Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/461

Rh the proposition, which many economists deny, that taxation can be based on scientific principles; in other words, that money for the needs of government can be so raised as to take advantage of the natural laws that operate in society instead of running counter to them. The principle of plucking the greatest quantity of feathers with the least squawking is certainly antiquated and unworthy of a mature and intelligent people. Our taxation should be scientific, and if the scheme advocated by Mr. Shearman really has that character, he has brought the right article to market. Many persons who are not prepared to accept the single tax as a remedy will admit most of what he says in regard to the evils of indirect taxation. He affirms that direct taxation is practicable, but of the three forms now in use—the income, succession, and general property tax—he deems the second useful only as an adjunct, while the other two, because of the premium they put on fraud and other objections, should never be used. A tax on land he calls the natural tax, because it can not be evaded, and because its proper distribution is automatically determined very much as ground rent is regulated by the market. In reply to the objection that such a tax would be shifted upon tenants, he cites "not only the entire school of Ricardo and Mill, but also nine tenths or more of other economic writers," as denying the possibility of such a transfer. In this respect he notes a difference between a tax on land and one on buildings. It is obvious that the landless class would be greatly benefited by exemption from all direct or indirect taxation. Mr. Shearman also maintains that the landowners, taken as an entire class, would also bear a smaller burden than now, because they would be exempt from taxes on personal property, indirect taxes, and the cost of collection and other burdens incidental to these modes of taxation. Some of the landowners would have a heavier burden than now. Mr. Shearman estimates that this would fall on fifty thousand of the six million families in the United States who own land. These fifty thousand own thirty per cent in value of all the land in the country, and also get almost all the benefits arising from the monopolies fostered by the present mode of taxation. He takes especial pains to show that the farmers need have no alarm at the land-tax proposition, and affirms that this plan, in addition to its other benefits, "would bring about a just distribution of wealth, would give a perpetual stimulus to industry and production, would greatly increase wages, would increase the profits of capital, would give a security to property now unknown, would encourage manufactures, commerce, and agriculture, and would incidentally solve many social problems which under present conditions seem almost insoluble." Mr. Shearman has not made his programme attractive enough, or, rather, he has not given it the right kind of attractions. The masses do not want a just division of wealth any more than the classes. Every mother's son of them is perfectly willing that a few shall have big prizes at the expense of the many, if only he can be one of the few; and in a democratic country, where it is possible for a poor boy to become president of a railroad, he is constantly hoping that next week or next year will bring him some undeserved advantage over his fellows. Even if a majority of the voters in the United States were convinced that any economic reform would benefit them all, they would need to have the lottery spirit educated out of them before they would adopt it.