> > The main problem with the old George proposal to > replace all other taxes > with a land or site > tax is that governments are now simply too large to > be funded out of the > income that goes just > to land. Maybe that would have worked in the 19th > century, but no more. Such things are not fixed in stone, and vary according to context. I suspect that a land/resource tax might generate "enough" revenue in Saudi Arabia. As for the US, how much is really "enough"? We should not take it simply as granted that governments are simply too large for any particular tax. Perhaps modern governments are themselves simply too large. The 1994 Congress passed a budget that would have set the US on the path towards reducing the Federal Budget to single digits, as a percentage of GDP. Of course, CLinton forced a revision of this plan, and Republicans have since grown fond of federal spending. But the fact of the matter is that much of the Federal budget could be zeroed out wihtout causing a collapse of modern civilization. Some would say that extensive cuts in Federal spending would actually improve economic conditions. I do not agree with Georgist arguments for the single tax, but the idea that the single tax is unworkable because government is necessarily 'too big', is not supported by any established facts. Modern governments are arguably too large, and could possibly be downsized to fit with the single tax, assuming that the single tax is itself desirable. Doug Mackenzie