The 2020 presidential campaign began Wednesday, Nov. 9. There is a single issue on which it could and should be based: tax reform.

Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz provided it. A land tax. Land and natural resources are wealth. Money is not wealth.

Neither persons nor corporations should own land. It is the common inheritance of all of us. We own and should rent it. The rent accruing from it should be paid to the public, as the rightful collective owner of the land.

Individuals and firms should own whatever results they make from their efforts to make the land productive. They should also own entirely whatever profit they create through the investment of accumulated capital, which renders it a capitalist proposal.

It would be a single tax. It would be a tax on land, not improvements. It would be a tax at a level that supports government. It would be a tax representing the rent those who use the land owe the public. It would also eliminate taxes on wages and capital gains.

A land tax would boost the economy. A sound economic system encourages both work and capital investment. It would enable the government to avoid taxing wages and returns on capital.

Such a system would discourage rentier behavior — that is, holding onto land and resources, living off rent while waiting for speculation to raise land prices.

Stiglitz believes that a high enough rate will tend to cause land to end up in the hands of those who would make it most productive.

Capitalist Henry George proposed a land tax as a “single tax” in his 1879 book Progress and Poverty, which captured the imagination of millions worldwide and sold better than any economics text since.

Our 2020 campaign would be based on a single issue, thus an effective and simple way to begin Nov. 9.

C F Baumgartner

Mercer Island