Henry George

“ Imposts upon manufactures are frequently grateful to large manufacturers for similar reasons. Duties on imports not only tend to give certain producers special advantages, but accrue to the benefit of importers or dealers who have large stocks on hand. And so in the case of all such taxes, there are particular interests, capable of ready organization and concerted action, which favour the imposition of the tax, while, in the case of a tax upon the value of land, there is a solid and sensitive interest ready to oppose it steadily and bitterly. ”

“ Absolute accuracy is impossible in any system, and to attempt to separate all that the human race has done from what nature originally provided would be as absurd as it is impracticable. A swamp drained or a hill terraced by the Romans constitutes now as much a part of the natural advantages of the British Isles as though the work had been done by earthquake or glacier. ”

“ There is thus a definite and powerful interest opposed to the taxation of land values; but to the other taxes upon which modern governments so largely rely there is no special opposition. The ingenuity of statesmen has been exerted in devising schemes of taxation that drain the wages of labour and the earnings of capital. ”

“ In the oldest country in the world no difficulty whatever can attend the separation, if all that be attempted is to separate the value of the clearly distinguishable improvements, made within a moderate period, from the value of the land, should they be destroyed. ”

“ Those who pay the money directly to the tax collector are not only not interested in opposing a tax they so easily shift from their own shoulders, but are very frequently interested in its imposition and maintenance, as are other powerful interests that profit, or expect to profit, by the increase of prices such taxes bring about. ”

“ The French Physiocrats But there has been a school of economists who plainly perceived, what is clear to the natural perceptions of men when uninfluenced by habit, that the revenues of the common property, land, ought to be appropriated to the common service. ”

“ Chapter XVIII Endorsements and objections The grounds from which we have drawn the conclusion that the tax on land values or rent is the best method of raising public revenues have been admitted expressly or tacitly by all economists of standing, since the determination of the nature and of the law of rent. ”

“ One of the things most to be regretted about the French Revolution is that it overwhelmed the ideas of the Economists, just as they were gaining strength among the thinking classes, and were apparently about to influence fiscal legislation. ”

“ Nearly all of these taxes are ultimately paid by the consumer; and he pays them in a way that does not call his attention to the fact - pays them in such small amounts and in such insidious modes that he does not notice it, and is not likely to take the trouble to remonstrate effectually. ”

“ That these principles have not been pushed to their necessary conclusions evidently arises from the indisposition to endanger or offend the enormous interest involved in private ownership in land, and from the false theories in regard to wages and the cause of poverty that have dominated economic thought. ”