The Single Tax
In the late 19th century, Philadelphia-born economist Henry George wrote a book entitled "Progress and Poverty." While he didn't immediately call what he was proposing the "single tax," others soon did. Eventually, it led to several movements: The Single Taxers, the Anti-Poverty Society, [UK?] ..
What is the Single Tax, and why is it relevant in the 21st century?
The Single Tax is a more logical way to collect the revenue needed to finance our common spending. It is efficient, just, provides desirable incentives, and collects for common purposes value created by the community, instead of permitting that value to accumulate in private pockets. Thus, it serves as a
Here are a few of the mottoes I've come across for the Single Tax -- some old, some recent:
Free Enterprise, Free Trade & Free Men
Tax Property, Not People
Tax Bads, Not Goods
The theory behind the Single Tax applies not only to what we commonly mean when we say "land" but also to all the things which the classical economists would classify as Land, including things they never saw, such as
- the value of land -- sites -- particularly urban land and other land well-served by infrastructure and/or nature;
- the value of non-renewable natural resources such as fresh water, oil, natural gas, minerals and the like;
- the value of electromagnetic spectrum -- the airwaves; geosynchronous orbit spaces for satellites;
- landing rights, particularly at peak hours, at congested constrained airports;
- the value of parking in congested towns and cities;
- the "right" to pollute air, water and land.
All these things can provide significant revenue to fund our common investment in public goods and services. By collecting the economic rent rather than permitting it to accumulate in private or corporate pockets, we create a society in which all of us can prosper, with far less concentration of wealth and higher wages for all who work.
Suppose the "Single Tax" alone doesn't provide enough revenue to meet all the needs for which we now collect taxes on wages, sales, buildings, transactions, etc.? Should we use it as our primary tax and supplement it with other less desirable taxes, or simply stick with the tax system we all know (and love) today?
THAT is the point of this site: to get to know the virtues of the Single Tax, and reach some hypotheses about whether our current tax system should be replaced by one based on the old "Single Tax," or whether the current tax system is satisfactory for the vast majority of us.
Having said that, I encourage the reader to consider whether one of the benefits of a tax system based on Single Tax theory is that it would create sufficient opportunity to reduce significantly the amount we spend on the "social safety net." I think it highly likely that we would need to spend much less on social services which mitigate today's poverty, were we to shift to a tax system based on the Single Tax.
Is the "Single Tax" philosophy more suited to developing nations, or is it primarily applicable to industrialized nations?
It is equally suited to both. It is rooted both in justice and efficiency, and provides incentives to move us in the direction most of us want to go.
What does this site offer?
Initially, it offers several full-length books -- mostly non-fiction but a few fictional ones, too -- and a number of shorter pieces. It has several pages which organize these documents in various ways -- date, length, topics covered, author. There is a Google search box for this site, and a list of suggested searches to get you started if this material is unfamiliar.
Over time, more documents, including some of the Single Tax periodicals, will be added, and the cross-referencing will increase. So will links to related pages at the sibling sites. It will also gain some wonderful political cartoons.
Where else might one look for information on The Single Tax?
Check out the Links page. There are a lot of good resources online. This site has several siblings: wealthandwant, lvtfan (a blog) and whatwouldjesustax. You can search this site via Google, use another search box to search this site and its siblings, and a third to search a larger collection of sites. See the Links page.
Where should I start?
If you know nothing about the Single Tax, you might start with a few of the "short takes" under the "What is the Single Tax?" heading. Some were published in a column by that name in The Single Tax Review. Others came from other places, but seemed to fit nicely.
After you've looked at a few of those, you might take a look at The Single Tax Times page, which lists some topics and then a selection of documents which pertain to those topics. Follow the links, and search on the terms that interest you. Some of the sources are quite long -- book length; others are shorter.
In large part, this site owes its existence to Google Books scooping up whole libraries of books and bound journals. Books I'd only seen referenced are now available. I've tidied up the scanned, copied-and-pasted text and tables, copied in most of the graphics, and provided each book as a single web document. What you see here is a small fraction of the material I've got in hand, and I encourage you to explore it and then to stop back from time to time to see what has been added. Some of the old books had "gloss" in their margins: phrases which described the contents of the paragraphs they were next to. Some had comparable material immediately after the chapter heading or in the table of contents. I've preserved these guides, though some might find them distracting on first reading; if they bother you, push them off the left side of your window.