Progress and Poverty

views updated

PROGRESS AND POVERTY

PROGRESS AND POVERTY, the magnum opus of the American economist Henry George (1839–1897)and the bible of his Single Tax movement. The forty-eight-page essay on which the book was based, "Our Land and Land Policy," published in 1871, advocated the destruction of land monopoly by shifting all taxes from labor and its products to land. George began Progress and Poverty in September 1877 as "an inquiry into industrial depression and of increase of want with increase of wealth." Its publication in 1880 established a major American contribution to the literature of social reform and exerted an appreciable influence on modern theories of taxation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

George, Henry. An Anthology of Henry George's Thought. Edited by Kenneth C. Wenzer. Henry George Centennial Trilogy, vol. 1. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1997.

HarveyWish/c. w.

See alsoEconomics ; Land Policy ; Single Tax ; Taxation .

More From encyclopedia.com