VALUE OF LAND AN UNTAXED VALUE 41 
true to-day, so it will be true in future of each new 
purchaser subsequently to the imposition of any new 
tax. It is in the very nature of things that the burden 
of a land tax cannot be made to survive a change of 
ownership. 
(/) This is equally true of a bond, but it is assumed 
that a tax levy should be not upon intangible stocks and 
bonds legally conceived as property, but only upon 
tangible goods and estates. It is, to be sure, just as 
true that a man who builds a house to rent pays no 
tax on his investment, but for a different reason. The 
tax, in that case, is shifted upon the user in increased 
house rent, except so far as, by discouraging building, 
it is reflected in lower wages for building. But an old 
tax upon the land is a burden neither upon present 
owner nor user. The tax on land is “absorbed,” 
that on the house is “shifted.”* 
(g) We cannot too soon or too rigidly fix in mind the 
fact that this ground rent of $300 is the governing 
factor in the situation;** that it is a tax laid not by the 
State but by nature, which every man must pay for 
the use of land, either to a private owner as rent, or to 
the State as a tax, or to both. No statute or ordi 
nance can increase or reduce, exempt from, or abolish 
the payment of this “economic rent,” or ground rent, 
to somebody. Its amount is neither fixed nor affected 
hy the tax that is put upon it, whether large or small. 
Taxing it cannot increase it; cannot decrease it; cannot 
abolish it. Its amount may always be calculated 
by this simple formula: ground rent equals interest 
* Landlords who own and let both land and tenement houses, apartment 
houses, and business blocks thereon, escape the burden of the tax on their 
* a nd, and at the same time shift upon their tenants the building tax, thus 
avoiding all share in the tax burden. 
**This is indeed the point from which the whole discussion proceeds.