"How can taxes equal to land rents, in full, from land owners, be collected
(1) Without giving to the assessor the arbitrary power of a dictator ?"
(2)"Without allowing the assessor to retain the dictatorial power that he already has ?"
The Graduated Income Tax
Today the only ting that is delaying an incipient, fascistic aristocracy from becoming a full-blown, royal aristocracy and shoving all of their rightful share of the expenses of government over onto industry to pay, is the graduated income tax, communistic though it may be.
The government expenses that should be paid by this incipient aristocracy as its share, are
(A) Land rents. Taxes equal to land rents in full from land owners, would prevent the formation of a fascistic, landed aristocracy or ruling class.
On the other hand, as we have found, in order to prevent Communism, we must prevent the government from hoarding land sold to the State for taxes.
(B) Rents of evidences of the social credit. These, if collected properly by the government, would destroy, and prevent the formation of a fascistic moneyed, ruling-class aristocracy.
If this incipient aristocracy will be allowed to shove its rightful share of the expenses of government over onto industry and labor to pay, it will do three things :
(A) It will leave a great portion of the money of these expenses in the hands of this budding aristocracy, in the form of unearned incomes.
(B) All that would thus be left in the hands of this budding aristocracy, would have to be duplicated by industry in the form of an added expense to labor and industry.
(C) It will allow the formation of a real, fascistic, parasitic aristocracy.
Today, this graduated income tax actually is tending to guide us into Communism or State Capitalism.
Communism is a sate of complete, theoretical democracy.
Communism or State Capitalism is a state where the masses are regimented and coordinated in their activities by a king or dictator.
Communism is a state where the masses will be equalized by being herded like cattle by an industrially planning dictator.
If this executive coordinator of activities or industrial planner (king) will happen to be benevolent in mind, as Communists hope he will be, he will coordinate his people in cooperative, mass production and distribution of wealth. There will be trade with other nations and peaceful isolation.
But if this dictator will be tyrannical, as dictators usually are, he will, coincident with a lust for power, dissipate the energies of his people in conflict with external nations.
This dictator can still be designated or called a "president" and exercise dictatorial power through "executive agreement."
Again, how can taxes equal to land rents be collected in full from land owners.
(3) �Without causing the State or the government to assume a real, active, Communistic, Socialistic, Marxist, de-facto ownership of land, s called for by Article I of the �Communist Manifesto � ?
(4) �And still allow land to be privately owned and controlled and inherited by the individual.�
(5) �And still allow the land-owning individual to produce wealth as, and when he pleases, but yet
(A) Force him to put his land to its most intensive use, and
(B) Prevent him from hoarding more than he can use, and
(C) Provide the government with enough money to pay the necessary expenses of a necessary amount of government, and
(D) Cause all the best land to be put to its best use, and
(E) Cause all land poorer than the poorest necessary to be used, to be abandoned and to become a source of free land for future generations and immigrants, and
difference in the amount of wealth produced from the better, or better located land, and the poorest in use, the amount of labor being the same in both cases?�
How to Combat Communism and Fascism
In order to accomplish all the above . . .
(1) The first thing to do will be to pass a Constitutional amendment to prevent the government from owning and hoarding more land than it can actually use in the administration of government.
This would effectively prevent Communism and/or Socialism and/or State Capitalism. It would cause the production of wealth to be, and become solely the right and prerogative of the individual, to the greatest degree possible ; labor products being the truest and most sacred kind of private property.
This would permit all land not actually used by the government in its administration, to become available for pre-emption by either private persons or by the government whenever either would have an actual use, or need for it.
The hoarding of land, today, by the government is peculiarly a policy of communists trying to control government. Yet, such a policy, by tending to give land a higher price by causing it to become more scarce to the individual, is playing into the hands, and suiting the purposes of Fascists.
We have already seen how Socialism can turn into Fascism when, after socializing industry, the executive planner of dictator or effective political employer of men in mass production, would inevitably find it necessary to either
(A) Destroy land owners and money owners in a bloody rebellion or revolution or
(B) Bow to their political power arising from their ownership of money and land, and take orders from them.
(2) The next thing to do would be to simply remove all taxes from industry and labor products and improvements on land.
Comment : in view of the presently proposed universal excise (a general sales tax, or consumption tax). One might venture : the excise would only apply to the amounts of money actually spent on buying new (not second-hand) goods, to the monies spent on the final products of the several industries.
It is not the product that would be subject to taxation but the action of the purchase of such a product, the individual being, in most circumstances, free to engage or not to engage in any such particular action or transaction.
This being an indirect taxation , such as called for by the U. S. Constitution in its original (unaltered) form.
"Tax the rich" may be appealing and may seem just, so long as everybody does not get ruined and so long as not everything is being destroyed under such slogans.
One may observe that such an excise as proposed, while exactly uniform, would in effect tend to produce higher relative rates of taxation on the wealthiest persons who usually are the ones who either can afford or are interested in obtaining expensive articles of luxury. — (WPT).
Even regulatory licenses could be removed, because, with the free competition to produce and to sell wealth that would be established, the people would soon learn who would be reliable and honest and trustworthy in their business dealings. Today, with virtual monopoly, industry must be regulated.
Thus we would really encourage the production of wealth, for which there would be a market. There would be a market for all wealth produced by all individuals, for the same reasons that there would be no �surplus� and no �accumulated capital� and no �excess population,� as we have seen.
(3) Next, leave taxes on land as they are, for the time being.
That is to say, continue the assessments on land and the tax rate on land as it is, for the present. Make no arbitrary attempt to increase taxes on land. These will be increased automatically to their proper amount, as time will go on.
The users of land will themselves increase these land taxes, to their proper amount. This increase won�t be made by any arbitrary, dictatorial decree of an assessor trying to equalize land values. How ?
In passing, we will not that rates of interest on evidences of the social credit that will be
borrowed compulsorily from the primary, Treasury Bank, will be made high enough to pay the balance of all necessary, routing, budgetary expenses of government.
To fill this channel of money, we will just start to make loans to industry to work on job-lots of goods.
[ . . ]
Land taxes will be applied first to the payment of all local government expenses. Whatever will remain will be applied to the payment of next higher levels of government. Rents fro the social credit will be at rates high enough to finish all governmental expenses of a routine, necessary nature.
Thus . . .
(4) Leave all present-day debts of persons, industries and the nation as they are. They will be gradually paid off and retired.
[ . .
But, when our proposed reforms will have been inaugurated, the debts of industry and the nation will cease to be perpetuated and increased, in order to keep full the channel of the functional cycle of money, as is the case today.
(5) Next, have the government take over the Federal Reserve Bank by buying its stock (evidences of the ownership of these banks—evidences of the money lent to establish these banks. Stocks represent the real physical valuation of the properties of the banks. Thus, buy the stocks, and
the properties will be included in their sale.
Government bonds can be issued in exchange for these stocks of the Federal Reserve banks, dollar for dollar, at their present-day market value. The stock acquired thus by the government in its secondary capacity, can be destroyed, while the bonds issued to buy this stock can become a part of the great temporary, secondary debt, and be somewhat similar to a second mortgage.
A part of this great secondary debt will cancel itself, because it, as a secondary debt, will be composed of debts contracted by, and between individuals and companies of individuals, up to and including a secondary capacity of government, even though most of this great secondary debt will resolve itself into a debt of industry and working people to money-owning, non-working parasites.
[ . . ]
In any case, in passing, the Federal Reserve Banks must become totally and exclusively owned and controlled by the government. They will become the primary Treasury Bank which will be compelled by law to issue evidences of the social credit (primary money) to industry, s loans, which will be first used after being lent
exclusively to pay the wages of all men engaged in the routine, mass production and s distribution of real wealth (labor products).