Both, after all, need land on which to produce. Therefore, the returns to one cannot long increase at the expense of the other. Labor and capital seek to engage in the production of wealth, and gain a return for it. To do that, they must have land. But the landowner can command a payment from them, not because of any contribution to production, but merely for access to natural opportunities.
Land speculators can increase their income by denying land access to labor and capital.
That is the true opposition. Because of confusion regarding the term interest , many writers prefer to restrict the term to the sense of bank interest , or the return on money that is loaned. For the return to capital, which George called economic interest , they use another term such as capital yield . Because there is no unanimity about this usage, however, in this course we continue to use the term interest as Henry George defined it.