The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1891-10-07
The Single Tax.
BY W. L. oRosNAN, BOSTON, MASS.

That farmers will never agree to the re-
form known as the single tax is COM
mon objection. 1t is supposed, errone-
ously, that it would rest most heavily
upon them. AT first blush they would,
no doubt, oppose it; but when they once
realize the fact that their sources of
greatest income are their labor and
their stock and improvements, and not
their bare land, they will readily agree
to the change, through the means of
taxation, that will establish justice and
freedom. Farms, the land of which is
valuable, are comparatively few. Not
many farmers could quit working and
live upon ground rent. If taxes were
shifted from products of labor to land
values, the bulk of taxes would be paid
by the owners of city lots and rich
mines, not by farmers; all the stock and
improvements of farmers would be ex-
empt from taxation, and these, not his
land values, constitute the bulk of the
average farmers property. So long as
the tax was merely shifted, the great
majority of farmers would pay smaller
tax than now; when the tax was so in.
creased to absorb economic rent, they
would pay higher direct tax, but they
would then be more than compensated
by the benefits they would derive from
exemptions from indirect taxes and by
their common interest in the common
fund raised by such taxation. More
over, one effect of such tax would
be to make great bodies of accessible
farming land free, so that men desir-
ing to farm could get land without
price or tax and free of rent. What
working farmer would object to putting
the whole annual value of his land, eX-
elusive of improvements, into the COM
mon treasury with the annual value of
all other land? A very full discussion
of the effect of the single tax on the
pecuniary interest of farmers is given
by Henry George in chapter twenty of
"Social Problems," and book nine,
chapter three, of " Progress and Pow
erty." The distinction between a tax
upon land and a tax upon land values
must always be observed. A tax upon
land would be decidedly inexpedient.
Its evil effects would be numerous:
but it is enough to say that it would
perpetuate land monopoly. No one
could use land without paying the tax.
No land would be free. But tax
upon land values would rest only upon
land which had value, and upon that
according to its value. And inasmuch
as, under such a system of taxation,
there could be no speculation in land
values, all land which was not wanted
for use would have no value; for there
would be so much in the market that,
of great quantities of productive land,
no two men would want the same
piece. Such land would pay no tax
Such land would be free. AS popula-
ton increased and invention advanced,
lower grades in point of desrableness
would come into use, whereupon the
next higher grade would acquire value
and pay taxes. Even the best land has
no value so long as only one man wants
It,. When two want it, it has some
value; when million, very great
value. The value of land, therefore, is
not dependent upon its natural pro-
ductiveness, but upon the demand for
1t, and that value which attaches to
land by reason of the increased demand
for its use, and which is due to the
growth of population and public i'm
provements, justly belongs to the whole
community, and should be taken by the
community for the use of national,
state and local government. The me-
cessity for government and the value
of land are both the result of popula-
ton, and the value of the one should
pay the cost of the other.