“Historically, land taxes are commutations of physical rents into money-rents, and taxes are not something taken from private property by the sovereign, but property is sovereignty taken collectively from the King by his tenants.”

Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 221

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Historically, land taxes are commutations of physical rents into money-rents, and taxes are not something taken from pr…" by John R. Commons?
John R. Commons photo
John R. Commons 26
United States institutional economist and labor historian 1862–1945

Related quotes

Mary Ruwart photo

“Those too poor to own their own home pay no property taxes, but their rent reflects the taxes that the landlord must pay. The poor pay higher rents to subsidize inefficiency and waste.”

Mary Ruwart (1949) American scientist and libertarian activist

Source: Healing Our World: In An Age of Aggression, (2003), p. 123

Thomas Robert Malthus photo

“But, fortunately for mankind, the neat rents of the land, under a system of private property, can never be diminished by the progress of cultivation.”

Book I, Chapter III, Of the Rent of Land, Section IX, p. 216
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Abraham Lincoln photo

“It is fair that each man shall pay taxes in exact proportion to the value of his property; but if we should wait before collecting a tax to adjust the taxes upon each man in exact proportion with every other man, we should never collect any tax at all.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speeches to Ohio Regiments (1864), Speech to the One Hundred Sixty-fourth Ohio Regiment
Context: I say this in order to impress upon you, if you are not already so impressed, that no small matter should divert us from our great purpose. There may be some irregularities in the practical application of our system. It is fair that each man shall pay taxes in exact proportion to the value of his property; but if we should wait before collecting a tax to adjust the taxes upon each man in exact proportion with every other man, we should never collect any tax at all. There may be mistakes made sometimes; things may be done wrong while the officers of the Government do all they can to prevent mistakes. But I beg of you, as citizens of this great Republic, not to let your minds to carried off from the great work we have before us. This struggle is too large for you to be diverted from it by any small matter.

Friedrich Engels photo

“More than ever before, Americans are suffering from back problems: back taxes, back rent, back auto payments.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

San Antonio Express-News staff (September 14, 2007) "Consumer's Edge", San Antonio Express-News, p. 10F.
Attributed

Henry George photo
Milton Friedman photo

“In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

As quoted in The Times Herald, Norristown, Pennsylvania (1 December 1978)
Context: There's a sense in which all taxes are antagonistic to free enterprise … and yet we need taxes. We have to recognize that we must not hope for a Utopia that is unattainable. I would like to see a great deal less government activity than we have now, but I do not believe that we can have a situation in which we don't need government at all. We do need to provide for certain essential government functions — the national defense function, the police function, preserving law and order, maintaining a judiciary. So the question is, which are the least bad taxes? In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago.

Adam Smith photo

“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VI, p. 60.

Michel Foucault photo
Walter Rauschenbusch photo

Related topics