Question

What was the message of Henry George and why was it so appealing?

Answer 1

Henry George wrote a book named Progress and Poverty.Progress and Poverty is a treatise on the questions of why poverty accompanies economic and technological progress and why economies exhibit a tendency toward cyclical boom and bust. George uses history and deductive logic to argue for a radical solution focusing on the capture of economic rent from natural resource and land titles.

According to Henry George, the government should tax the "unearned increment" of rising land prices and use the funds to ameliorate the misery caused by industrialization.He said that the curse born of poverty is not confined to the poor alone; it runs through all classes, even to the very rich. They, too, suffer; they must suffer; for there cannot be suffering in a community from which any class can totally escape.

Progress and Poverty seeks to explain why poverty exists notwithstanding widespread advances in technology and even where there is a concentration of great wealth such as in cities.In Progress and Poverty, George examines various proposed strategies to prevent business depressions, unemployment and poverty, but finds them unsatisfactory. As an alternative he proposes his own solution: a single tax on land values.

To conclude George envisaged that the government's annual income from this “single tax” would be so large that there would be a surplus for expansion of public works. His economic argument was reinforced and dominated by humanitarian and religious appeal.