Читать книгу Distributive Justice: The Right and Wrong of Our Present Distribution of Wealth - John A. Ryan - Страница 7

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All land that is in use, and for the use of which men are willing to pay a price yields rent, whether it is used by a tenant or by the owner. In the latter case the owner may not call the rent that he receives by that name; he may not distinguish between it and the other portions of the product that he gets from the land; he may call the entire product profits, or wages. Nevertheless the rent exists as a surplus over that part of the product that he can regard as the proper return for his labour, and for the use of his capital-instruments, such as, horses, buildings, and machinery. If a farmer employs the same amount and kind of labour and capital in the cultivation of two pieces of land, one of which he owns, the other being hired from some one else; if his net product is the same in both cases, say, 1,000 dollars; and if he must pay 200 dollars to the owner of the hired land,—then, 200 of the 1,000 dollars that he receives from his own land, is likewise to be attributed specifically to his land rather than to his capital or labour. It is rent. While the whole product is due in some degree to the productive power of land, 200 dollars of it represents land value in the process of production, and goes to him solely in his capacity as landowner. The rent that arises on land used for building sites is of the same general character, and goes likewise to the owner of the land. The owner of the site upon which a factory is located may hire it to another for a certain sum annually, or he may operate the factory himself. In either case he receives rent, the amount that the land itself is worth for use, independently of the return that he obtains for his expenditure of capital and labour. Even when a person uses his land as a site for a dwelling which he himself occupies, the land still brings him economic rent, since it affords him something for which he would be obliged to pay if his house were located on land of the same kind owned by some one else.