• water, and
• health inspection,
• sewerage,
• fire protection,
• police,
• schools,
• libraries,
• museums,
• parks,
• playgrounds,
• steam and electric railway service,
• gas and electric lighting,
• telegraph and telephone service,
• subways,
• ferries,
• churches,
• public schools,
• private schools,
• colleges,
• universities,
• public buildings —

Q10. What is the distinction between the taxation of land and the taxation of rent?
A. Taxing land means, in the ordinary use of the words, to tax the land upon its capital value, or selling value, at a given rate per $100 or $1,000 of that value. Taxing rent means taxing the annual value, or ground rent, at a given percentage of that rent. It is in one case a tax on rent; in the other is a tax on capitalized rent.

Q11. Does not the common right to rent involve common ownership of land?
A. Not in the least. When the economic rent is appropriated by the community for common purposes, individual ownership of land could and should continue. Such ownership would carry all the present rights of the landowner to use, control, and dispose of land, so that nothing like common ownership of land would be necessary.

Q12. Did not Henry George believe in the abolition of private property in land?
A. Assuredly not. If he did, why was it that he suggested no modification whatever of present land tenure or "estate in land"? If he did, how could he have said that the sole "sovereign" and sufficient remedy for the wrongs of private property in land was "to appropriate rent by taxation"?

Q13. What is meant by the right of property?
A. As to the grain a man raises, or the house that he builds, it means ownership full and complete. As to land, it means legal title, tenure, "estate in land," perpetual right of exclusive possession, a right not absolute, but superior to that of any other man.

Q14. What is meant by the right of possession?
A. As to land, if permanent and exclusive, as on perpetual lease, it means the right to "buy and sell, bequeath and devise," to "give, grant, bargain, sell, and convey" together with the rights and privileges thereto pertaining, in short, the same definition for possession that the law applies to property.

Q15.  What should be the limit of revenue under the single tax?
A. The same as under any other system of taxation, the cost of government economically administered.

Q16. Did not Henry George hold that the full ground rent of land should be taken in taxation?
A. No! Not only did he concede a margin of rent to the landlord, but as a matter of fact, as Thomas G. Shearman said, "not all the power of all governments" could collect in taxation all of ground rent.

Q17.  You would not say that land is a product of industry?
A. No; but the annual site value of land is a product of the growth and industry of the community.

Q18. You would not say that the supply of land can be increased?
A. No; but fresh demand is constantly requiring not only an increase in the public equipment of land already in use, but also the constant extension of such equipment to new area.

Q19. Why should buildings and all other improvements and personal property and capital be exempt from taxes?
A. Because a tax on them falls upon industry, and so increases the cost of living, while continuing the invidious exemption of the present net land value.

Q20.  Why should stocks and bonds be exempt?
A. Stocks, because they are only paper certificates of property which itself has been taxed once already. Bonds, if legitimate, because a tax on borrowed money is paid after all by the borrower and so becomes an added factor in cost of production, and consequently in the cost of living.

Q21.  What is meant by an "old tax" or a "new tax"?
A. By the term "old tax" is intended the taxing force at last change of ownership; by a "new tax," one the imposed since then.

Q22.  What is privilege?
A. Strictly defined, privilege is, according to the Century Dictionary, "a special and exclusive power conferred by law on particular persons or classes of persons and ordinarily in derogation of the common right."

Q23. What is today the popular conception of privilege?
A. That it is the law-given power of one man to profit at another man's expense.

Q24.  What are the principal forms of privilege?
A. The appropriation by individuals, or by public service corporations, of the net rent of land created by the growth and activity of the community without payment for the same. Also, the less important privileges connected with patents, tariff, and the currency.

Q25. Where in does privilege differ from capital?
A. Capital is a material thing, a product of labor, stored-up wages; an instrument of production paid for in human labor, and destined to wear out. Capital is the natural ally of labor, and is harmless except as allied to privilege. Privilege is none of these, but is an intangible statutory power, an unpaid-for and perpetual lien upon the future labor of this and succeeding generations. Capital is paid for and ephemeral. Privilege is unpaid for and eternal. A man accumulated in his profession $5,000 capital, which he invested in land in Canada. Ten years later he sold the same land for $200,000. Here is an instance of $5,000 capital allied with $195,000 privilege. This illustrates that privilege and not capital is the real enemy of labor.

Q26.  How may franchises be treated?
A. Franchise privileges may be abated, or gradually abolished by lower rates, or by taxation, or by both, in the interest of the community.

Q27. Why should privilege be especially taxed?
A. Because such payment is fairly due from grantee to the grantor of privilege and also because a tax upon privilege can never be a burden upon industry or commerce, nor can it ever operate to reduce the wages of labor or increase prices to the consumer.

Q28. How are landlords privileged?
A. Because, in so far as their land tax is an "old" tax, it is a burdenless tax, and because their buildings' tax is shifted upon their tenants; most landlords who let land and also the tenement houses and business blocks thereon avoid all share in the tax burden.

Q29. How does privilege affect the distribution of wealth?
A. Wealth as produced is now distributed substantially in but two channels, privilege and wages. The abolition of privilege would leave but the one proper channel, viz., wages of capital, hand, and brain.

Q30.  How would the single tax increase wages?
A. By gradually transferring to wages that portion of the current wealth that now flows to privilege. In other words, it would widen and deepen the channel of wages by enlarging opportunities for labor, and by increasing the purchasing power of nominal wages through reduction of prices. On the other hand it would narrow the channel of privilege by making the man who has a privilege pay for it.

Q31. How can this transfer be effected?
A. By the taxation of privilege.

Q32. How much ultimately may wages be thus increased?
A. Fifty percent would be a low estimate.

Q33. What are fair prices and fair wages?
A. Prices unenhanced by privilege, and wages undiminished by taxation.

Q34. Why does not an increase in ground rent tend to cause an  increase in prices?
A. Usually sales increase faster proportionately than rent, thus reducing the ratio of rent to sales. The larger the product, the lower the individual costs. The larger the gross sales, the lower the competitive prices.

Q35. Why should land be singled out to bear the bulk of the burden of taxation?
A. Because in the private appropriation of the net rent of land is found the bulk of privilege.

Q36. How much does this particular form of privilege amount to?
A. It amounted for 1914 to approximately $40 million for Boston and more than $200 million for Greater New York.

Q37.  Does the single tax imply or involve the municipalization of public utilities?
A. No. A public franchise value is a land value which the single tax would assess at the same rate as other land values. The municipalization of the public utilities themselves is a different question, and is no necessary part of the single tax.

Q38. What are the three legs of the tripos, the threefold support upon which the single tax rests?
A. They are:

(1) The social origin of ground rent — that the site value of land is a creation of the community, a public or social value.

(2) The non-shiftability of a land tax — that no tax, new or old, on the site value of land can be recovered from the tenant or user by raising his rent.

(3) The ultimate burdenlessness of a land tax—that the selling value of land, reduced as it is by the capitalized tax that is imposed upon it, is an untaxed value. Whatever lowers the income from land lowers proportionately its selling price, so that whether the established tax upon it has been light or heavy, it is no burden upon the new purchaser, who buys it at its net value and thus escapes all part in the tax burden which he should in justice share with those who now bear it all.

Q39. Is not land peculiar in that it is a gift of the Creator, and is not a product of labor?
A. Yes, that is true of land itself, but not of the value of land.

Q40. What is meant by a capitalized tax?
A. It is a sum, the interest of which would pay the tax.

Q41.  Why would the single tax be an improvement upon present systems of taxation?
A. Because: (1) The taking for public uses of that value which justly belongs to the public is not a tax; (2) it would relieve all workers and capitalists of those taxes by which they are now unjustly burdened, and (3) it would make unprofitable the holding of land idle.

Q42. Should not all people pay taxes for the protection of their property?
A. Yes, and that is what they are doing when they pay their ground rent. To tax them again, as is now done, is double taxation.

Q43.  Do all people, then, pay ground rent?
A. Yes, in proportion as they are users of land having any value.

Q44.  Why, on similar lots of land, should one man with a $10,000 building be taxed as much as another with a $100,000 building?
A. Because the value of the privilege of occupancy and use is the same in both cases.

Q45. Why tax $1,000 invested in a vacant lot while exempting $1,000 invested in New York Central stock?
A. Because: (1) the land is made worth $1,000 and so maintained at public expense without any contribution from the owner; (2) the $1,000 New York Central stock adds nothing to the public expense, but a tax upon it, if collected at the source, falls directly on the road and thence upon the public, and so adds to the cost of living.

Q46.  Would it not be confiscation so to increase the tax on land?
A. What would be confiscated? No land would be taken, no right of occupancy, or use, or improvement, or sale, or devise; nothing would be taken that is conveyed or guaranteed by the title deed.

Q47.  What is the distinction between taxation and confiscation?
A. The sovereign state may appropriate private property of its citizens in two ways: (1) by confiscation; (2) by taxation. When one particular man by treason or otherwise has forfeited his rights as a citizen, the land and houses and personalty of this one man may all be "forfeit to the crown," while the validity and sanctity of 9,999 other men's rights are in no way infringed. This is confiscation. On the other hand, when the state, in order to obtain the revenue to meet the expenses of government, levies tribute upon its 10,000 citizens impartially, this is taxation.

Q48.  But would it not be an injustice to the landowner?
A. If it be an injustice to tax hard-earned incomes (wages) to maintain an unearned income (net economic rent) that bears no tax burden, how can it be an injustice to stop doing so? There can be no injustice in taking for the benefit of the community the value that is created by the community.

Q49.  What is the lesson of the inevitable "capitalization" of the land tax?
A. It is that an unfair discrimination in favor of the landowner can never be overcome until all taxes are paid out of ground rent; then all men will enjoy total exemption equally with the landowner.

Q50.  How could the landowner escape the alleged burden of an increase in his land tax?
A. Simply by assuming the legitimate role of a model landlord, by putting his land to suitable use, in providing for tenants at lowest possible price the best accommodations and facilities appropriate to the situation that money can buy.

Q51.  Does not a land tax increase house rent or store rent?
A. The landlord, as a rule, exacts the full ground rent for the use of his land. Neither by taking three dollars nor $30 per thousand in taxation can land to be made worth any more for use.

Q52.  In old cities, it is not nearly all the land in use?
A. About one half the area of New York and Chicago is classed by the assessors as vacant. In Boston the proportion is: occupied, 45 percent; vacant, 43 percent; marsh, 12 percent.

Q53.  How would the single tax effect the farmer?
A. It would greatly reduce his taxes. His buildings, stock, and crops would be exempt. His land is at present assessed at nearly twice its proper unimproved value, while town and city land is often valued at less than one half its actual value, thus subjecting him to a more than fourfold disadvantage.

Q54.  What relief could it bring to strictly agricultural towns, where the unimproved land values are very small?
A. However poor the town or heavy the taxes, it would at least tend the equalize their present tax burden. The assessed value of land in the three smallest towns of Massachusetts, Alford, Holland, and Peru, is $282,335, or more than three times that of the buildings. Allowing one half of the assessed valuation of land to be improvement value, the unimproved basis for taxation would be $141,168, or 60 percent more than the buildings. Thus an apportionment according to unimproved land values, increasing ever so slowly, would seem to be fairer than one according to improvements, which require constant renewal.

Q55.  How would the single tax effect the tenant?
A. It would neither increase nor decrease his land rent. It would reduce his house rent by the amount of the house tax.

Q56.  How would it affect the man who owns the house he lives in?
A. In nearly every case it would reduce his taxes. Roughly speaking, his taxes will be less or greater in proportion as his house is worth more or less than his land.

Q57.  Would the single tax yield sufficient revenue for all government purposes, local, state, and national?
A. Careful estimates by Mr. Thomas G. Shearman indicate that all present taxes amount to not much more than one half of the annual site value of the land. But he said:

Q58.  What expected result of the single tax needs studious emphasis?
A. That it would unlock the land to labor at its present value for use, instead of locking out labor from the land by a prohibitive price based upon the future value for use.

Q59.  Is it correct to say that "land" is one thing, and the "rent of land" another and quite different thing, and that to take in taxation the rent of land it is not necessary to take the land itself?
A. Ninety-one professors of political economy have answered "Yes." Twenty-three have answered "No."

Q60.  Do you believe that economic rent ought to furnish a larger proportion of public revenue than it does now?
A. One hundred nineteen professors of political economy have answered "Yes." Eight have answered "No."

Q61. Do you think there would be any injustice in taking by taxation the future increment in the value of land?
A. Fifteen professors of political economy have answered "Yes." Ninety-four have answered "No."

Q62.  Would it be wise to take gradually in taxation, say, 1/4, one half, or 3/4 of the future increase in economic rent?
A. One hundred and one professors of political economy have answered "Yes." Twenty-nine have answered "No."

Q63.  How could the single tax be put into operation?
A. By gradually transferring to land all taxes not already on it.

Q64.  How might such a plan be worked out?
A. If fifty cents per thousand should be deducted yearly for 30 years from the rate on all property other than land, the reduction would finally amount to $15 per thousand, and it would then be practically exempt from all taxation.

Q65.  But how could it be worked out in case of the land?
A. Recognizing that a right thing may be done in a wrong way, it is insisted that a right way ought to be found to do a thing that ought to be done. The following is presented as a natural and convenient unit of calculation: To be exact, an average of about 20 percent of the gross ground rent of land is now taken in taxation, for instance, in Boston, as well as for the whole state of Massachusetts. If an additional one percent should be taken each year for 30 years, it would amount at the end of that period to 30 percent, which, added to 20 percent, would make 50 percent, or one half, which is about the average proportion that present taxes levied on all property bear to gross ground rent. Meantime few landowners would feel the change, much less be prejudiced by it.

The following variable illustrations, A, B, and C, make clear.

A "Modus Operandi"

A Increase of Present Tax

For instance, applied to the assessment of a specific lot of land for which the user pays a gross ground rent of say ......  $68.00
Of which amount there is taken in taxation, 1915 ..... $18.00

Leaving a net income to the owner of  .... $50.00
The selling value (presumably also the assessed valuation) would be at 5 per cent ... $1,000.00
Proceeding to take yearly from now on 1 per cent additional of the gross ground rent of $68 for a period of thirty years would amount in all to 30 per cent of $68, equal to   .... $20.40
Which, added to the tax already taken .... $18.00
Would give at the end of thirty years, from the $1,000 worth of land alone, everything else being exempted, a total tax of .... $38.40.
Which is not much more than one half of the gross ground rent of ... $68.00

The opening exhibit in detail would stand as follows:
In 1915 the tax on this $1,000 worth of land was $18.00
In 1916 the tax would be $18 plus 68 cents (1 per cent of the gross ground rent, $68); equal to .... $18.68
Reducing the owner's net rent from $50 to $49.32
In 1917 the tax would be $18 plus $1.36 (2 per cent of the $68), totaling .... $19.36
Reducing the owner's net rent from $50 to $48.64,
In 1918 the tax would be $18 plus $2.04 (3 per cent of the $68) or $20.45
Reducing the owner's net rent from $50 to $47.96
In 1945 the tax on the land would be $18 plus $20.40 (30 per cent of the $68) or  ... $38.40
With all improvements exempted.
Reducing the owner's net rent from $50 to $29.60.