Note 224 — Chapter XXIII · TAXATION AND PUBLIC FINANCE

Henry George advocated that on all land a tax should be levied equal to the full amount of its ground rent (see p. 43) and that all other taxes should be abolished. This, in effect, would do away with the private ownership of land, making the government the real owner. Mr. George endeavored to prove that nearly all our economic troubles are due to the private ownership of land and land monopoly. “What I therefore propose”, he said, “as the simple yet sovereign remedy which will raise wages, increase the earnings of capital, extirpate pauperism, abolish poverty, give remunerative employment to whoever wishes it, afford free scope to human powers, lessen crime, elevate morals and taste and intelligence, purify government and carry civilization to yet nobler heights, is—to appropriate rent by taxation.” Progress and Poverty, Book VIII, Ch. ii. This is a good example of the extravagant and Utopian hopes held out by reformers who are carried away by a single idea. If earth could be changed into heaven by merely taxing one thing instead of another, the transformation would have been made long ago.