GROUND  RENT  A  SOCIAL  PRODUCT  21

11,000  than  has  Jones  over  the  facilities  afforded  by
society  for  the  promotion  of  private  business.
IX.—The  Tax  Imposed  by  Time
A  representative  real  estate  man  of  Boston  has  said
that  the  lifetime  of  the  best  new  buildings  in  the  city
cannot  be  figured  to  exceed  two  score  years,  and  that
with  swiftly  accelerating  changes  they  will  have  to
give  way  in  forty  years  to  a  new  and  better  order.
Granting  these  facts,  if  during  the  forty  years  the  new
buildings  shall  yield  to  the  landlord  interest  upon  their
cost  and  2\  per  cent  annually  for  depreciation,  he  is
at  no  disadvantage  from  the  necessity  of  tearing  down
and  building  greater,  while  both  labour,  which  builds
buildings,  and  business,  which  uses  buildings,  will  be
greatly  benefited  by  such  a  process.  What  a  paradise
any  American  city  might  be  made  if  built  over  new
every  forty  years!  Yet  the  users  of  the  buildings
can  well  afford  to  pay  2\  per  cent  a  year  for  such
a  luxury.
Any  sensible  readjustment  and  equalisation  of
taxation  should  take  this  annual  depreciation  directly
into  account  as  a  tax  imposed  by  time  upon  all  products ­
  of  labour,  a  tax  so  heavy  as  to  seem  an  instant
excuse  for  exempting  them  from  all  other  taxes.
On  the  other  hand,  while  time  is  engaged  in  the
destruction  of  the  building,  it  is  occupied  in  the  construction ­
  of  the  land  value.
A  conspicuous  example  of  the  contrariety  of  this
time  agency  is  found  in  the  biography  of  a  once  modern
building  that  in  1870  supplanted  a  colonial  residence
which  for  several  years  previous  to  1809  was  the
residence  of  John  Quincy  Adams.