The Notion of the Unearned Increment

Joseph Dana Miller

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, January-February 1928]

Lee Bidgood, of the Department of Political Economy in the University of Alabama, is the author of a book used in his classes, and in it (page 152) he says:

"Again Single Taxers are incorrect in supposing that increase in value without the effort of the owner the unearned increment is peculiar to land. We see such increase going on everywhere in respect to all sorts of property. The ethical basis of the Single Tax is therefore fallacious."

SO that ends it. If there is any species of property that increases in value outside of old books, old violins, old wines, and old paintings, the Professor fails to indicate them. "All sorts of property," says the Professor. That is pretty inclusive. Yet "all sorts of property" tend to disintegration and decay. Houses built thirty years if not constantly renovated have arrived at their hour of dissolution. Machinery is shorter lived. Clothes shorter yet. Foods shorter still, unless we except plum pudding. Ah, plum pudding! The unearned increment in plum pudding has eluded the Professor. Yet it supplies another fine excuse for not taking for public purposes the socially created land values of the community!

BUT even plum pudding is a product of labor. It can, unlike land, be produced ad libitum. That is the reason why labor products do not increase in value. To urge the increase in value that comes to a few things which are not commodities and owe their value always fluctuating and uncertain to the vanity and wealth of collectors looks like a joke or an evasion. And it is a joke. It is a joke on the Professor. Delivered with the air of an oracle it may have an effect on some of the youthful minds Prof. Bidgood teaches. But we call on his students to challenge this contention. He is teaching economics the values he no doubt has in mind, values only to the virtuoso, are not the values which enter into the science of economics.