Inasmuch, then, as the requirements of social morality and social utility coincide in this respect, the broad basic principle of the Single tax is a co-ordination of social utility and social morality principles. It demands equal rights to land.
But the basic principle of the Singletax is not necessarily inconsistent with individual titles to land. Whatever is socially useful in a public policy that recognizes individual titles may be harmonized in practice with the princi ple of equal rights. Any community could harmonize the two for itself, by socializing the land values within its jurisdiction. Instead of attaching equality of rights to the land directly, it could do so indirectly by socializing such of the profits of the whole area as are fairly at tributable to its superior natural qualities and locational advantages. Nor would this be a difficult matter. Separation of the profits of mere ownership of natural opportunities from the profits of their use is practicable by refer ence to the principle of Ricardo's law of eco nomic rent. This law affords an approximately accurate and substantially) fair measure of the difference between the incomes that land users earn, whether they are landowners or not, and incomes or other financial benefits from mere ownership. For it measures with reasonable accuracy the varying financial advantages of natural resources through every gradation, from the zero value of superabundant fertile land at social frontiers to the fabulous values of rich mineral deposits easily accessible to mar kets and the choicest sites for business oper ations in a metropolitan city. These financial advantages, whether estimated as annual values or as capital values, are °land values° in Sin gletax terminology. To socialize land values is, therefore, the Singletax method of securing equality of rights to land without abolishing any of the socially useful attributes of private titles.
Nor need the reform be made abruptly, or through novel modes of land administration, so as to shock a socially useful conservatism or any reasonable sense of social prudence. It can be established by a deviation from present fiscal principles and policies, with hardly any alteration of present fiscal methods. This is the point at which taxation principles and poli cies enter into the Singeltax. Though consid ered as a fiscal reform alone, the change pro posed would be in the direction of simplicity and greater fairness. It consists in so modify
ing real estate taxation as to exempt improve ments, leaving land values to bear the burden. This modification would not of itself socialize all land values, the entire amount of real estate t2xation being less annually than annual land values; but besides socializing more land val ues than are socialized now, it would discour age monopoly of idle land by increasing the taxation expense of keeping it idle. And it would encourage the improving of land by les sening taxation expenses of improvement and maintenance. It would, therefore, tend toward the social aims of the Singletax. This tend ency would be accelerated if all personal taxes for revenue were abolished. Taxes for police regulation are not within the purview of the Singletax, though objectionable as being the most unfair and least effective of regulation methods. But with land values as the sole source of public revenues, industrial activity would be doubly stimulated: first, by freedom from tax burdens; second, by the lowering of capitalized values of natural resources through market gluts of idle land taxed out of useless and obstructive ownership. The second of those causes of industrial stimulation would be progressively intensified by the forcing upon the real estate market of still more and better idle land, consequent upon the necessity, in order to derive public revenues exclusively from land values on a falling market, of increasing the rates of taxation on capitalized land values. This action and reaction—lowering of capital ized values of land by market gluts of idle land, and consequent raising of tax rates— might result in drawing approximately all land values into public treasuries. In that event and so long as the condition continued, land values would be wholly socialized. If, however, any considerable amount remained continuously un socialized, extensions of public functions and further improvements in public service could be made at the expense of land values until their socialization was approximately and per manently complete. To abolish all taxes save upon land values (in itself a beneficial tax re form) is, therefore, the method of the Single tax for securing all its social objects.