Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1382

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Edwin H. Spengler, Department of Economics, Brooklyn College, Bedford Avenue and Avenue H, Brooklyn, New York

May 2, 1941

Dear Doctor Spengler:

It was with much regret that I was unable to have another happy association with you and Dr. Hession during my last visit in New York. However, I expect to be in New York again for a week or more following the 9th or 10th of May, and shall be very happy if there is opportunity to see you both again during that time.

I have been interested in your article on “Land-Value Increment Taxation” in The American City for April.

Your opening sentence assumes that there are evils associated with land speculation, and that it is these evils which have led to proposals to restrict the free and open market as the agency for the transfer of titles. It would interest me very much to have you specify pre­cisely what evils result from the purchase of land when there is small demand for it, and selling it at an increased price when the demand has become greater. Does such a transaction impair the free contractual relations of men? Does it in any way inhibit or diminish the pro­duction of wealth? Does it not enable persons to carry out the distribution of sites and resources in the manner in which they wish to do so? And does it infringe any liberties to permit the distributor to have the full recompense for his services which the distributee consents and desires to give him for them? Would it be better for the community to have the land distributed by politicians or other persons not owning it, and for a recompense dictated by them instead of by the opera­tion of contract and the market? These seem to me very important questions that should be considered even if not answered, by anyone who desires any precise or practical knowledge concerning one of the basic social institu­tions.

Your closing paragraph suggests that if the compensation which land owners have received for their distri­bution of sites and resources since the turn of the century had been seized by political authority, huge revenues would have accrued to the politicians in charge. Is it to be inferred that these revenues would have been used more constructively than politicians used other revenues that they seized? Is it also to be inferred that land owners would have continued to distribute land and its resources by operation of the market if they had been denied recompense for doing so? And is it to be supposed that land and its resources would be more equitably held and possessed if transfers of title were determined by political authority instead of under proprietary authority by the process of making voluntary agreements in open competition?

I hope you are not considering the questions I have raised as being impertinent or irrelevant to the subject matter upon which you have written, or that I am inviting you to controversy. My hope is rather to raise healthy inquiries in your mind and, perhaps, to have the pleasure of participating with you in the discovery of some of the answers.

Please remember me kindly to Dr. Hession, and let me reaffirm my pleasure in being acquainted with you.

Sincerely yours,

 

  Spencer Heath

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