Land Value Quotations

Overview

Using quotations to support an argument is often a logical fallacy - a type of appeal to authority. But, if something is said by someone who accomplished much in their life, somehow it is given more weight. So, consider the below quotations quotes with a grain of salt and use your own judgement. Where possible, context is supplied.

Tribal

At least some of the Native Americans seemed to think that the land belonged to all of us:

"The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth, and the Native American shared this elemental ethic: The land was alive to his loving touch, and he, its son, was brother to all creatures." [1]

That sounds nice in principle, but beyond singing Kumbaya by campfire, how can this be made practical? The following quotes add some more background and detail.

Adam Smith

"Both ground-rents and the ordinary rent of land are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. Though a part of this revenue should be taken from him in order to defray the expences of the state, no discouragement will thereby be given to any sort of industry. The annual produce of the land and labour of the society, the real wealth and revenue of the great body of the people, might be the same after such a tax as before. Ground-rents and the ordinary rent of land are, therefore, perhaps, the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them. Ground-rents seem, in this respect, a more proper subject of peculiar taxation than even the ordinary rent of land. The ordinary rent of land is, in many cases, owing partly at least to the attention and good management of the landlord. A very heavy tax might discourage too much this attention and good management. […] Nothing can be more reasonable than that a fund which owes its existence to the good government of the state should be taxed peculiarly, or should contribute something more than the greater part of other funds, towards the support of that government."

Locke

The founding fathers studied Locke. Here are some quotations of his:

• "Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others."
• "Whenever, in any country, the proprietor ceases to be the improver, political economy has nothing to say in defence of landed property. When the “sacredness” of property is talked of, it should be remembered that any such sacredness does not belong in the same degree to landed property."
• "When land is not intended to be cultivated, no good reason can in general be given for its private property at all."
• "The earth belongs in usufruct to the living and is given as a common stock for men to live and labor on."

Declaration of Independence

The DoI stated that: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". These words are borrowed from earlier works, but were modified - notably property was excluded.

As an aside, scholars have debated these source of these words, but a friend of mine has asserted that while Jefferson was the front man for the DoI, it was Paine behind the scenes who was the source, suggesting that Paine was perhaps too outspoken during the period for the Declaration of Independence to be associated with Paine's name. For similar reasons, it is widely understood that slavery couldn't be dealt with right away as there were a number of voices at the time who would not go along with the DoI if slavery were spelled out as an evil. Similarly, it is widely known that without the capital provided by rich land owners, at the time, the revolutionary war may not have succeeded. Whether this is speculation or not, as we will see shortly, Paine and Jefferson did offer many quotations where they seem aligned on the land issue, and we may also be able to wonder about property in land, just as some wondered about property in person (slavery) during the time period of the DoI.

Constitution

The word property is in the Constitution only once, and when mentioned it is under Article IV and is related to government property. It is also interesting to note that during the special ratification conventions held for the Constitution, the ordinary requirements for property (land) ownership were set aside, to allow a wider voice at the conventions.

The Articles of Confederation, which preceded the Constitution, directly stated about land value taxation, but sadly, also included the improvements.

"All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several States in proportion to the value of all land within each State, granted or surveyed for any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the United States in Congress assembled, shall from time to time direct and appoint."

The following is an explanation of the need for the Direct Tax Apportionment clause. It was written by Supreme Court Justice Paterson in Hylton v US (3 US 171 [1796]):

The constitution declares, that a capitation tax is a direct tax; and both in theory and practice, a tax on land is deemed to be a direct tax... The provision was made in favor of the southern states; they possessed a large number of slaves; they had extensive tracts of territory, thinly settled, and not very productive. A majority of the states had but few slaves, and several of them a limited territory, well settled, and in a high state of cultivation. The southern states, if no provision had been introduced in the constitution, would have been wholly at the mercy of the other states. Congress in such case, might tax slaves, at discretion or arbitrarily, and land in every part of the Union, after the same rate or measure: so much a head, in the first instance, and so much an acre, in the second. To guard them against imposition, in these particulars, was the reason of introducing the clause in the constitution.

Constitutional Convention Debates of 1788

The following quote was by a supporter of the Constitution during the NC ratification debates, in response to a critique of the Constitution. A little setup is needed first. It begins by demonstrating that any one actually reading the Constitution would or should not think that complaints against the government would result in being charged for Treason.

"But the gentleman has gone further, and says, that any man who will complain of their oppressions, or write against their usurpations, may be deemed a traitor, and tried as such in the ten miles square, without a jury. What an astonishing misrepresentation! Why did not the gentleman look at the Constitution, and see their powers? Treason is there defined. It says expressly, that treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. Complaining therefore, or writing, cannot be treason. [Here Mr. Lenoir rose, and said that he meant misprision of treason.] The same reasons hold against that too. The liberty of the press being secured, creates an additional security. Persons accused cannot be tried without a jury; for the same article provides, that "the trial of all crimes shall be by jury." They cannot be carried to the ten miles square; for the same clause adds, "and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed."

The reason I included the above quote is to demonstrate how quickly the objector was somewhat proven correct via the Alien and Sedition Acts, which imprisoned persons critical of the government, or we may even want to consider the internment of Americans of Japanese descent during WWII.

Continuing with the issue of land:

"He has made another objection, that land might not be taxed, and the other taxes would fall heavily on the poor people. Congress has a power to lay taxes, and no article is exempted or excluded. The proportion of each state may be raised in the most convenient manner. The census or enumeration provided, is meant for the salvation and benefit of the southern states. It was mentioned that land ought to be the only object of taxation. As an acre of land in the northern states, is worth many acres in the southern states, this would have greatly oppressed the latter. It was then judged that the number of people, as therein provided, was the best criterion for fixing the proportion of each state, and that proportion in each state to be raised in the most easy manner for the people" [2] (search for page 236).

He's saying that land taxation would upset the balance between the states, so population was chosen instead, as a measure of what each state would owe to the federal government to pay for its protection of the States. I included this quote not as outright support for land value or similar tax schemes, but rather, to emphasize that land taxation was well understood during the time period. It wasn't just made up in the last few years and now a days many will assert that it is the basis for Liberty, and I would agree; however, I'd also suggest that population growth needs to be factored into the modern era when considering Liberty. The interesting thing to note is that taxation of the value wasn't noted in this debate, which would have reconciled the issue of land being more valuable in some states than others.

I should also add - the Articles of Confederation used a land tax scheme. This scheme was carried forward until the Whiskey tax was born. During the time, Whiskey was used as medium for transferring value by farmers who were further from the market - whiskey made it easier to transport their "corn" to market. It was also easy to pick on these folks since they were small farmers, as the story goes. The tariff would have made it much harder on smaller producers to carry, than on larger producers who already had the momentum to drive the smaller producers out of business. The leader who squashed the Whiskey rebellion was none other than George Washington, who at one time was the largest Whiskey producer in America. Whether he was up to no good or not, I don't know, but some have found this reality curious. Personally, I think he got into the Whiskey game too late for it to be relevant, but there were others already in the game who may have had influence. Further, there is the matter of wealthy land holders that may have exerted influence in the taxation scheme as well.

Paine

Paine is one of the unsung heroes of the founding period. HIs work helped provide the spark to the kindling present during the time of the Revolutionary war. Though he was apparently a Deist, during that time period, the word Deist also seemed to mean Atheist to many of the people of the period. It was not good to be associated with such things at the time, so he was too outspoken for many. Here is a quote of his:

• “The present state of civilization is as odious as it is unjust…The contrast of affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained together.”

• “Man did not make the earth, and though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the first title deeds should issue. Thus, Every proprietor, therefore of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea)... Each individual attaining the age of 21, should receive the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural in heritage, by the introduction of land property…and the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.”

• "But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that parable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property."

It's subtle: "it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property".

Jefferson

• "Legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree, is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."

• "Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a commonstock for man to labour and live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed."

• "It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment but who can find uncultivated land shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small land holders are the most precious part of a state."

Source: Letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison on Private Property [ [3]]

Regarding Jefferson's last quote - some have argued that we have lost our social equilibrium - that the jobs have left the country. Trump is one of those. Others argue that a high-school education is hardly enough to raise a family anymore. Bernie is one of those. While smart folks may find themselves quickly moving beyond minimum wage, consider that for those who can't understand why or how a minimum wage MIGHT hurt them, that they may still want to raise a family. Just thinking out loud.

Lincoln

• "The land, the earth that God gave to man for his home, his sustenance, and support, should never be the possession of any man, corporation, society, or unfriendly Government, any more than the air or the water, if as much. An individual company or enterprise requiring land should hold no more in their own right than is needed for their home and sustenance, and never more than they have in actual use in the prudent management of their legitimate business, and this much should not be permitted when it creates an exclusive monopoly. All that is not so used should be held for the free use of every family to make homesteads, and to hold them as long as they are so occupied.

• "A reform like this will be worked out some time in the future. The idle talk of foolish men, that is so common now, on 'Abolitionists, agitators, and disturbers of the peace,' will find its way against it, with whatever force it may possess, and as strongly promoted and carried on as it can be by land monopolists, grasping landlords, and the titled and untitled senseless enemies of mankind everywhere."

Henry George

The man wrote extensively on this topic. Pulling a few quotes is useless since his name is synonymous with this discussion :)

William Buckley

• "Henry George said that the rent of all land ought to be public. … I am sympathetic with that particular analysis."
• In an interview with conservative pillar, William Buckley interacted with a person participating in the interview using a telephone, and identified as CALLER:

"CALLER: I've heard you describe yourself as a Georgist, a follower of Henry George, but I haven't heard much in having you promote land value taxation and his theories, and I'm wondering why that is the case.

Buckley: It's mostly because I'm beaten down by my right-wing theorists and intellectual friends. They always find something wrong with the Single-Tax idea. What I'm talking about Mr. Lamb is Henry George who said there is infinite capacity to increase capital and to increase labor, but none to increase land, and since wealth is a function of how they play against each other, land should be thought of as common property. The effect of this would be that if you have a parking lot and the Empire State Building next to it, the tax on the parking lot should be the same as the tax on the Empire State Building, because you shouldn't encourage land speculation.

Anyway I've run into tons of situations where I think the Single-Tax theory would be applicable. We should remember also this about Henry George, he was sort of co-opted by the socialists in the 20s and the 30s, but he was not one at all. Alfred J. Nock's book on him makes that plain. Plus, also, he believes in only that tax. He believes in zero income tax." Source: an interview with Brian Lamb, CSpan Book Notes, April 2-3, 2000

Fredreich Hayek

"The usefulness of almost any piece of property in a city will in fact depend in part on what one's immediate neighbors do and in part on the communal services without which effective use of the land by separate owners would be nearly impossible. … The general formulas of private property or freedom of contract do not therefore provide an immediate answer to the complex problems which city life raises. It is probable that, even if there had been no authority with coercive powers, the superior advantages of larger units would have led to the development of new legal institutions—some division of the right of control between the holders of a superior right to determine the character of a large district to be developed and the owners of inferior rights to the use of smaller units, who, within the framework determined by the former, would be free to decide on particular issues. In many respects the functions which the organized municipal corporations are learning to exercise correspond to those of such a superior owner."

Churchill

"LAND MONOPOLY is not the only monopoly, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies -- it is a perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly. Unearned increments in land are not the only form of unearned or undeserved profit, but they are the principal form of unearned increment, and they are derived from processes which are not merely not beneficial, but positively detrimental to the general public. Land, which is a necessity of human existence, which is the original source of all wealth, which is strictly limited in extent, which is fixed in geographical position -- land, I say, differs from all other forms of property, and the immemorial customs of nearly every modern state have placed the tenure, transfer, and obligations of land in a wholly different category from other classes of property. Nothing is more amusing than to watch the efforts of land mo- nopolists to claim that other forms of property and increment are similar in all respects to land and the unearned increment on land." ~ Speech made to the House of Commons on May 4, 1909 [4]

Take note, Churchill switched political parties a couple of times. Was this out of principle?

Malcolm X

The following quote offers some violence and lots of colorful metaphors (pun apologies). I do not post it to encourage violence or support it, but encourage the reader to look beyond the violence into the core of what is being said - land is at the core:

"Look at the American Revolution in 1776. That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. Number one, it was based on land, the basis of independence. And the only way they could get it was bloodshed. The French Revolution -- what was it based on? The land-less against the landlord. What was it for? Land. How did they get it? Bloodshed. Was no love lost; was no compromise; was no negotiation. I'm telling you, you don't know what a revolution is. 'Cause when you find out what it is, you'll get back in the alley; you'll get out of the way. The Russian Revolution -- what was it based on? Land. The land-less against the landlord. How did they bring it about? Bloodshed. You haven't got a revolution that doesn't involve bloodshed. And you're afraid to bleed. I said, you're afraid to bleed.

long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled. You bleed for white people. But when it comes time to seeing your own churches being bombed and little black girls be murdered, you haven't got no blood. You bleed when the white man says bleed; you bite when the white man says bite; and you bark when the white man says bark. I hate to say this about us, but it's true. How are you going to be nonviolent in Mississippi, as violent as you were in Korea? How can you justify being nonviolent in Mississippi and Alabama, when your churches are being bombed, and your little girls are being murdered, and at the same time you're going to violent with Hitler, and Tojo, and somebody else that you don't even know?

If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it's wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it's wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.

The Chinese Revolution -- they wanted land. They threw the British out, along with the Uncle Tom Chinese. Yeah, they did. They set a good example. When I was in prison, I read an article -- don't be shocked when I say I was in prison. You're still in prison. That's what America means: prison. When I was in prison, I read an article in Life magazine showing a little Chinese girl, nine years old; her father was on his hands and knees and she was pulling the trigger 'cause he was an Uncle Tom Chinaman, When they had the revolution over there, they took a whole generation of Uncle Toms -- just wiped them out. And within ten years that little girl become a full-grown woman. No more Toms in China. And today it's one of the toughest, roughest, most feared countries on this earth -- by the white man. 'Cause there are no Uncle Toms over there."

Michael Kinsley

Consider this little jewel:

• "Ideally, all taxes should be zero because all taxes discourage the activity being taxed. (The exception is the land tax, as Henry George famously noted, because land has nowhere to go.) Taxes on labor discourage work and encourage sloth. Taxes on capital discourage thrift and encourage consumption."
• "Ownership of natural resources like land or oil does not 'create' or 'supply' anything. The profit from such ownership is a direct transfer from the rest of society."

Did you catch that? Income tax encourages consumption - which may mean it indirectly causes global warming, if you subscribe to man's role in that concept. How? The income tax system through its so-called write-offs tries to drives businesses towards spending their cash which would ordinarily be retained as profits/income on ventures or depreciable assets lest their profits become subject to tax. Use it or lose it, in other words. In other words, as a business - showing a profit is not advantageous from an income tax perspective, so business owners typically try to spend as much as they can investing in the business and many times these are things it doesn't really need. This results in much unnecessary expenditure and consumption.

Milton Friedman

"There's a sense in which all taxes are antagonistic to free enterprise … and yet we need taxes. We have to recognize that we must not hope for a Utopia that is unattainable. I would like to see a great deal less government activity than we have now, but I do not believe that we can have a situation in which we don't need government at all. We do need to provide for certain essential government functions — the national defense function, the police function, preserving law and order, maintaining a judiciary. So the question is, which are the least bad taxes? In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago." -- quoted from The Times Herald, Norristown, Pennsylvania (1 December 1978)

Piketty, a modern economist

• A few years ago, a French economist by the name of Thomas Piketty made waves with the publication of Capital in the 21st Century, a prodigiously weighty economic tome that simplified the perpetual problem of inequality down to three symbols: “r > g”. Translated, this equation claims that wealth begets wealth faster than economic growth creates wealth, or in other words, the rich get more of the pie faster than the pie itself can grow the size of the slices for everyone. Assuming this is true, there is then no way around redistribution of wealth outside of another wealth-destroying world war or social revolution, because humans have their inequality limits.
• The Internet, however, is full of surprises, and a critique of Piketty’s hypothesis by a college student called Matt Rognlie bubbled up from an online comments section to gain notoriety. Rognlie is now credited with adding an incredibly important insight to this discussion by pointing out that if one looked really closely at the letter “r” in Piketty’s equation, only one part appeared to be responsible for almost all the growth, and that lone part was land ownership." (todo: add source link).

Murray Rothbard

Nope, not a supporter of LVT. To my knowledge, he rejected the so-called Lockean proviso - Locke's contention that land property was fine so long as there was enough for everyone. There are multiple rebuttals to one of his papers on the topic, but for purposes of working through is own thinking one of the principle author's of this site is working on his own analysis of Rothbard's critique of Georgist concepts.

David Nolan, Founder of the Libertarian Party

Make no mistake, in the piece this quote is derived from, David Nolan does express an ideal state for the state is to have no state, but in the interim, he expressed as follows:

"What kind of taxation is least harmful?….My own preference is for a single tax on land, with landholders doing their own valuation; you'd state the price at which you'd be willing to sell your land, and pay taxes on that amount. Anyone (including the tax collector) who wanted to buy it at that price could do so. This is simple, fair, and minimizes government snooping into our lives and business."

Dan Sullivan, Director of Saving Communities

Consider this quote:

• "The classical liberal distinctions between land, labor and capital were greatly confused by socialists, and particularly Marxists, who substituted the fuzzy abstract term, "means of production," for all three factors. They also blurred the distinction between common property and state property, for socialists believed, as royalty also believed, that they were the people. Today, the confusions between land and capital and between state property and common property are shared by socialists and royal libertarians, and only classical liberals keep these distinctions clearly defined. Yet royal libertarians frequently duck the land issue by charging that it is the classical liberals, not the royal libertarians, who have embraced socialist ideas." See: Wealth and Want.

The same page states:

• "We are libertarians who make the classical liberal distinction between land, labor and capital. We believe in the private possession of land without interference from the state, but in the community collection of land rent to prevent monopolization of land. We believe that all government activities should at least be limited to those which increase the value of land by more than what the government collects, and that government should be funded entirely from the land value increases it creates. We oppose direct state monopolization of land as well as state-sanctioned private monopolization of land, and advocate that state and federally held land pay land rent to the communities the same as private land. We advocate that government be allowed to spend only what is authorized by voter referendum or similar device and that it take for itself the minimum it is authorized to spend. Those who advocate collection of the full rent stipulate that the proceeds be divided among community members on a per-capita or similar basis, for the land, and the rent, belong to the people, not the state. We condemn the taxation of property improvements, and of all activities, productive, consumptive, or recreational, as invasions by the state into the private affairs of free individuals."