Economic essays

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Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Title:: The farmers' indemnity / Alvin S. Johnson

Collection:: Economics Books

226 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK sing, would strike up in chorus: “I didn’t raise my boy to be a farmer.” VII One thing is certain: we shall never have a sound, contented, debt-free rural life until the process of farm turnover has been much slowed down. Anything that makes country life more fruitful and agreeable would help: the organization of cooperative societies; the establishment of institutions like the Danish folk schools; university extension; the building up, through a far- sighted urban philanthropy, of the rural church. One could enumerate a thousand things that would help, each in its own small way, and in the aggregate they would help considerably. But we are too impatient a people to throw ourselves enthusias- tically into a program that might not show tangible results for half a century. We insist on remedies that work more promptly and efficaciously. And we can find them if we set about it. In the recent boom period there were thousands and tens of thousands of men who could have sold their farms at a huge advance over the price they had paid, but hesitated until the opportunity passed. They are still holding down those farms and are not very happy over it. Why didn’t they sell? Because the income tax, then heavy, would have taken a big slice of the profit. They thought it wise to wait until the income tax had subsided. Now let us enact a profits tax that will take the whole, or almost the whole of the profit from the sale of land. We will let bygones be bygones, and take present values as our base. Let four-fifths of any advance upon this base go to the community. And that it may not become a new device for plundering the country for the benefit of the city, let the proceeds of the tax be applied locally to the abatement of other taxes. Such a tax would practically abolish the unearned increment subsidy to agriculture. Every buyer of land would have to look to actual earnings, not to rising values, for the return on his capital. This means that on the buyer’s side the process of farm turnover would be retarded. If the prices of farm products rose, as they must sooner or later, a large class of farm owners would find that they were in a privileged position, so long as they held their farms as owners. They would be enjoying the full benefit

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