George, Henry (1839–1897)

At one time, the third most famous American (after Thomas Edison and Mark Twain), George was an influential practical philosopher, social critic, and reform proponent of the “single tax” during the progressive error. Despite George's limited education, he was praised for his logic and originality by many prominent intellectuals ranging from Leo Tolstoy to John Dewey.

In his book Progress and Poverty (first published in 1879), George asserted that the ownership of property created poverty by only enriching the owner at the expense of the community. In essence, George believed that land and its wealth belong to all. In this he was akin to the 18th-century physiocrats and their impôt unique, as well as philosophers such as James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and David Ricardo.

As a political economist, George argued that “economic rent” on land going to its owners served to create resource inequity (through commerce on urban properties, through agriculture on farm lands, and the value of natural materials extracted from mineral leases, minus the cost of property improvements that increase land's value).

To rectify misdistribution, George said that governments at every level should abolish all taxes except those on beneficiaries of economic rent. Because land is a fixed resource, the income it yields is a product of the economy's growth and not individual effort. The remedy was to impose a “single tax” on the unimproved value of that land if it remained in its natural state without buildings or other improvements. George believed that the government's annual income from this single tax would be fair and prove so significant that resulting surpluses could underwrite necessary beneficial public works. On the other hand, opponents have argued that there is no correlation between land ownership and total income or wealth. Furthermore, they protest that the lack of graduation under a single tax system fails to take into account an individual's ability to pay.

George's first book sold in the millions and appeared overseas in numerous translations. In 1880, he moved to New York to continue writing and lecturing. His popularity grew and this encouraged George to try to put his ideas into practice. He challenged the “politics as usual” system in a reform platform campaign for mayor of New York in 1886. Although George outpolled Theodore Roosevelt in a three-person race, he narrowly lost to the Tammany Hall–endorsed Democrat. Later, he again campaigned for the office, but died before the election.

Ethics form a central focus of Progress and Poverty and George's subsequent books, especially on the dominant question of right and wrong. For George, each person's labor belongs to himself or herself and should be free of arbitrary government taking. George, thus, sees a natural right or justification for private property in products created by one's own hands. On the other hand, land is not produced by man and is to be held in common. The value of land exists only as the community exists. It grows as the community expands and decreases as the population declines. Thus, unfettered private property in land, according to George, is unjust because it allows landowners to erect a toll for its use (a form of robbery) or even refuse all access to property (thereby injuring one's livelihood and threatening life itself).

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