The Void in College [Economics] Curricula

Harry Gunnison Brown

[Reprinted from The Freeman, September, 1939]

This is the first of a series of three articles by Professor Brown under the general title "The Void in Our College Curricula." The three articles will be reprinted as a pamphlet in which a page will be devoted to an announcement of the correspondence course in fundamental economics, and another page will advertise the classes. Copies will be mailed to college and high school instructors, as well as to students. Readers who would like to help this, project are requested to send names of people to whom they would like to have copies of the pamphlet sent. One dollar will cover the cost of printing and mailing twenty-five pamphlets.

Do you really want to understand the economics of location or site value? Do you want to face frankly and hear discussed without embarrassed withholding of vital considerations the question of the right to use natural resources? Do you want to examine in all of its significant aspects, the economic consequences of the fact that, in our existing system of property and taxation, a majority must pay to a comparatively few, billions of dollars a year for community-produced location advantages, -- i.e., for permission to work and to live on the earth in those locations where such advantages are available? And do you want to gain a full understanding of the consequences to be expected should government, by taxation, appropriate this annual community-produced location value as a first source of revenue for public expenditures?

If you really desire a full comprehension of this problem, you should probably take one or more courses in The Henry George School of Social Science.

I do not mean to say that you can learn about the problem nowhere else. There are teachers of economics in a few of our universities and colleges who do really give their classes assignments on the problem and even, perhaps, take some pains to make them analyze the principles involved in its solution. But this is not generally the case. In most colleges and universities the student will either never have his attention called to the subject at all, or he will be offered the briefest summary, not in the least calculated to make him understand what can be said in favor of the taxation of land values, followed by a "refutation," but with no mention at all of considerations which have again and again been presented in rebuttal.

Not long ago the very "liberal" St. Louis Post Dispatch editorialized, with apparent satisfaction to the editorialist, on the inability of a certain conservative organization to stamp out sentiments of criticism and protest among college students. After commenting on the persistence of socialistic and communistic groups the editorial continued: "Here and there, even, an occasional single taxer is found boring from within some department of economics." The implication (though emphasis is my own) seems clear enough that the land-value tax philosophy gets definitely less adherence than the philosophy of socialism or of communism which, in turn, has the adherence of a comparatively small minority.

At least one economist tells us that, in matters on which there is controversy among his fellows, he has sought to be "meticulously objective." He appears to believe that he can thus avoid any suspicion of being a propagandist. But, in truth, fair suspicion of being a propagandist or, at least, a near-propagandist, is not to be so easily avoided. "Propaganda" may express itself in the very selection of topics for presentation; in determining how much space to allot, relatively, to the affirmative and to the negative side of an argument; in deciding which view is to' have the last word; in the somewhat disingenuous neglect to make perfectly clear to readers or listeners the grounds upon which the intelligent opposition would rest its case, -- and, after all, who of us does not strive harder to make clear the arguments for belief s we ourselves hold than the arguments for beliefs which, rightly or wrongly, we disapprove? "Propaganda" may express itself in the easy acceptance and uncritical presentation of arguments which even a little analysis would show to be invalid or irrelevant. Indeed, silence may sometimes be "propaganda," if not by formal definition at least in practical effect.

Under the circumstances, with a majority of professors of economics seemingly unfriendly to the most essential elements in Henry George's economic philosophy, it is hardly to be wondered at that this philosophy does not receive a complete presentation --when it receives any presentation whatever -- in most institutions of the so-called "higher learning."

An interesting example of the type of argument presented by wellknown academic economists against the view that the rental value of sites and natural resources should go to the public, is to be found in Public Finance (2nd edition) by Harley Leist Lutz of Princeton University. Professor Lutz, discussing the local use of the "single tax" in cities of Northwestern Canada, says that "the taxes on land value were a fairly satisfactory source of support as long as the community making use of it was growing and its land values were rising," but contends that this method of taxation "ceased to be satisfactory as soon as the peak of land value inflation was reached" and refers, with apparent approval, to the "reaction against a narrow tax base."

Commenting on this discussion in my book on The Economic Basis of Tax Reform, in 1932, I pointed out that whether land values are increasing is not the matter of chief importance in deciding whether the tax "base" is too "narrow" to yield adequate revenue to the public, but that the real question is whether the total annual economic rent is sufficiently great; and that, so long as a land-value tax leaves to private owners any considerable amount of economic rent, there is no sense in calling the tax base too narrow. And I further pointed out that even if such a source did prove to be inadequate from the point of view of securing sufficient revenue, this would be no argument against relying on it for as much revenue as it could be made to yield.

I then remarked on the fact that, in a book on public finance extending to 750 pages and treating at length various kinds of taxes and taxing systems, Professor Lutz was able to spare scarcely more than three pages for a consideration of land-value taxation, and that the major part of these three pages was given over to a brief discussion of a temporary exemption of new dwellings in New York State, leaving only one page -- the page on which the land-value taxes in Northwestern Canada were discussed! -- that is really devoted to the land-value-tax program.

The sequel is interesting. Perhaps -- who can tell! -- it is even significant. Recently Professor Lutz brought out a new edition (the 3rd) of his book, considerably enlarged. The new edition contains not just an insignificant 750 pages, but 940 pages, covering numerous and varied ideas and practices in government finance and taxation. But of the problem of land-value taxation or of the arguments in support of such taxation or of reference to Henry George who so effectively pleaded for this reform, there is now not a single sentence. The criticism of the use of the "single tax" in Northwestern Canada, on which I commented in my book is neither revamped nor further developed. It has simply disappeared. And with it, unless in my search I have inadvertently overlooked it, has disappeared all reference to the single tax or to any special taxation of land values.

And so the student at Princeton University -- or at any of the colleges where Lutz's now massive book is the chosen text -- who takes a year's course in public finance based on this text, can easily, however faithfully he works at his assigned lessons, come out at the end utterly unaware that anyone, anywhere, has ever suggested either the exclusive or, even, the especially high taxation of land values.

If not all text books in public finance and taxation ignore the issue thus thoroughly, it is certainly the case that various others give it only a tiny bit of attention. It is altogether probable, therefore, that the typical college student who pursues one or more courses in public finance or taxation for a semester or for a year in the typical American university or college, finishes his course with not a glimmer of understanding of the "single tax" or land-value-tax theory, although, indeed, he may imbibe a prejudice which will prevent his ever thereafter giving it serious consideration; and frequently enough -- as when the course is based on Lutz's text or some other text of similar nature -- he finishes with no awareness that there is any such theory.

Is it not reasonably clear that teachers who use such texts, unless with extended supplementing, are altogether willing -- even if not positively desirous -- that the land question shall be entirely omitted from consideration?

In view of the large number of teachers and educational institutions whose courses in public finance fit one of the descriptions above, has not The Henry George School of Social Science a task fully as important in educating college graduates as in educating those who have never attended college?