THE A B C OF TAXATION
12
that a vacant lot was bought fifty years ago for
$i,ooo, which to-day is worth 110,000. The chances
are that when the purchaser paid his original 11,000,
the people, in one capacity or another, paid for
the same year $50 to maintain that purchase value,
and that for forty-nine years thereafter the people
have paid in annual arithmetical progression up to
I500 for the present year. The purchaser paid 11,000
in one payment. The people have paid during the
fifty years an average of $250 a year to maintain this
value. On the part of the people it has been not
unlike a continuous purchase in the proportion of
I250 a year of the people’s tax money to $50 a year of
the purchaser’s interest money.
In addition to whatever income the purchaser has
received, he possesses to-day 110,000 worth of land,
while the people possess nothing except an outgo of
5 per cent in maintenance, offset in small part by an
income of per cent in tax. Such an inheritance
would usually be counted worse than nothing. Is it
not reasonable that the community should derive
profit from its part in this transaction, by appropriating
to its own use the one-half at least of that ground
rent that is manifestly created by the simple expenditure
of its taxes? Why should not taxes, all of which
are spent upon the land, be taken from the land?*
* E. Benjamin Andrews, formerly President of Brown University, said at
Saratoga, N. Y., in 1890:
“To turn the golden stream of economic rent partly or mostly into the
State’s treasury, where it would relieve the public of taxation in burdensome
forms, seems to be extraordinarily desirable. I by no means concur in all the
reasons which many assign for this; nor should I expect from it, even if carried
to Mr. George’s length, more than half the benefits to society which he anticipates.
Still the proposition to lay the main tax on land impresses me as just,
safe, accordant with the best canons of public finance, and in fact, every way
excellent.”
