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THE  A  B  C  OF  TAXATION

This  rental  tax  will  make  compulsory  the  adequate  utilisation ­
  of  natural  bounties  exactly  in  proportion  to  the  growth
of  the  community  and  of  civilisation,  and  will  thus  compel
the  possessors  to  employ  labour,  the  demand  for  which  will
enable  the  labourer  to  obtain  perfectly  just  wages.  The  rental
tax  fund  growing  by  a  natural  law  proportionately  with  the
growth  of  civilisation  will  thus  be  sufficient  for  public  needs
and  capacities  and  therefore  all  taxes  upon  industry  and  upon
the  products  of  industry  may  and  should  be  abolished.  While
the  tax  on  land  values  promotes  industry  and  therefore  increases
private  wealth,  taxes  upon  industry  act  like  a  fine  or  a  punishment ­
  inflicted  upon  industry—they  impede  and  restrain  and
finally  strangle  it.
In  the  desired  condition  of  things  land  would  be  left  in  the
private  possession  of  individuals,  with  full  liberty  on  their
part  to  give,  sell,  or  bequeath  it,  while  the  state  would  levy  on
it  for  public  uses  a  tax  that  should  equal  the  annual  value  of
the  land  itself,  irrespective  of  the  use  made  of  it  or  the  improvements ­
  on  it.
The  only  utility  of  private  ownership  and  dominion  of  land,
as  distinguished  from  possession,  is  the  evil  utility  of  giving
to  the  owners  the  power  to  reap  where  they  have  not  sown,
to  take  the  products  of  the  labour  of  others  without  giving
them  an  equivalent—  the  power  to  impoverish  and  practically
to  reduce  to  a  species  of  slavery  the  masses  of  men,  who  are
compelled  to  pay  to  private  owners  the  greater  part  of  what
they  produce  for  permission  to  live  and  to  labour  in  this  world,
when  they  would  work  upon  the  natural  bounties  for  their  own
account,  and  the  power,  when  men  work  for  wages,  to  compel
them  to  compete  against  one  another  for  the  opportunity  to
labour,  and  to  compel  them  to  consent  to  labour  for  the  lowest
possible  wages—wages  that  are  by  no  means  the  equivalent
of  the  new  value  created  by  the  work  of  the  labourer,  but  are
barely  sufficient  to  maintain  the  labourer  in  a  miserable  existence, ­
  and  even  the  power  to  deny  to  the  labourer  the  opportunity ­
  to  labour  at  all.  This  is  an  injustice  against  the  equal