Note 730 — Chapter XVIII · THE MORAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE INCOMING OF DEMOCRACY: THE NEW SOCIAL AND INTERNATIONAL CONSCIENCE

The most practicable proposal for the undoing of this ancient and ever-augmenting wrong of private monopoly in land is that presented with singular force and clarity by Henry George in his epochal work, Progress and Poverty. His proposal is to exempt from taxation industry and all forms of property save land, and to lay upon land values, or, in other words, upon actual or potential ground rents, a tax that would reclaim practically the whole of these for society, and secure to the public all future increments in land values created by communal growth and enterprise. Since this tax is to take the place of all other forms of taxation it has become known as “the single tax.” Such a change in the tax system would inevitably create a hardship in a few cases, but a hardship almost infinitesimal as compared with that now inflicted upon the many by the preëmption of the earth by a class. The reform would undoubtedly, as claimed by its advocates, destroy private monopoly in land, the root which nourishes most other monopolies, and secure to all equal right of access to the earth and its resources.