THE tax upon land values is the most just and equal of
all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from
society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in
proportion to the benefit they receive. It is the taking
by the community, for the use of the community, of that
value which is the creation of the community. It is the
application of the common property to common uses. When
all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the
community, then will the equality ordained by nature be
attained. No citizen will have an advantage over any
other citizen save as is given by his industry, skill,
and intelligence; and each will obtain what he fairly
earns. Then, but not till then, will labor get its full
reward, and capital its natural return. —
Progress & Poverty
— Book VIII, Chapter 3, Application of the Remedy:
The Proposition Tried by the Canons of Taxation
HERE is a provision made by natural law for the
increasing needs of social growth; here is an adaptation
of nature by virtue of which the natural progress of
society is a progress toward equality not toward
inequality; a centripetal force tending to unity growing
out of and ever balancing a centrifugal force tending to
diversity. Here is a fund belonging to society as a
whole, from which without the degradation of alms,
private or public, provision can be made for the weak,
the helpless, the aged; from which provision can be made
for the common wants of all as a matter of common right
to each. —
Social Problems
— Chapter 19, The First Great Reform
NOT only do all economic considerations point to a tax
on land values as the proper source of public revenues;
but so do all British traditions. A land tax of four
shillings in the pound of rental value is still nominally
enforced in England, but being levied on a valuation made
in the reign of William III, it amounts in reality to not
much over a penny in the pound. With the abolition of
indirect taxation this is the tax to which men would
naturally turn. The resistance of landholders would bring
up the question of title, and thus any movement which
went so far as to propose the substitution of direct for
indirect taxation must inevitably end in a demand for the
restoration to the British people of their birthright.
— Protection or Free Trade— Chapter
27: The Lion in the Way -
econlib
THE feudal system, which is not peculiar to Europe but
seems to be the natural result of the conquest of a
settled country by a race among whom equality and
individuality are yet strong, clearly recognized, in
theory at least, that the land belongs to society at
large, not to the individual. Rude outcome of an age in
which might stood for right as nearly as it ever can (for
the idea of right is ineradicable from the human mind,
and must in some shape show itself even in the
association of pirates and robbers), the feudal system
yet admitted in no one the uncontrolled and exclusive
right to land. A fief was essentially a a trust, and to
enjoyment was annexed obligation. The sovereign,
theoretically the representative of the collective power
and rights of the whole people, was in feudal view the
only absolute owner of land. And though land was granted
to individual possession, yet in its possession were
involved duties, by which the enjoyer of its revenues was
supposed to render back to the commonwealth an equivalent
for the benefits which from the delegation of the common
right he received. —
Progress &Poverty
— Book VII, Chapter 4, Justice of the Remedy:
Private Property in Land Historically Considered
THE abolition of the military tenures in England by
the Long Parliament, ratified after the accession of
Charles II, though simply an appropriation of public
revenues by the feudal landowners, who thus got rid of
the consideration on which they held the common property
of the nation, and saddled it on the people at large in
the taxation of all consumers, has been long
characterized, and is still held up in the law books, as
a triumph of the spirit of freedom. Yet here is the
source of the immense debt and heavy taxation of England.
Had the form of these feudal dues been simply changed
into one better adapted to the changed times, English
wars need never have occasioned the incurring of debt to
the amount of a single pound, and the labor and capital
of England need not have been taxed a single farthing for
the maintenance of a military establishment. All this
would have come from rent, which the landholders since
that time have appropriated to themselves — from
the tax which land ownership levies on the earnings of
labor and capital. The landholders of England got their
land on terms which required them even in the sparse
population of Norman days to put in the field, upon call,
sixty thousand perfectly equipped horsemen, and on the
further condition of various fines and incidents which
amounted to a considerable part of the rent. It would
probably be a low estimate to put the pecuniary value of
these various services and dues at one-half the rental
value of the land. Had the landholders been kept to this
contract and no land been permitted to be inclosed except
upon similar terms, the income accruing to the nation
from English land would today be greater by many millions
than the entire public revenues of the United Kingdom.
England today might have enjoyed absolute free trade.
There need not have been a customs duty, an excise,
license or income tax, yet all the present expenditures
could be met, and a large surplus remain to be devoted to
any purpose which would conduce to the comfort or
well-being of the whole people. —
Progress &Poverty
— Book VII, Chapter 4, Justice of the Remedy:
Private Property in Land Historically
Considered
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