WHAT MAKES HIGH PRICES?
Nortan, Edmund
What Makes High Prices? By EDMUND NORTON THE DISCUSSION in LaFollette's of February 12 and 26, by Mr. Clyde H. Tavenner and Mr. Herbert Quick, in relation to prices, is arousing to a student of...
...Here seems to be a verification of Mr...
...We sell it there for an advance ©f only 10 cents (price ISO cents...
...Revolt is in the air...
...Lassiter of Virginia...
...WHAT is the answer—what the relief...
...The fact that wages are just as much the "price" of a day's work as is the cost of a bushel of wheat, would cause them to rise and fall commensurately and harmlessly...
...and (2) payment for the site (land) values on which it stands, which payment is rent...
...The private tax-gatherer and specially privileged plunderer are social parasites that may best be destroyed by removing the cause of their existence...
...This being done—taxes taken off steamships, railroads, material,—everything made by man—the things that men desire will be obtainable...
...They are civicly inexpedient and socially destructive...
...Quick quotes that, "prices go up the elevator while wages climb the stairs," simply proves the absence of such a law...
...a 50% tariff at the custom house...
...After saying all this, it doesn't really matter, for money is simply a form of book-keeping, a medium to facilitate barter, to lubricate exchanges, which is nothing but a part of production...
...Prom capital: It will cheapen and make it more accessible while reducing its price, if that be all we are fooling with...
...Monopoly will be destroyed, natural resources will be conserved and civilization will freely advance...
...All friction should be removed and man left free...
...The excess value of the location over less desirable ones was a land value payment (rent) which could not be added to price, but was absorbed by the title holder of the land for which no labor creations were returned to user...
...This is also economic law...
...tariff, 50...
...In the city the same is true under differing names and are all reachable through taxation...
...Disapproval SINCE the Aldrich Tariff Law was passed elections have been held to fill vacancies caused by the death of these five congressmen : D'Armond of Missouri...
...Man is the Ultimate Consumer—nature is the raw material...
...Take taxes off instead of putting them on...
...that "AH taxes on wealth in course of production enters into the cost and is paid by the Ultimate Consumer...
...In my investigations in Los Angeles, I have one lot in mind (73 feet front by 122 deep on alley) with 73 feet of one story buildings valued at less than $10,000...
...Element* of Price-growth HERE is a natural law of commercial economics...
...So—assuming no ocean monopoly to exist—even here the 10-cents of ocean freight has an element of super-cost in the enhanced prices through ship-material-taxes...
...It also vitiates Mr...
...Now if (a) there were no other possible means of trading or making exchanges except with primary metal (gold) money—no substitute, no barter...
...Here is a manifest growth in price with which the "gold influx" has nothing to do...
...But wheat is no dearer there than on the plains of Manitoba or Minnesota, except the plus for transportation...
...Why, simply remove special privilege and UNPILE what we have piled...
...The fact which Mr...
...In the state, it is privileges of power or immunities, nine-tenths of which are question of taxation...
...Public values taxed into the public treasuries would be a conservation of public resources, while leaving private creations untaxed so long as public values covered the costs of legitimate government would square with the moral law...
...The occupying businesses did not charge any more for their services than was charged elsewhere on land at a tenth at the value...
...Therefore, there are never any real taxpayers on any form of labor-created wealth except the Ultimate Consumer...
...If we re-state the matter, we have: Original Stuff, 100...
...The property was valued by the holding bank at $300,000, and on the assessor's books at $69,360...
...its abolition the remedy...
...From labor: It will lighten its burdens, lower the "price" of its living, if "prices" are the only objects of life...
...Herbert Quick, in relation to prices, is arousing to a student of economics and politics...
...Even in this I have left out the question as to whether the ocean freight has entered into the price before or after it has passed the Custom's line—something a business man never does...
...This should be the cry of every Progressive American: "Wherever a special privilege raises its head—smash it...
...It is only when some prices are changed while others remain stationary or fluctuate in the opposite direction that relative values are disturbed...
...This does seem possible here— where an absolute monopoly exists—as it practically does in American railroads, for this rent may be, and is, capitalized and charges made to cover actual capital and capitalized rent...
...Permit me then, even at the risk of appearing very "primary" to: (a) doubt the "Gold influx" theory, (b) minimize the tariff and (c) challenge the "Rent is Price" theory of Mr...
...Quick's suggestion that "rent enters into price," is another dangerous economic error to propagate, as its extension would tend to add "confusion worse confounded" to that of our present loose thinking...
...In the ten-cents railroad freight we have another element...
...that (b) trade was perfectly free and governed by natural economic Jaw with no commercial or governmental restrictions, privileges or tariff, and (c) that there was no possibility of anything else affecting prices, then we might have a working opportunity to deduce such a theory...
...The present conditions are highly immoral and vicious—to say the least...
...trade will be freed, for this will involve the destruction of the tariff—the vilest of the brood...
...A hair-dresser, restaurant and saloon (occupying) paid 5% on $250,000, thus paying an interest rent on $10,000 building capital, plus $240,000 land-rent...
...Here is a double charge...
...This price we will accept as simply a fact...
...Here we have price added to price till it is now 100 plus 10 plus 50, or 160 cents in price after crossing the tariff line...
...In the nation they are chiefly the tariff and monopoly of national highways...
...I do not believe this is possible in any case except where absolute monopoly exists...
...Gold influx has been no element in its growth Every intermediary, by the inexorable economic law, has been compelled to shift his tax onto the next or get out of business...
...If by fiat you could double, halve, or quadruple all prices tomorrow, relative values would not be disturbed and no one would be richer or poorer because of it...
...is greatly enhanced by the multitude of taxes on the materials entering construction, maintenance and operation of railroads exclusive of the franchise values...
...Thus we see that the cost price of this "Stuff," from the time we took it up till it reached the Ultimate Consumer, has had piled on it, tax after tax, chief of which is the tariff...
...Here the private taxing power of the specially privileged is piling the burdens as high and heavy as is possible to be born...
...Anything that removes friction from the mechanism of production simply increases the power to produce wealth with less exertion, and should make it easier instead of harder to acquire...
...Gold Influx" THAT influx of gold raises prices is based on the assumption that the "Quantitative theory" of money is sound...
...ultimate consumer, 198...
...So here we have normal capital-labor cost, plus material-tax cost, plus capitalized land-value cost...
...The Irish story said: "My boy, here is your grandfather's shillaly...
...Not a single congressman has been chosen who ran on a platform approving the Tariff Law.—Kansas City Times...
...Quick's suggestion that: "All history shows that an influx of gold of a sudden sort lifts all prices except that of labor...
...Say we pay a 10-cent freight on the ocean...
...ocean freight, 10...
...JThis excess is a ground-value, land-value or franchise-value—unrler either name the same thing—-a specially granted rent-exacting power or privilege...
...bona fide capital in railroad and land-values or rights of way in proportion of 5 to 8, from the fact that the steam-railroads of America have cost not more than fifty-hundred million dollars, while they are capitalized at eighty-hundred million in excess of actual cost...
...Han never has had such an opportunity, and the enormity of the data necessary makes it practically impossible of attainment...
...What is the Remedy...
...Tariff* and Other Things LET us start from England with a dollar's worth of "stuff...
...Perkins of New York...
...This theory assumes that there is an absolute relation between the quantity of primary metal money (gold) and other things in the exchange market, and that their fluctuating relative quantities fluctuates prices...
...Between nature—the raw material—and man—the Ultimate Consumer—there should nothing exist but the producer...
...railroad, 10...
...Griggs of Georgia...
...For "wages" being a "price," would go up or down with other prices unless—which is a fact—they are governed by a different law...
...seller's profit, 18...
...Special Privilege is the chief evil...
...All unnecessary taxes on material entering into the making of ships, by increasing the necessary capital in ship-investments enhance the freight costs...
...This total is paid by the ultimate consumer...
...If such a law were fact, all prices would riBe or fall together as the tide—barring1 artificial obstructions—and an equilibrium would be maintained that would be as harmless as the tide to a ship, except where the immovable shoal, harbor-bar, or sunken reef existed...
...The real problem that confronts mankind is this: Man has desires that he can only satisfy by drawing from the storehouse of nature...
...Again—part of the bona fide charge for the actual capita...
...The 60 cent tariff has no saving element whatever...
...Capital invested by the purchaser 180 cents, who sells to "ultimate consumer" with added profit of 10% (18 cents) and we have a price of 198 cents...
...natural opportunities will be then thrown open to the use of labor and capital—for there will then be no other thing to tax but special privileges and natural monopolies, railroad rights-of-way, and land values...
...The so-called rent for a house is usually composed of two things: (1) Payment for the use of the house (capital), which is interest...
...This whole so-called price question is one of distribution and not of production to which money properly belongs...
...but, in which the tariff is glaringly apparent...
...Take it, and on this, jour first visit to Donnybrook Fair, be sure to crack every head you meet...
...As a great matter of fact there is no such thing as a price question...
...agent's charge, 10...
...It is a pure fine or punishment and is equivalent to compelling the passage of "Stuff" over the ocean an extra five times—on the ten-cent-one-way basis...
...Now we send it by railroad to the Middle West—say ten cents freight again (price 170 cents...
...Lovering of Massachusetts...
...If rents entered into price it seems obvious that a Stetson hat on Broadway and Fulton St., New York, where land rises to millions of dollars per acre, would cost many times more than it does in a western town where land is only a few thousand dollars per acre—for rent (economically) is the price paid for the use of land alone—and the same might be said of wheat (as of hate) in Liverpool, London or New York...
...Quick's idea of rent entering into price...
...Rent in Prices" ON the other hand, Mr...
Vol. 2 • May 1910 • No. 19
