Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/171

 ficiary of rural effort. Since we propose to recognize fully at the same moment the city land-owner’s share in the control of basic value, there may be no protest; but if there should be, let us meet it firmly by pointing out that the city property-owner has very seldom to take in summer boarders to eke out a living, and that we are, in the end, more dependent upon the unfortunate farmer, who, with far greater invested capital than the owner of a couple of flats, has often to break up his family life in summer-time to meet his taxes.

Some recognition of the fundamental fact that “conductivity,” the facility ensuring the orderly flow of effort, is a general benefit and not a local one, is necessary if taxation is to be in any way scientific. Taking a very simple physical parallel, it is obvious that any resistance to flow interposed between a producing dynamo and a consuming motor is a burden upon both. In many parts of the United States, under our archaic practices, the economic burden of providing the means of free flow is purely local; and areas which would otherwise be of the utmost value to the entire commonwealth are hermetically sealed by economic malpractice.

If the general contention is sound, namely, that economic value is essentially due to the exertion of effort, then it is just as logical to make the cost of creating and maintaining the physical avenues of exchange a general one as it is to make the cost of providing the financial medium of exchange a general one—as we now do through the agencies of the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve System.

It is necessary to give this point special consideration, because we may not realize that under the archaic doctrines which now govern taxation, many of our isolated producers, after cutting their way out of economic solitudes, find that in establishing contact with the trader and consumer, they are not justly rewarded for their effort. It is true that they are better off, but all the other members of our commonwealth are better off. It is too painful a survival of an abandoned political era to insist that the gain be shared while the burden falls solely upon the same weary shoulders.