--- Pat Gunning wrote:

> If a tax on oil was anticipated, it would reduce the
> incentive to search for oil.
> Surely George did not have in mind taxing desert
> land. 


	H. George did not address this question, to my knowledge. To him
subsoil hydrocarbons and minerals were just another form of pay dirt
yielding rent. His critics in his day made much of soil erosion, and Walras
chastened them for their unbalanced treatment. Hotelling wrote one of his
classic articles on how to value depletion. So, BTW, did Herbert Hoover, and
it is a good article, whatever we may think of his Presidency. L.C. Gray,
and Herbert Davenport, also wrote about soil erosion, Gray minimizing its
economic value, and Davenport first crying alarm, and later calling himself
a single taxer of the lesser persuasion, or some such qualifying phrase.

	Some latter-day Georgists have addressed mineral economics more
fully. I assembled a good group of them in *Extractive Resources and
Taxation*, 1967. I can cite other sources for whoever might ask: some
Georgist, some not.

	Considering the extensive history of thought on the subject, some
quite sophisticated,there is no need now to go back to square one.

Mason Gaffney