THE SINGLE TAX 
155 
Question is under all these. Where it leaves off, these 
begin. A single taxer may be any of these. All these 
should be single taxers. 
The Argument 
The argument in the case may be put briefly as 
follows; 
The three economic legs necessary and sufficient 
whereupon the single tax stool may firmly stand are 
found in three generic peculiarities quite exceptional in 
their nature, which distinguish land from houses or 
other man-made products. The failure to recognise 
this distinction is, we believe, sufficient to account for 
the crookedness of present systems of taxation. Such 
a recognition must lie at the very foundation of any 
just system of the future. 
These three attributes, firmly grounded in orthodox 
economics, are, in economic language, as follows: 
a The site value of land is a social product. 
b A land tax cannot be “shifted.” 
c The selling value of land is an untaxed value. 
These three fundamentals are worthy of brief 
separate consideration. 
a First in order is the fact that land value is a 
social product, i. e., it is created principally by the 
community through its activities, industries, and 
expenditures. The value of land is based primarily 
upon economic rent, defined as “what land is worth 
for use,” what it would command in the open market. 
Strictly speaking this “worth for use” usually 
attaches not to the land itself, not to the earth’s surface, 
not to the inherent capabilities of the soil, not to light 
and air or other bounties of nature resident in the land,