Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/764

 744 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

tration of all public burdens upon ground rent. The single tax, therefore, implies the total abolition of all taxes upon personal property, buildings, and improvements, of all custom tariffs, all excise duties, all stamp duties, all poll taxes, and, in short, every tax of every description, except that which is now levied upon the rent of bare land.

Thus far, the matter would surely seem perfectly simple. No new taxes are to be invented or imposed. All that needs to be done is to abolish all existing taxes except this one. But some explanation of the terms used is necessary. "Ground rent" and the "value of land" are in reality the same thing. Rent is the price which the owner of land either does or can obtain for the privilege of using land ; and what is usually called the value of land, or the price of land, is nothing but the capi- talized value of its rent ; or, to use simpler terms, it is the pres- ent market value of the landlord's power of collecting rent in future, as compensation for the privilege of using land.

Here, however, is a fertile source of confusion. We are all so accustomed to thinking of land as being necessarily worth a great sum in and of itself that almost everybody beginning the study of this subject is overwhelmed with confusion, when some solemn critic informs him that "land is the least productive of all improvements," because the rent of land usually brings a smaller return upon the investment than the income of any equal investment in other property. Thus, in Great Britain, when the usual rate of interest on good investments was 4 per cent., the average income from investments in land was not more than 3 per cent.; and something of the same proportion has always existed. This seems to multitudes a conclusive proof that the rent of land is very low ; whereas there is nothing in the state- ment, except a clever trick. Land costs nothing to produce ; and it cannot be produced. All other investments are produced by human skill and labor, and cost enormously in production. Rent is not, therefore, measured by the value of land ; but the value of land is always measured by rent. A piece of land for which nobody ever did and nobody ever will pay any rent has no market value whatever. The value of land, therefore, depends