Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/212

 barrier to the forward sweep of the more rabid single-taxers is that the immediate victims of the adjustment are apparently still more numerous than the beneficiaries, owing to the ballast of our freeholds, many of which are co-operatively held through savings-banks and insurance companies. It is this ballast which it is proposed to throw overboard.

The most deeply rooted antipathy to single-tax and its modifications is the fear of what would amount to government by appraisers, the tribune again becoming the autocrat. The claim of some of its advocates, that it is a burdenless tax, seems to be more technical than reassuring. If the cost of government is to be borne by a tax on some personally assessed value of land, in terms of dollars, and if there is no fixed value to the dollar and no specific limitation to the scope of government, such a tax gradually increased to meet the inclination of the office-holder and the unemployed “to gratify their desire with the least exertion,” while it might not, as in the case of a poll-tax, add a new burden from above, would undoubtedly contribute a factor of pressure from underneath. It makes very little difference to the victim whether he is touched first by the upper or the nether millstone.

Henry George, in paying a double-acting tribute to Herbert Spencer and himself, states as follows:

“Such a plan (Single-tax) instead of being a wild, impracticable vagary, has (with the exception that he suggests compensation to present holders—undoubtedly a careless concession which he upon reflection would reconsider) been endorsed by no less eminent a thinker than Herbert Spencer.”

(If this is endorsement it would be equally in order to assert that a check is certified when returned with the superscription “No Funds.”)

In a further statement, which is more obviously tinctured with the promise of loot, Henry George adds:

“Let the individuals who now hold it, still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to call it their land. Let them buy and sell