The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW: 1883-1930) Sat 1 Feb 1890 Page 5
By J. Farrell.
IX. — THE METHOD OF REFORM.
We propose to do nothing whatever beyond changing the basis of taxation from industry, production, exchange or incomes to land values. We propose to exempt everything else from taxation and derive not only the whole necessary revenue for governmental purposes from land values, but if there is more than enough for such purposes to divide the remainder equally among the members of the community in the form of annuities, or in any tray that may he determined upon. Land value belongs to the entire community by right, and neither individual nor communal justice is being done while any part of it is being diverted from the true owners. I have already shown that the State recognizes that the value of land results from the presence and needs of the whole people by paying the proceeds of the sale or lease of Crown land into the public Treasury. But, in selling, it gives to a private owner the power to take to himself, without further payment, all future increment of value arising from precisely the same source as the first value, for which he paid, had arisen. And in leasing a similar wrong may be done when the duration of the lease is a long one. Before it falls in the growth of population, the expenditure of public money and other causes may make the land leased worth much more than the lessee pays annually to the State, in which case he secures an unfair advantage over others.
The single tax, unlike any other, is simply a payment by the individual for value received from the State. All other forms of taxation are appropriations by the State, for public use, of individual earnings. The doctor, the lawyer, the merchant, as well as the industrial producer of every class fulfill necessary functions — in some cases, no doubt, functions made necessary only by an entirely false condition of society. But for every shilling of income they may receive through the exercise of their various callings they have given in return a value of service or of some tangible thing which these who paid them
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