Rent in a Georgeist Society

Fred Pease

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, May-June 1942]

I am occasionally asked how I would picture or visualize the state of society if the reform advocated by Henry George were to be adopted and in actual practice. My answers to this question are not usually well received.

After attending a Single Tax meeting at Detroit I stopped off at Chicago and renewed acquaintance with several Georgeists there. The question as to rent fund being sufficient for the needs of society was raised and my views were requested. I made such extravagant claims that they formed the opinion I was not serious and gave me the "horse laugh." I then referred them to the words of George: "Heat, light, water, power, and transportation, etc., at public expense, to be defrayed from rent fund." Some refused to believe he had made any such statement, and others regarded it as a dream or vision impossible of realization, entirely impractical.

It is said that when one is denied food or drink for long periods the utmost care must be exercised when food is available; the stomach rebels and expels nourishment. It seems to me this is similar to the matter under discussion. The average human intelligence is incapable of even entertaining the thought or idea that a large part, even a major proportion, of the temporal needs of individual life, may be supplied by expenditure of government revenue derived from the rent fund.

When we realize that the effect of progress is to constantly decrease prices of commodities, measured either in money or in terms of human effort, we must agree that the elimination of taxes would result in decreased cost of every article consumed; the elimination of tariffs or trade restriction would make available the special skill or superior natural resources of foreign countries. The enormously increased consumption resulting from this procedure would appear in a standard of living so greatly superior to that enjoyed at present as to stagger the imagination. The contrast is so striking in comparison with our present poverty-stricken, cheese-paring, penurious, miserly existence, it is only the exceptional mind that is capable of even considering the matter, and our claims are dismissed as the ravings of a diseased or disordered mind.

Many students of George fail to grasp the full significance and the effect on society of his proposal. He contends that rent absorbs a constantly increasing proportion of total wealth produced at present. He draws attention to the fact that if rent were to be collected by society and expended for the benefit of society this procedure would accelerate the increase of rent and in the course of time be far greater in amount and as a proportion than the wage and interest fund. (See Progress and Poverty, pages 252, 433, 442, 456.)

George states: "It will be necessary, where rent exceeds the present governmental revenue, to increase the amount demanded in taxation, and to continue this increase as society progresses and rent increases."

Many students of George have grasped only a portion of the great truth he tried to make clear.