Land value taxation - 1 - Chapter 6

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  Dec, 2002  

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While living in Pennsylvania, Brown became active in promoting local land value taxation. In 1951, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a bill allowing "third-class" cities to voluntarily adopt a graded tax plan wherein the cities could assess land and improvements separately and gradually increase the tax on land value relative to that on improvements. (104) In 1913, Pittsburgh and Scranton had adopted a similar plan. The new plan did not set fixed limits on the ratio between land and building taxes. Brown and his wife, Elizabeth, aided in the attempt to convince city authorities to adopt the plan. However, the results were disappointing, and the Browns attributed this to a lack of understanding of the benefits and to the opposition of those with special interests. (105) Later, the fortunes of land value taxation in the state, improved with new cities adopting the plan and cities such as Pittsburgh increasing the ratio of land to improvements taxation. Steven Cord, an active supporter of this movement and edi tor of Incentive Taxation, was quoted as saying that the land-tax idea "has moved out of the hands of the aficionados and into the mainstream of local politics" in western Pennsylvania. (106) Cord's 1983 statement was prophetic for all of the state of Pennsylvania. A portion of the abstract of a 1997 study by Wallace Oates and Robert Schwab of the rejuvenation of the city of Pittsburgh reads: "The analysis suggests that, while the shortage of commercial space was a primary driving force behind the expansion, the reliance on increased land taxation played a supportive role by enabling the city to avoid rate increases in other taxes that could have impeded development." (107) One can speculate that Brown would have applauded the authors for their objectivity and recognition of the importance of the study despite its inherent difficulty. He may as well have quibbled with the authors' above statement, and asked if the previous tax regime was a contributor to the shortage of commercial space. If this were so, then the role of land value taxation may have been something more than merely supportive.

Throughout his life Brown was active in organizations supporting the single tax idea and was a contributor to Land and Freedom, The Freeman and the Henry George News, among others, and, from its inception, the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. As mentioned earlier, he served on the editorial board of this journal along with, for a number of years, two other economists, Harold Hotelling and John Ise. Hotelling was sympathetic to land value taxation as was Ise originally, although the latter was shown to have altered his view by E. R. Brown. (108) Brown was also a founding member of the The Freeman's editorial council along with William C. de Mille, John Dewey, George Raymond Geiger, Henry George III, Joseph Dana Miller, Albert Jay Nock and Kathleen Norris. His contributions to this journal (1938-1943) were highly polemical with titles such as: "The Clarions of the Battle Call," "The Void in College Curricula" and "Why States Go Totalitarian." The Freeman became the Henry George News in early 1943. B rown contributed many articles to this newsletter.