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THE single tax is dead. Long live land value taxation!

We "former" single taxers have been caught in faulty logic. While we rightly believed that all value in land was social, we also in error believed that all social economic values were reflected in land values. The latter may not be true. The relationship between land values and social values is unilateral and not bilateral.

This may explain why a single tax on land values will not pay all of government budgets.

Examination of various benefits from civilization and society will show: some benefits add value equally to all portions of land area within governmental units; some do not affect land values at all.

The benefits of society and civilization to an individual are first evident in land - and can be measured as land value and economic rent.

Some other benefits are independent of land location and do not apply differentially to areas of land but equally, because they are directed toward individual inhabitants. They might raise land values equally with the governmental unit. Examples of these service benefits would be: availability of personal (not property) police protection, library facilities, and a high quality of education.

Each governmental unit contributes some social economic values to the individual which is not reflected in land value. The final practical governmental unit (the nation) contributes high social values: freedom of expression, the right to vote, national defense of persons, and justice in the courts.

Civilization representing past and present society, in the nation and without, has given knowledge and new methods in production and commerce, which has given to individuals employment possibilities and wages far beyond the opportunity existing from the basic opportunities in land.

Many talents are related almost entirely with human individuals and but slightly, if at all, with land. We Georgists have skipped the exchange values in the area of non-land services - lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers, barbers, etc. - where no wealth is created but capital is often used. The opportunities for high earnings perhaps should have a cost to individuals, just as the opportunities related to land have a cost to those who use land.

If there are other social economic values benefiting individuals besides those in land values, then these other values are factors in wealth production and service value creation.

The factors in the production of wealth are land plus labor plus capital plus non-land social values. Price is determined by rent plus wages plus interest plus non-directed social benefits plus taxes.

Factors in the creation of non-land service values are labor plus capital plus non-land social value (note the elimination of land). Service fees are determined by wages plus interest plus non-directed social benefits plus taxes.

A further proof that some non-land values do not add value to land is that at least some of these benefits are not in rent. For instance, at the national margin of production, where there is no land value the following benefits are available equally to all: citizenship, civil rights, national protection of life. Since rent of any portion of land is determined by subtracting the "production" of marginal land from the "production" of the land in question - the equal benefits subtract out. The capitalized "rent" does not include these equally distributed social values in the land value. This theory does not discard land value taxation but extends its principles. The benefits created should be returned .to those who create them. If this theory and the Georgist philosophy are correct, the extra non-land social values should be returned to society to maintain and continue those values.