A Square Deal and Guaranteed Democracy

Silas S. Taber

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, March-April 1928]

SPECIAL privilege and monopoly can be abolished, thus ending the process of enriching the few by impoverishing the many, and incidentally, purifying politics by removing occasion for The Third House.

Equality of opportunity in natural resources, can be established; thus ending unemployment and the resultant criminality.

Private ownership or possession of land and property can be confirmed; thus inducing a loyal and stabilized citizenship.

Freedom of production and exchange can be introduced; thus reducing the cost of living and stimulating industry.

Public tax assessors can be relieved of their impossible task of estimating values, and citizens from their inclination to fraud and perjury; thus inculcating honesty.

Modern inventions can and should be made to signify increased wages to labor and increased profits to capital; thus eliminating conflict.

Condensing the above declarations into one:

The square deal among men the Golden Rule in our economic life can and should be inaugurated, by simply transferring as gradually as required all governmental or community taxes, from the private property values created by industry and trade the products of human labor to the social or community values created by the governments and society itself, as expressed and reflected in ground rent. Ground rent keeps pace with public need. This would be scientific taxation, in harmony with every day business principles a levy upon the citizen in exact proportion to the benefits conferred.

The voters can enact scientific taxation into law, whenever they make a majority demand; thus introducing all the benefits and blessings of a square deal and a guaranteed democracy to all people; a new era of liberty and justice.