William Jennings Bryan, (1860-1925)

Henry George was as guileless as a child, and as earnest as a martyr.

Benjamin Franklin, (1706-1790)

Our legislators are all landholders, and they are not yet persuaded that all taxes are finally paid by the land... therefore, we have been forced into the mode of indirect taxes. All the property that is necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual and the propagation of the species, is his natural right which none may justly deprive him of; but all property superfluous to such purposes is the property of the public.

Site Value Real Time Maps

By 1986 integrating Australia's highly acclaimed registers of Torrens Title ownership and each State's valuation lists, assessments of land tax, local rates and land rents can each be compiled and issued by computer with a speed and accuracy unknown only a few years ago making site Value contour maps available in real time.

President State Chamber of Commerce and Industry

The changes, which encouraged councils to switch from site value rating systems to the Capital Improved Value rating system was a form of capital gains tax on one’s house and business and its introduction should be opposed. The C.I.V. rating means in effect you will be taxed for making improvements to your house, for example painting it, building extensions, putting in a swimming pool and so on” he said. “It will discriminate against homeowners and business people who will have to pay more for making improvements to their properties or who may even be discouraged from doing so.” Michael Porter The Herald 28/10/1987

History of Site Value Rating

Site Value Rating was first raised in the 1901 Legislative Assembly by Arthur Robinson, the Member for Dundas, but frustrated by the Upper House opposition. Resurrected three times over the next twelve years, a bill giving municipalities the option of site value rating was finally passed in the Upper House in November, 1913, by a sixteen to six vote. A few extracts from the debate are worth quoting: Mr Hagelthorin, Minister for Public Works: “This proposal is widely supported by the A.N.A., the Chamber of Manufactures and the Rating Reform League.” William Angliss: "My firm will lose more than it will gain from this Bill, because it is compelled to keep vacant land on which to run stock; but I am voting for it in the interest of the people of Victoria.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865)

As long as the land monopoly is maintained, the few can take possession of what Nature free of charge has granted to everyone, and usury will penetrate the whole society, and we will have banks, which instead of being servants for the exchange of goods will become powerful extorters.

Professor Mason Gaffney

George's blend of radicalism and conservatism can puzzle one, until it is seen as a reconciliation of the two. The system is internally consistent, but defies conventional stereotypes. New Palgrave Dictionary of Economic Thought 1987 ...I’m very suspicious of people who take that point of view, I think it’s a substitute for having constructive ideas themselves. ..The word panacea is a scare word, it is used to intimidate people who have a solution, I refuse to be intimated. To me the wonderful thing about Site Value Rating the way it reconciles a number of ideas that in other philosophies and in the dominant philosophy today are considered to be incompatible. For example we can have a progressive tax system and we can have free markets and we can have incentives at the same time, these are not only compatible these are essential to each other. If the government imposes a rate on land and the rent that land yields, that not only allows land to put to its best use as defined by the free market. It encourages it! It’s not only compatible with the free market. Its more compatible than any other system. Furthermore it allows the government to untax labour, it allows government to untax exchange. The things that are the essence of the free market in are untaxed. The effects of the rate is highly progressive because the ownership of land is extremely concentrated. So what more could you ask for? Here’s a revenue system which is at the one time progressive and at the same time favourable to incentives. Association For Good Government Interview 1987

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948):

There is enough for everybody's need, but not enough for their greed.

Bible: Leviticus XXVv23

The land shall not be sold forever; for the land is Mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me. Moses (1400 BC)

Henry Thomas Buckle, (1821-1862)

The landlords are perhaps the only large class whose interests are diametrically opposed to those of the people.

George Bernard Shaw, (1856-1950)

The greatest of evils and the worst of evils is poverty. I went quite casually one night into a hall in London, and I heard a man deliver a speech which changed the whole current of my life. That man was an American, Henry George. We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. Whether it is the man or the earth I own, the bird or its food, it is essentially the same thing. As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed. There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

Patrick Edward Dove

"The Theory of Human Progression": The land is for the nation, and not for the aristocracy.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Social Contract: The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying, "This is mine", and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes, might not anyone have saved mankind by pulling up the stakes, filling in the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."

Dr Sun Yat-Sen, (1866-1925)

The land tax as the only means of supporting the government is an infinitely just, reasonable, and equitably-distributed tax, and on it we will found our new system.

Pliny the Elder (23-79)

Land monopoly ruined Rome.

Thomas Carlyle, (1795-1881)

Properly speaking, the land belongs to these two: the almighty God and to all his children of men. (Past and Present)

Bible: Eccles. 5:9

The profit of the earth is for all.