Henry George
Description
Progress and Poverty explores why the economy of the mid-to-late 1800s saw a simultaneous growth in prosperity and growth in poverty. Henry George arg
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ues that poverty grew due to the increasing speculation and monopolization of land, as landowners had captured the increases in growth, investment, and productivity through the rising cost of rent. To solve this, George proposes the complete taxation of the unimproved value of land, thus returning the value of land, created through location, to the community. This solution would incentivize individuals to use the land they own productively and remove the tendency to speculate upon land's increasing value. Progress and Poverty inspired the Single Tax Movement, and influenced a wide range of intellectuals and policymakers in the early 1900s including Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, and Winston Churchill.
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