A correspondent has pointed out to us that when we
said that the Land Value Duties of the 1909 Budget did not pay for the officials who came into existence to administer them, we understated the case. He says that according to Mr. Harold Cox in the Sunday Times— and Mr. Cox ought to know, as he was the most brilliant opponent of the scheme—the duties involved the country in a net loss of 13,671,000. Mr. Lloyd George had prophesied that they would pay for the ' Dreadnoughts ' and Old Age Pensions. The whole inspiration of the Single Taxers is Henry George's fallacy that land is the only form of wealth which increases in value through the growth of the community. A moment's thought will show that this cannot possibly be true. What would happen if the whole burden of the rates were placed on land values, as Mr. Snowden suggested ? Those who do not own an inch of land but possess many other forms of wealth would get off scot free. Mr. Churchill's alleged failure to discriminate between those able and those unable to pay would become a masterpiece of just discrimination by comparison.
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