Allyn Young on Henry George and the Single Tax

Abstract

ABSTRACT Henry George, though not the originator of the idea of the single tax, succeeded in popularising it to a wide audience. His scientific rigour in Progress and Poverty was questioned by both Alfred Marshall and Allyn Young. With progress neither poverty nor the decline in real wages was inevitable. Young agreed with Marshall that although the overall supply of land was fixed, it was relatively elastic for any particular use even within agriculture. Once it is recognised that land has competing uses, the opportunity cost principle becomes operative. Young largely discounted the notion of ‘unearned increment’ on several grounds including the fact that buying and holding land being like any other business, its increments were as much earned as any other, and therefore confiscatory taxation was largely unjustified.