Controversies over Taxation take the form primarily of “Taxation according to ability to pay” versus “Taxation according to financial benefits conferred” upon the taxpayer by the social whole of which the agent is Government. The former contention--apportionment of Taxation according to ability to pay--puts Government in the position of a highwayman whose “loot” corresponds to so much of the proportionate property of his victims as he is able to extort. But how shall taxes be measured in proportion to governmental or social benefits received in financial form by the taxpayer? A sound Economic discrimination might be made by levying upon Rent only, instead of both Rent and Wages as is now customary. But by what right could Government levy upon Rent only if its claims to an income are as a producer of Wealth functioning in the category of Labor, the natural compensation for which is not Rent but Wages? The answer would seem to be that inasmuch as all Wealth is produced by Labor from and upon Land, and as the Rent allocation of Wealth attaches to Land-ownership--Land itself making no claim to compensation,--Government might with Economic consistency exact its Wages as a factor in Production from the receivers, actual and potential, of Rent, whose ownership of the Land, valueless without Governmental protection, rises in Value with Economic progress and falls in Value with Economic decline. Such an adjustment would exact no more of Economic science than appropriate alterations of the technical terms respectively for the two fundamental allocations of Wealth in Distribution. Instead of identifying one allocation as Wages and the other as Rent, the two could be identified respectively as Individual Wages and Social Wages. This mode of identification would in no wise disturb the natural characteristics of the two allocations into which the Wealth produced by Labor from and upon Land naturally distributes itself. In that connection it may be useful to note the fact that Taxes on the Wages allocation of Wealth tend to check the production of Wealth. They interfere with Trade, that gigantic factor of Production, by thrusting the tax upon consumers as part of the Price--not only the tax, but also business profits on the tax. On the other hand, taxes upon Rent tend to check the Economic evil of speculation in Landownership and the consequent monopolization of Natural Resources unproductively. Related to the problems thus suggested is the policy commonly and widely known as “the Single Tax,” the fiscal method proposed and widely popularized by Henry George for initiating and promoting an evolutionary process in the direction not only of ethical readjustments of fiscal methods but also of ethical readjustments of the Economic relations of mankind to Natural Resources and to Artificial Objects produced from and upon Natural Resources in accordance with natural Economic law.