Knight: Nemesis from the Chicago School

摘要

How should one assess Frank Knight's objections against the single tax? His objection against the practical feasibility of the taxation of land value certainly requires attention. But economists have suggested solutions to many of the practical problems of taxing land value. Although it needs to be tested whether these solutions are feasible in practice, it would be premature at this point to reject land-value taxation purely on practical grounds. Imagine a proposal to introduce a sales tax or a capital gains tax if no such taxes had ever been levied. The amount of information that needs to be gathered to implement such taxes would seem (and is) enormous, and the possibilities to evade these taxes would seem (and are) high enough to require highly intrusive enforcement activities. In addition, such taxes lead to an inefficient allocation of resources by distorting people's incentives. In comparison, the practical difficulties of levying a nondistortive tax on visible and immobile land seem rather small. We do not find any of Frank Knight's theoretical objections against the single tax compelling. The only objection that we cannot dismiss is the possibility that the single tax may provide funds to and thereby increase the power of nonbenevolent governments. Even though Knight did not explicitly raise this objection, his writings suggest that it may have been on his mind. But this objection applies to every tax, and the possibility that governments might abuse the levied funds is one of the costs of permitting governments to correct market inefficiencies through taxation. A society must decide whether this cost outweighs the expected benefit of government action.