Quote#Politics & Power
Historically, land taxes are commutations of physical rents into…
Quote byJohn R. Commons · 1862–1945
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 221.
English (original)
Historically, land taxes are commutations of physical rents into money-rents, and taxes are not something taken from private property by the sovereign, but property is sovereignty taken collectively from the King by his tenants.
— John R. Commons
More from John R. Commons
The aim of this volume is to work out an evolutionary and behavioristic, or rather volitional, theory of value. It was commenced thirty-five years ago at Johns Hopkins University under my stimulating teacher, Richard T. Ely.
The Chinese and Japanese are perhaps the most industrious of all races, while the Chinese are the most docile. The Japanese excel in imitativeness, but are not as reliable as the Chinese. Neither race, so far as their immigrant …
Other races of immigrants, by contact with our institutions, have been civilized—the negro has only been domesticated.
The boot and shoe makers, either as shoemakers or “cordwainers,” have been the earliest and the most strenuous of American industrialists in their economic struggles. A highly skilled and intelligent class of tradesmen, widely scattered, …
Liberty is absence of restraint. Freedom is participation in government.
It would not be incorrect to say that all capital is invisible value, in that it is the present value, not of physical things, but of the hopes of the future aroused through confidence in the now invisible but expected transactions of the …