true that men are equally entitled to
land? Are they not entitled to it in proportion to their
use of it?
A. Yes, they are entitled to it in proportion to their
use of it and it is this title that the single tax would
secure. It would allow every one to possess as much land
as he wished, upon the sole condition that if it has a
value he shall account to the community for that value
and for nothing else; all that he produces from the land
above its value being absolutely his, free even from
taxation. The single tax is the method best adapted to
our circumstances, and to orderly conditions, for
limiting possession of land to its use. By making it
unprofitable to hold land except for use, or to hold more
than can be used to advantage, it constitutes every man
his own judge of the amount and the character of the land
that he can use.... read the book
Charles B. Fillebrown: A Catechism of Natural
Taxation, from Principles of Natural Taxation
(1917)
Q3. What is meant by economic rent?
A. Gross ground rent -- the annual site value of land --
what land, including any quality or content of the land
itself, is worth annually for use -- what the land does
or would command for use per annum if offered in open
market -- the annual value of the exclusive use in
control of a given area of land, involving the enjoyment
of those "rights and privileges thereto pertaining" which
are stipulated in every title deed, and which, enumerated
specifically, are as follows: right and ease of access
to
* water, and
* health inspection,
* sewerage,
* fire protection,
* police,
* schools,
* libraries,
* museums,
* parks,
* playgrounds,
* steam and electric railway service,
* gas and electric lighting,
* telegraph and telephone service,
* subways,
* ferries,
* churches,
* public schools,
* private schools,
* colleges,
* universities,
* public buildings --
utilities which depend for their efficiency and
economy on the character of the government; which
collectively constitute the economic and social
advantages of the land which are due to the presence and
activity of population, and are inseparable therefrom,
including the benefit of proximity to, and command of,
facilities for commerce and communication with the world
-- an artificial value created primarily through public
expenditure of taxes. For the sake of brevity, the
substance of this definition may be conveniently
expressed as the value of "proximity." It is ordinarily
measured by interest on investment plus taxes.
Q50. How could the landowner escape the alleged
burden of an increase in his land tax?
A. Simply by assuming the legitimate role of a model
landlord, by putting his land to suitable use, in
providing for tenants at lowest possible price the best
accommodations and facilities appropriate to the
situation that money can buy.
Q58. What expected result of the single tax needs
studious emphasis?
A. That it would unlock the land to labor at its present
value for use, instead of locking out labor from the land
by a prohibitive price based upon the future value for
use. ... read
the whole article
Thomas Jefferson:
William F. Buckley, Jr. Henry George and the Single
Tax (on C-SPAN's Book Notes)
John Locke: "The earth belongs in usufruct to
the living and is given as a common stock for men to live
and Labor on."
a synopsis of Robert V. Andelson and James
M. Dawsey: From
Wasteland to Promised land: Liberation Theology for a
Post-Marxist World
By equalizing opportunity, political and economic
liberation tend to draw both poor and rich into the
middle class. As an expression of social justice, this
constitutes a genuine advance, ethical as well as
material. But it is no easy guarantee of spiritual
gain.conscientization" (roughly, consciousness-raising
through social commitment), emphasized and refined by
liberation theology, must continue although in a
different vein. The Kingdom of God will flourish only
when outward liberation gives rise to inward liberation,
a victory over the limitations of the bourgeois
ethos.
"The Earth Is the Lord's" (Psalm 24:1). This
statement tells us something about God. He is attached to
the land and loves it. He is not a spiritual abstraction
oblivious to the Wasteland in which we live. God is the
maker of the world of eating and sleeping, working and
begetting. It also tells us something of our place in
this world. With God as the true owner
of the earth, every person has a right to the produce
which equitable usufruct yields
to his or her efforts.
Middle-class traits include virtues such as
industry, thrift, restraint, commercial and professional
rectitude, but, on the other hand, low prudentialism,
self-satisfaction, and an inclination to regard material
well-being as a sign of righteousness. Hence, even in the
Promised Land, what Paulo Freire calls " To recognize
that "the earth is the Lord's" is to see that the same
God who established communities has also in his
providence ordained for them, through the land itself, a
just source of revenue. Yet, in the Wasteland in which we
live, this revenue goes mainly into the pockets of
monopolists, while communities meet their needs by
extorting individuals the fruits of their honest toil. If
ever there were any doubt that structural sin exists, our
present system of taxation is the proof. Everywhere we
see governments penalizing individuals for their industry
and creativity, while the socially produced value of land
is reaped by speculators in exact proportion to the land
which they withhold. The greater the Wasteland, the
greater the reward. Does this comport with any divine
plan, or notion of justice and human rights? Or does it
not, rather, perpetuate the Wasteland and prevent the
realization of the Promised Land?
This not meant to suggest that
land monopolists and speculators have a corner on
acquisitiveness or the "profit motive," which is a
well-nigh universal fact of human nature. As a group,
they are no more sinful than are people at large, except
to the degree that they knowingly obstruct reforms aimed
at removing the basis of exploitation. Many abide by the
dictum: "If one has to live under a corrupt system, it is
better to be a beneficiary than a victim of
it."
But they do not have to live
under a corrupt system; no one does. The profit motive
can be channeled in ways that are socially desirable as
well as in ways that are socially destructive. Let us
give testimony to our faith that the earth is the Lord's
by building a social order in which there are no
victims.
Read the whole
synopsis
Bill Batt: How Our
Towns Got That Way (1996 speech)
... Rutgers Professor of Urban Planning Donald
Krueckeberg more recently explained how real property
became for the first time a "commodity," much as the
market gives personal property exchange value. Native
Americans tied the concept of property not to ownership
but to use. "One used it, one moved on, and use was
shared with others." But the colonists took their
notion of real property from evolving British legal
tradition, defined largely in terms of what its owners
could subdue and control against challengers. John
Locke's conception of property was, in one sense, more
akin to the Indian notion in as much as one owned it
only to the extent that one "mixed one's labor" with
it.
Indeed the most widespread notion of
property ownership, especially in realms where Roman law
had left no legacy, was title in usufruct, meaning
title to use. But that meaning has gradually given way to
the prevailing conception of title in fee simple, even
though legal constraints have grown to curtail abuses of
such ownership and are even seen sometimes as assaults on
it. Krueckeberg notes that as many as nine kinds of
property rights have been distinguished:
- possession,
- use,
- alienation (the power to give
away),
- consumption,
- modification,
- destruction,
- management,
- exchange, and ...
read
the whole article
Bill Batt: The
Compatibility of Georgist Economics and Ecological
Economics
Georgists' assumptions about property
ownership rest upon premises profoundly different from
their conventional use in western society — indeed
increasingly in world society. In the discourse of legal
philosophy, the notion of property and ownership are
better understood as a collection of legal rights and
responsibilities among people; for example, the right to
possess, to use, to capitalize, to manage, and to retain
the income from such.18 If one disaggregates these
rights, one has a far clearer understanding of the
potential array of socio-economic arrangements that are
possible. The primary distinction to Georgists is that
between ownership for use and ownership for gain. More
will be said about the merit of this division at a later
point, but it should be noted even here that the
distinction is ancient,19 and has had expression at various
times in human history long before the appearance of
Henry George. Two sets of contrasting terms are often
employed to distinguish the separate notions of
ownership:
- leasehold versus freehold, or
- usufruct title versus fee-simple
title.
In fact compensation for land held in usufruct was
far more often in kind than it was in money. Typically,
in Middle Eastern as well as in Asian societies, a
percentage of a crop or of other products gained from the
land were accepted as just payment for its use, paid
usually to a king or nobleman in exchange for services
which they in turn were expected to provide. This usually
meant the protection against ravaging bands, arbitration
of disputes, provision of sustenance in times of
emergency, and so on. The pattern of leasehold ownership
with either in-kind services, goods, or later fees paid
to lords and kings is the hallmark feature of feudalism,
widely known not only in the European past but throughout
Asia and prehistoric Central American
civilizations.
In the Georgist context a
titleholder has the right to ownership of land in
usufruct, but not in fee simple. As long as an owner uses
land and other elements of nature in accord with the
rules and laws of society, one retains a possessory
interest. That interest extends to the privilege
to use land for all purposes consistent with its proper
maintenance and care. It extends even in some cases to
the right to preclude others from any trespass at all.
But what it typically does not include
is the right to any speculative gain that would follow
from title in freehold, or the right to use land beyond
what it is capable of sustaining. Use implies that
its quality is not diminished for the future availability
of others, and that there is an obligation for the user
to pay to society a just price in exchange for such use.
One had no right, for example, to strip a forest of its
trees. Enough is known now about the arrangements of land
ownership and use in comparative perspective to assert
with confidence that the historical practice of title in
fee simple or freehold has been far more the exception
than rule.20
Taking the long view of history, title in usufruct has
been by far the more common pattern of ownership of
natural resources, except where Roman jurisprudence and
its offspring have spread throughout the world and come
to dominate. ...
The heart of George’s economics was, in a
way, Biblical. As the son of a religious book publisher
born in Philadelphia, he had adequate opportunity to
witness the early growth of the American republic in a
unique way. On his own in San Francisco and responsible
for a wife and child at a young age, his first effort at
resolving the puzzles of injustice were a manuscript
printed in 1871. But only after additional exposure to
Ricardian rent theory was he able to refine his ideas
such that they could form the basis of his Progress and Poverty eight years later. His
Christian roots led him to a deep commitment to the basic
moral equality of all people; his challenge was to find a
way to ensure that this equality was manifest in economic
fairness.
As noted earlier, the starting point of Georgist
philosophy is that nature belongs to owners only in
usufruct and not in freehold.
Because any monetary wealth that accrued to that nature
stemmed directly from the physical presence of people and
was therefore social in character, the resulting added
increment of value that constituted rent belonged in turn
to the community that created it. Nature would have no
economic price without people. Hence rent was the
community’s entitlement and not that of
individuals, and the land rent that accrued to parcels as
a result of social investment should be returned to
— recaptured by — the community. It was obvious to George that the wealthiest people
in the nation usually owed their fortune not to the sweat
of their brow or the inventiveness of their minds. Rather
their position was due to their success as land
speculators, to an increase in rent on land they had
captured title to, land rightfully belonging to
all. The earth and all its product, he argued, was
the common heritage of humanity, a birthright of all
people. ... read the whole
article
see also Bill Batt: How the Railroads Got Us On
the Wrong Economic Track
Frank Stilwell and Kirrily Jordan: The Political Economy of Land:
Putting Henry George in His Place
Georgism has a distinctive ethical basis. So a review
of the contemporary relevance of Georgist political
economy can usefully begin by making this explicit. The
key moral issue is the private appropriation of public
wealth. As George recognised, land is a ‘gift from
nature’ and, as such, is rightfully a community
resource. Hence, those deriving benefits from the private
ownership of land should recompense the community for the
privilege. This principle has strong echoes of the idea
of ‘usufruct’, a pre-capitalist term denoting
a person’s legal right to use and accrue benefits
from property that does not belong to them. In return,
the user is obliged to keep the property in good repair
and pay all costs as a ‘ground rent’
(‘Lectric Law Library, n.d). The concept of
‘usufruct’ has fallen out of common usage, so
one hesitates to try to revive it. Moreover, as Richards
(2002) notes, ‘it is difficult to image how this
word could be employed, or brought back into circulation,
in the modern world, since we live in a world in which
people tend to be remarkably unsympathetic to the
property rights or claims of others’.
However, the principle of ‘usufruct’ goes
to the heart of the question of how best to balance
collective and individual rights and interests.
George’s solution of a tax on the value of land
squarely addresses this issue. By returning a proportion
of the land value to the community in the form of
taxation revenue, restitution would be paid for the use
of a community resource. This is an ethical justification
for land taxation. ... read the whole
article
Walter Rybeck and Ronald Pasquariello:
Combating
Modern-day Feudalism: Land as God’s
Gift
Private vs. common property. We utterly
misunderstand the land issue unless we acknowledge the
distinction between the value of the land itself and the
value of labor on the land. The institution of private
property has a sound foundation -- the proposition that
people have a right to the fruits of their labor; that is,
to the output of their mental and physical efforts. We are
not questioning the legitimacy of earnings that landholders
or others derive from buildings or production on the land.
People who build homes, factories or offices, or who
produce various types of goods and services, have a solid
ethical claim to what they have created. However, the land
itself, as our biblical forbears realized, does not meet
this criterion. "The
earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof"
(Ps. 24:1).
God’s
gift of the land does not confer absolute ownership. We are
free to use it, enjoy it and benefit from it, but God
retains ownership. We serve as God’s caretakers, or
tenants, on the land. Jefferson recognized this gift,
saying that land belonged in usufruct -- in trust -- to the living. Sir
William Blackstone, the preeminent authority on English
law, wrote in his Commentaries: "The earth and all
things therein are the general property of all mankind,
from the gift of the creator."
This idea of
the land belonging to all humanity, to the community as a
whole, is not entirely inoperative today. National parks,
school grounds, public building sites, many wilderness
areas, lakes and ocean fronts are recognized as the common
property of all.
... Read
the whole
article
Everett Gross: Explaining Rent
Sometimes it's difficult for people to understand the
meaning of "rent" as an economic concept. One way
I have of explaining it doesn't use the word rent. I
just use a little analogy.
I'm from Crete, Nebraska. It's a small town of 5,000
people.
Suppose a man comes to Crete, and he wants to start
a business. He needs a building, but first he needs a
piece of ground to build this new building on. So he
looks up a real estate agent, describes what he wants,
and the real estate agent shows him a parcel that's
just right for his needs. The man asks the agent, "All
right, now how much money do you want for this land?"
The agent says, "It's worth $50,000." The man says,
"Why is it worth $50,000?" And the real estate agent
points out that "The school is good, the roads are
good, the police department is good, the rescue crew is
good and very fast, and business is good here."
So the man says "Yeah, I believe that $50,0000
is a fair price. I'll take it. How do I pay the $50,000
to the school people, and the road people, and the
police department? To whom do I pay the $50,000?" And
the real estate agent says, "Oh no. You don't pay it to
them. You pay it to the person who owned the land
before."
The man says, "But who supports the schools, and the
roads, and the police, and the other good things?" And
the real estate agent says, "If you build, then
you'll pay for them again."
The buyer then asks, "And what will the previous
owner do for me for my $50,000?" The real estate
man answers, "Nothing! Nothing at all!"
Now I don't need to use the word "rent" in that
explanation. ...read
the whole article, including Dave Wetzel's take on
it
Henry George: The Condition of Labor
— An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII in response to
Rerum Novarum (1891)
The darkness in light, the weakness in strength, the
poverty amid wealth, the seething discontent foreboding
civil strife, that characterize our civilization of
today, are the natural, the inevitable results of our
rejection of God’s beneficence, of our ignoring of
his intent. Were we on the other hand to follow his
clear, simple rule of right, leaving scrupulously to the
individual all that individual labor produces, and taking
for the community the value that attaches to land by the
growth of the community itself, not merely could evil
modes of raising public revenues be dispensed with, but
all men would be placed on an equal level of opportunity
with regard to the bounty of their Creator, on an equal
level of opportunity to exert their labor and to enjoy
its fruits. And then, without drastic or
restrictive measures the forestalling of land would
cease. For then the possession of land would mean only
security for the permanence of its use, and there would
be no object for any one to get land or to keep land
except for use; nor would his possession of better land
than others had confer any unjust advantage on him, or
unjust deprivation on them, since the equivalent of the
advantage would be taken by the state for the benefit of
all. ...
Nor do we seek any “futile and ridiculous
equality.” We recognize, with you, that there must
always be differences and inequalities. In so far as
these are in conformity with the moral law, in so far as
they do not violate the command, “Thou shalt not
steal,” we are content. We do not seek to better
God’s work; we seek only to do his will. The
equality we would bring about is not the equality of
fortune, but the equality of natural opportunity; the
equality that reason and religion alike proclaim —
the equality in usufruct of all his children to
the bounty of Our Father who art in Heaven. ...
read the whole
letter
Bill Batt: Comment on Parts of the
NYS Legislative Tax Study Commission's 1985 study
“Who Pays New York Taxes?”
Henry George’s Solution: Taxing the Flow of Land
Rent
If land values are really the present values of
anticipated future ground rents, one can certainly treat
them as flows rather than stocks, just as community
services are continuous flows. The amount of rent flowing
through a site and through the economy is not negligible;
what estimates have been made, where indeed the economic
data allow it to be made, suggest that it is roughly a
third of a nation’s GDP.29 The question is whether
it makes more sense to. Should we elect to continue
property tax regimes as we do, it would make better sense
to tax buildings as stocks and lands as rent flows. But
this raises the question whether real property should be
exempt from all taxes, as some have argued.30 What
rationale exists for taxing lands, whether as stocks or
flows; and why do we tax buildings? I will argue below
that taxing buildings and the failure to adequately tax
land both have deleterious consequences for the whole
economy.
Little justification exists for taxing buildings, or
improvements of any sort, so this question is easily
disposed of. The practice is explained largely as a
matter of historical inertia. Only in the recent century
or two have buildings represented any significant capital
value; prior to the rise of major cities, the value of
real property lay essentially in land. American cities
today typically record aggregate assessed land values
– at least when the valuations are well-done
– at about 40% to 60% of total taxable value, that
is, of land and buildings taken together.31 Skyscrapers
reflect enormous capital investment, and this expenditure
is warranted because of the enormous value of locational
sites. Each site gets its market price from the fact that
the total neighborhood context creates an attractive
market presence and ambience. By taxing buildings,
however, we impose a penalty on their optimum development
as well as on the incentives for their maintenance.
Moreover, taxes on buildings take away from whatever
burden would otherwise be imposed on sites, with the
result that incentives for their highest and best use is
weakened. Lastly, the technical and administrative
challenges of properly assessing the value of
improvements is daunting, particularly since they must be
depreciated for tax and accounting purposes, evaluated
for potential replacement, and so on. In fact most costs
associated with administration of property taxation and
appeal litigation involve disputes over the valuation of
structures, not land values.
Land value taxation, on the other hand, overcomes all
these obstacles. Locations are the beneficiaries of
community services whether they are improved or not. As
has been forcefully argued by this writer and others
elsewhere,32 a tax on land value conforms to all the
textbook principles of sound tax theory. Some further
considerations are worth reviewing, however, when looking
at ground rent as a flow rather than as a “present
value” stock. The technical ability to trace
changes in the market prices of sites – or as can
also be understood, the variable flow of ground rent to
those sites – by the application of GIS (geographic
information systems) real-time recording of sales
transactions invites wholesale changes in the maintenance
of cadastral data. The transmittal of sales records as
typically received in the offices of local governments
for purposes of title registration over to
Assessors’ offices allows for the possibility of a
running real-time mapping of market values. Given also
that GIS algorithms can now calculate the land value
proportions reasonably accurately, this means that
“landvaluescapes” are easily created in ways
analogous to maps that portray other common geographic
features. These landvaluescapes reflect the flow of
ground rent through local or regional economies, and can
also be used to identify the areas of greatest market
vitality and enterprise. The flow of economic rent can
easily be taxed in ways that overcomes the mistaken
notion that it is a stock. Just as income is recognized
as a flow of money, rent too can (and should) be
understood as such.
The question still begs to be answered, “why tax
land?” And what happens when we don’t tax
land? Henry George answered this more than a century ago
more forcefully and clearly, perhaps, than anyone has
since. He recognized full well that the economic surplus
not expended by human hands or minds in the production of
capital wealth gravitates to land. Particular land sites
come to reflect the value of their strategic location for
market exchanges by assuming a price for their monopoly
use. Regardless whether those who acquire title to such
sites use them to the full extent of their potential, the
flow of rent to such locations is commensurate with their
full capacity. This is why John Stuart Mill more than a
century ago observed that, “Landlords grow richer
in their sleep without working, risking or economizing.
The increase in the value of land, arising as it does
from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to
the community and not to the individual who might hold
title.”33 Absent its recovery by taxation this rent
becomes a “free lunch” to opportunistically
situated titleholders. When offered for sale, the
projected rental value is capitalized in the present
value for purposes of attaching a market price and sold
as a commodity. Yet simple justice calls for the recovery
in taxes what is the community’s creation.
Moreover, the failure to recover the land rent connected
to sites makes it necessary to tax productive activities
in our economy, and this leads to economic and technical
inefficiency known as “deadweight loss.”34 It
means that the economy performs suboptimally.
Land, and by this Henry George meant any natural
factor of production not created by human hands or minds,
is ours only to use, not to buy or sell as a commodity.
In the equally immortal words of Jefferson a century
earlier, “The earth belongs in usufruct to
the living; . . . [It is] given as a common
stock for men to labor and live on.”35 This passage
likely needs a bit of parsing for the modern reader. The
word usufruct, understood since Roman times, has almost
passed from use today. It means “the right to use
the property of another so long as its value is not
diminished.”36 Note also that Jefferson regarded
the earth as a “common stock;” not allotted
to individuals with possessory titles. Only the phrase
“to the living” might be subject to challenge
by forward-looking environmentalists who, taking an idea
from Native American cultures, argue that “we do
not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it
from our children.” The presumption that real
property titles are acquired legitimately is a claim that
does not withstand scrutiny; rather all such titles owe
their origin ultimately to force or fraud.37
If we own the land sites that we occupy only in
usufruct, and the rent that derives from
those sites is due to community enterprise, it is not a
large logical leap to argue that the community’s
recovery of that rent should be the proper source of
taxation. This is the Georgist argument: that the
recapture of land rent is the proper – indeed the
natural – source of taxation.38 ... read the whole
commentary
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