(Discusses the land values tax as a means of social readjustment, and compares it with other programs.) The writer of this book has been watching the social process for twenty years, trying to figure out one thing—how the change from competition to co-operation can be brought about with the minimum of human waste. He has come to realize that the first step is a mental one; to get the people to want the change. That means that the program must be simple, so that the masses can understand it. As a social engineer you might work out a perfect plan, but find yourself helpless, because it was hard to explain. As illustration of what I mean, I cite the single tax, a theory which has a considerable hold in America, but which politically has been utterly ineffective.
A few years ago a devoted enthusiast in Southern California, Luke North, started what he called the "Great Adventure" to set free the idle land. In the campaign of 1918 I gave my help to this movement, and when it failed I went back and took stock, and revised my conclusions concerning the single tax. Theoretically the movement has a considerable percentage of right on its side. Land, in the sense that single taxers use it, meaning all the natural sources of wealth, is certainly an important basis of exploitation, and if you were to tax land values to the full extent, you would abolish a large portion of privilege—just how large would be hard to figure. I was perfectly willing to begin with that portion, so I helped with the "Great Adventure." But a practical test convinced me that it could never persuade a majority of the people.
The single tax proposal is to abolish all taxes except the tax on land values. Then come the associations of the bankers and merchants and real estate speculators, crying in outraged horror, "What? You propose to let the rich man's stocks and bonds go free? You propose to put no tax on his cash in the vaults and on his wife's jewels? You propose to abolish the income tax and the inheritance tax, and put all the costs of government on the poor man's lot?"
Now, of course, I know perfectly well that the rich man dodges most of his income tax and most of his inheritance tax. I know that he pays a nominal pittance on his cash in the bank and on his wife's jewels, and likewise on his stocks and bonds. I know that the corporations issuing these stocks and bonds would be far more heavily hit by a tax on the natural resources they own; they could not evade this tax, and they know it, and that is why they are moved to such deep concern for the fate of the poor man and his lot. I know that the tax on the poor man's lot would be infinitesimal in comparison with the tax on the great corporation. But how can I explain all this to the poor man? To understand it requires a knowledge of the complexities of our economic system which the voters simply have not got.
How much easier to take the bankers and speculators at their word! To answer, "All right, gentlemen, since you like the income and inheritance taxes, the taxes on stocks and bonds and money and jewels, we will leave these taxes standing. Likewise, we assent to your proposition that the poor man should not pay taxes on his lot, while there are rich men and corporations in our state holding twenty million acres of land out of use for purposes of speculation. We will therefore arrange a land values tax on a graduated basis, after the plan of the income tax; we will allow one or two thousand dollars' worth of land exempt from all taxation, provided it is used by the owner; and we will put a graduated tax on all individuals and corporations owning a greater quantity of land, so that in the case of individuals and corporations owning more than ten thousand dollars' worth of land, we will take the full rental value, and thus force all idle land into the market."
Now, the provision above outlined would have spiked every single argument used by the opposition to the "Great Adventure" in California in 1918; it would have made the real intent of the measure so plain as to win automatically the additional votes needed to carry the election. But I tried for three years, without being able to persuade a single one of the "Great Adventure" leaders to recognize this plain fact. The single taxer has his formula, the land values tax and no other tax, and all else is heresy. Actually, the president of a big single tax organization in the East declared that by the advocacy of my idea I had &quo............