Progress and Poverty

Progress and Poverty, economic treatise by Henry George, published in 1879.

Attempting to discover why individual poverty increases while the nation is becoming more prosperous, George indicates a solution in the fact that private property in land confines interest and wages to marginal gains, while landlords, who are nonproducers, reap the benefits of social advance. This follows from the nature of rent, which measures the difference between the yields per acre on the richest and on the leanest soil with a like outlay of capital. According to George, social forces are responsible for the differences in real value, hence the return on the more valuable land is an unearned increment. Land is necessary to labor, but since it belongs to private owners every increase in production only increases rent, which is the price that labor must pay for the opportunity to utilize its own power. This in turn affects capital, for capital is produced by labor, being in fact labor impressed upon matter. Therefore labor and capital should be freed of this incubus, so that the community‐created value may be returned to the community. George advocates for this purpose a “Single Tax,” amounting to the whole or almost the whole of economic rent. This would permit the abolition of all other taxation, leaving production unpenalized, and improve the conditions of both capital and labor.