The ABC of taxation

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1010741608

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-21094

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Fillebrown, Charles Bowdoin

Title:: The ABC of taxation

Edition:: Fourth edition specially revised

Place of publication:: Garden City, New York

Publisher:: Doubleday, Page & Company

Year of publication:: 1916

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (236 Seiten)

Digitisation:: 2018

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part III. Other essays and addresses

Collection:: Economics Books

created is clearly by the law of justice a public fund, not merely, because the value is a growth that comes to the natural bounties which God gave to the community in the beginning, but also, and much more, because it is a value produced by the com munity itself, so that this rental value belongs to the community by that best of titles, namely, producing, making, or creating. To permit any portion of this public property to go into private pockets, without a perfect equivalent being paid into the public treasury, would be an injustice to the community. Therefore the whole rental fund should be appropriated to common or public uses. 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 improve ments 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. Thus it should be clear that what people need to see in order to incline them to the single tax is not so much “the wrong of private ownership” —a phrase which often both violates and confuses their moral sense — but “the wrong of the private appropriation of ground rent” — a phrase which does neither. It does not necessarily follow from this characterisa tion of a doctrine as morally sound, that what is right in principle may not be wrong in method. As to method, Dr. McGlynn was in accord with Henry George in his mature conclusion, given in his own words* that “we can only accomplish the change we seek by the slow process of educating men to demand it. In the very nature of things it can only come slowly, and step ♦ “Saratoga Discussion, 1 ” 1880, p. 78.

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