Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3172

Typed transcription by Spencer MacCallum of two fragments by Heath intended for a letter to R.T. Hall which may or may not have been used.

September 1954

Land users, present and prospective, are people who want to conduct enterprises and are looking for land which will give them the most of what they require considering the price they must pay. The last place they ever look is under the hammer of an auctioneer at a tax sale.  When land is made so cheap that the owner must sell it, it is so cheap that no user wants to buy it, because the taxes on the land are a detriment to its value. A prospective land user is looking for land that has value, not the land that has had the land /value/ taxed out of it.

I can say that I am not in agreement with George’s theory that land speculation is the cause of depressions. The reason for this is that I recognize, as George does not, that produc­tive business is borne down periodically by what he called the “schemes of taxation ..” I recognize, as George does not, that his “schemes of taxation ..” must necessarily cause periodic depressions.