Henry George

“ How rent arises Thus rent or land value does not arise from the productiveness or utility of land. It represents in no wise any help or advantage given to production, but simply the power of securing a part of the results of production. No matter what are its capabilities, land can yield no rent and have no value until someone is willing to give labour or the results of labour for the privilege of using it ”

“ In common speech we speak of rent only when owner and user are distinct persons. But in the economic sense there is also rent where the same person is both owner and user. Where owner and user are thus the same person, whatever part of his income he might obtain by letting the land to another is rent, while the return for his labour and capital is that part of his income which they would yield him did he hire the land instead of working it. ”

“ For, since the distribution of wealth is a division, in ascertaining what fixes the share of the produce that goes as rent, we ascertain also what fixes the share that is left for wages, where there is no cooperation of capital; and what fixes the joint share that is left for wages and interest, where capital does cooperate in production. ”

“ Thus wages and interest depend not upon the produce of labour and capital but upon what is left after rent is taken out, or upon the produce which they could obtain without paying rent - that is, from the poorest land in use. Hence, no matter what be the increase in productive power, if the increase in rent keeps pace with it, neither wages nor interest can increase. ”

“ Clearly, the labour and capital engaged in manufactures will turn to agriculture; and the process will not stop until, either by the extension of cultivation to inferior lands or to inferior points on the same land, or by an increase in the relative value of manufactured products, owing to their diminished production - or, as a matter of fact, by both processes - the yield to labour and capital in both units has, all things considered, been brought again to the same level. ”

“ But when this other land is appropriated and the best land to be had for nothing is inferior, either in fertility, situation or other quality, my land will begin to have a value and yield rent. And though the productiveness of my land may decrease, yet if the productiveness of the land to be had without charge decreases in greater proportion, the rent I can get, and consequently the value of my land, will steadily increase.
If one man owned all the land accessible to any community, he could of course demand any price or condition for its use that he saw fit ”

“ And thus to say that rent will be the excess in productiveness over the yield at the margin or lowest point of cultivation is the same thing as to say that it will be the excess of produce over what the same amount of labour and capital obtains in the least remunerative occupation. ”

“ It is the capacity of yielding rent that gives value to land. Until its ownership will confer some advantage, land has no value. (In speaking of the value of land I use and shall use the words as referring to the value of the bare land. When I wish to speak of the value of land and improvements I shall use those words.) ”

“ This has been the case in many communities; but in the modern form of society, the land, though generally reduced to individual ownership, is in the hands of too many different persons to permit the price which can be obtained for its use to be fixed by mere caprice or desire. ”