As I was glancing at the New York Times home page today, an article caught my eye: “The ‘Georgists’ Are Out There, and They Want to Tax Your Land.” It should be plain to anybody familiar with my writing what part of the article drew me in, but as I started reading, I realized that I was slightly familiar with Georgism.[fn1]
The short version of Georgism is this: in the late 19th century, Progressive Era political economist and journalist Henry George wrote Progress and Poverty. In his book, George tried to figure out why, with the economic and technological boom of the Gilded Age, income and wealth inequality were expanding, and how to solve the problem of inequality. As part of his solution, he proposed a land value tax (also known as the “single tax,” a name that will, for our purposes, become important shortly).
The land value tax isn’t a property tax as we know it; rather, it’s a tax based on the value of the underlying land, without taking into account any improvements (like buildings) on the land. It’s known as the “single tax” because George and strict Georgists believe that the land value tax could replace all other taxes as the single source of government revenue and that this single tax would not only be the most equitable—strict Georgists believe that the single tax would eliminate both poverty and recessions.
To be clear: this is crazy. It wouldn’t work for a ton of reasons, ranging from the constitutional[fn1] to the amount of revenue the modern welfare state needs to issues of valuation and liquidity. (In fact, the Times article refers to strict Georgists as the “tinfoil-hat-wearers of economics.”)
In the context of the Georgist Progressive Era, it’s not quite as insane an idea. The federal government was mostly funded through tariffs and excise taxes (and I’m not sure even in a Georgist world whether they would have considered the land value tax as a replacement for those). States, meanwhile, leaned heavily on property taxes, but the 19th century saw a huge shift in property taxes. At the beginning, there was little theory or consistency. By the end of the the century, there was a focus on the professionalization and standardization of property taxes, and Georgism would have been one way to do that.
The neo-Georgists the Times is writing about aren’t looking to replace all government revenue with land value taxes (or, at least, most of them aren’t). Rather, they’re looking at land value taxes as a way to drive down the cost of housing; basically, if you’re taxed on the value of land but not on the value of improvements on that land, you’re not going to let land sit vacant. Rather, you’ll build something on the land that provides a stream of income (housing or shops or whatever), since you’re paying the same amount of taxes with or without the building.
So what does this have to do with Mormonism? Well, we get that connection through Emmeline B. Wells. Among the many, many things she did, in 1891 she helped found that Utah Women’s Press Club. The Press Club was meant to encourage and support women writers and journalists in Utah. At their meetings, they (at least sometimes) had people come in to lecture.
As I was writing my forthcoming[fn3] book on Mormonism and taxation, I read through some of Wells’s diaries.[fn4] And in three entries she mentions the “single tax.” Those entries:
June 30, 1895: “did not reach home until the last car but one. how exhausted I was– I read to the Club– Autumnal Musings Dr. Ferguson looked daggers at me– she is unscrupulous. the ladies did remarkably well in the discussion. We are to have the single tax next time.”
February 27, 1896: “Press Club to night single tax continued”
March 31, 1896 (the most extensive and, frankly, interesting of her entries): “Today we are struggling to prepare for the Press Club. I realize it is a busy time but as we have some new members we should take some pains to appear well. The single tax question is very fascinating and the papers presented by Dr. Pratt have certainly been excellent and as citizens we should try to comprehend all these intricate problems and questions that are agitating the public mind and become able to talk of them in a way to help others. Miss Munroe [Sarah L. Monroe] and Dr. [Orielle] Curtis came in time only a few members came and the subjects were not given as satisfactorily as they ought to have been still one must submit to these disappointments. Dr. Curtis poem to the Club11 was very fine–”[fn5]
So what do we take from this? At the very least, that Emmeline B. Wells and the women in Salt Lake were participants in Progressive Era ideas. They were talking about very contemporary economic issues and appear to have hungered for the intellectual and social stimulation that those ideas provided.
And the ideas that animated Emmeline B. Wells are again in the spotlight.
[fn1] Chances are that you’re at least a little familiar with Georgisim, too, even if you don’t know the term; Monopoly‘s roots are in the explicitly Georgist The Landlord’s Game.
[fn2] The U.S. Constitution requires the federal government to apportion any direct tax according to states’ populations. We don’t know exactly what constitutes a “direct tax,” but the two kinds of taxes that are consistently seen as direct taxes are capitation taxes and taxes on real property.
[fn3] It will probably be released next year; watch this space for an announcement at some point!
[fn4] Well, “read through” might be a little strong. I searched for “tax” and read those entries.
[fn5] I assume that “Dr. Pratt” is Parley P. (Update: thanks to Ardis, now know that Dr. Pratt was Dr. Romania Pratt Penrose. Thank Ardis!) And honestly, if anybody knows how to find the single tax papers he delivered to the Utah Women’s Press Club, I would love to get my hands on those (even if they are too late for my book)!