ABSTRACT
Harry Gunnison Brown's interpretation of the single-tax idea was that income derived from the site value of land should constitute the first source for governmental taxation. Brown's advocacy, introduced in 1917 in "The Ethics of Land Value Taxation," would entail multiple considerations. The single-tax idea, especially where moderately interpreted as a program to increase the taxation of site values and relieve the tax burden on "improvements," elicited arguments that tended to be more economic than ethical in nature. Another argument commonly advanced against the implementation of high land value taxation was whether the site value of land could be accurately assessed in practice. Brown described what he saw to be the "probable effects of making land rent the chief source of public revenues." Brown had occasion, in a 1941 "communication" to the American Economic Review, to chide Kenneth Boulding for an inconsistency in his Economic Analysis.
