Review of the Book

Taxation Turmoil
by W.R.B. Willcox

Joseph Dana Miller

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, March-April 1938]

Joseph Dana Miller was during this period Editor of Land and Freedom. Many of the editorials published were unsigned. This review is signed by Mr. Miller.

The reader can the more readily get the drift of Mr. Willcox's argument by the following quotation from page 60:

"The constant reiteration of rent as payment for the use of land and the evils which result from the failure of government to collect the rent, has led many people to regard the correction of social economic ills, fundamentally, as a land question. Much has been written in support of this view. It lies at the root of the social and communist insistence upon the governmental ownership of land. Even when socialists do not go so far as that, it convinces many of them of the necessity for governmental control of land. All of the ideas lead to the theory of a planned economy as essential to establishment of a classless social order and presupposes some form of collectivism."

This is deplorable if true. But there is a Land Question, a Rent Question, and a Tax Question, and the solution is all contained in the remedy Mr. George proposes. We do not believe that those who advocate the taking of economic rent for public purposes as a solution of the land question are in the least danger of being led into any form of collectivism.

Of course the public collection of the economic rent can be defended with little reference to land, and if Mr. Willcox, or any one else, wishes to do that we say, "God speed him." This question is so large a question that it can be approached from many angles, and if one is not enamored of his own subtleties, as we fear is often the case, there is no object to a different approach to the goal which Mr. George frankly admits was his destination.

We are even willing to believe that a presentation of the remedy from the angle taken by Mr. Willcox will appeal perhaps more readily to a certain order of minds. But it is only a partial statement leaves something further to be said much more indeed.

Of course Mr. Willcox has made out a good case. We agree most of it, save for the part we have just quoted. That we can make it a more convincing argument as a rent question than as a land question may well be doubted. But a number of doors swing open, it is indicative of the universality of the problem that there is reason for several kinds of orthodoxy, perhaps several kinds of heresy as well. A great truth has many doors. When Mr. Willcox says, it is not the private possession of land that is wrong but the private possession of rent," he is both orthodox and correct.

We cannot better conclude this inadequate review of an able book than by giving the following from page 135:

"If faced with evidence of popular knowledge of the actuality of beneficence of the natural function of rent, and of the insidious malignancy of all taxation what counsel of individual justice, of such efficiency, or legal efficacy, or of morals, ethics or religion, could be brought to oppose the recovery of all of the rent for all of the [unreadable] and the abolishment of all taxation?"