Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of WealthGeorge, Henry
General
Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth
George, Henry
Economics; Single tax
There is another thing to be observed. Capital is not a necessary
factor in production. Labor exerted upon land can produce wealth
without the aid of capital, and in the necessary genesis of things must
so produce wealth before capital can exist. Therefore the law of rent
and the law of wages must correlate each other and form a perfect whole
without reference to the law of capital, as otherwise these laws would
not fit the cases which can readily be imagined, and which to some
degree actually exist, in which capital takes no part in production.
And as capital is, as is often said, but stored-up labor, it is but a
form of labor, a subdivision of the general term labor; and its law
must be subordinate to, and independently correlate with, the law of
wages, so as to fit cases in which the whole produce is divided between
labor and capital, without any deduction for rent. To resort to the
illustration before used: The division of the produce between land,
labor and capital must be as it would be between Tom, Dick, and Harry,
if Tom and Dick were the original partners, and Harry came in but as an
assistant to and sharer with Dick.
CHAPTER II.
RENT AND THE LAW OF RENT.
The term rent, in its economic sense—that is, when used, as I am
using it, to distinguish that part of the produce which accrues to
the owners of land or other natural capabilities by virtue of their
ownership—differs in meaning from the word rent as commonly used.
In some respects this economic meaning is narrower than the common
meaning; in other respects it is wider.
It is narrower in this: In common speech, we apply the word rent to
payments for the use of buildings, machinery, fixtures, etc., as well
as to payments for the use of land or other natural capabilities; and
in speaking of the rent of a house or the rent of a farm, we do not
separate the price for the use of the improvements from the price for
the use of the bare land. But in the economic meaning of rent, payments
for the use of any of the products of human exertion are excluded, and
of the lumped payments for the use of houses, farms, etc., only that
part is rent which constitutes the consideration for the use of the
land—that part paid for the use of buildings or other improvements
being properly interest, as it is a consideration for the use of
capital.
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