The only indubitable means of improving the position of the workers, which is at the same time in conformity with the will of God, consists in the liberation of the land from its usurpation by the landlords. …The most just and practicable scheme, in my opinion, is that of Henry George, known as the single-tax system.
This sin (of land ownership) can be undone, not by political reform, nor Socialist schemes for the future, not by revolution in the present, and still less by philanthropic assistance or government organisation for the purchase and distribution of land amongst the peasants ….The method of solving the land problem has been elaborated by Henry George to a degree of perfection that under the existing state organisation and compulsory taxation, it is impossible to invent any better, more just, practical and peaceful solution.
The only thing that would pacify the people now is the introduction of the Land Value Taxation system of Henry George. The land is common to all; all have the same right to it.
Addressed to the "wretched refuse" of the earth in 1883, she tried to welcome them as equals in the American dream. She was a strong supporter of Henry George and his land rights and land tax policy proposals.
George's book was a revelation not only for the workers, but also for the intellectuals. Only Darwin, in the natural sciences, left an impression comparable to that of George in the social sciences. ...His devotion can be compared to the love of Nazareen, expressed in the language of our times.
I believe in Henry George... I have long been a worker for the Single Tax cause.
I find it very difficult to disagree with the principles of Henry George... I believe in the taxation of land values only.
Henry George was one of the real prophets of the world; one of the seers of the world... His was a wonderful mind; he saw a question from every side... When we learn that the value of land belongs to all of us, then we will be free men – no need to legislate to keep men and women from working themselves to death; no need to legislate against the white slave traffic.
Silvio Gesell (1862-1930) German reformer, earned fame for the successful application of his monetary reform in Austria between the world wars. In his main work, "The Natural Economic Order" through Free Land and Free Money, Gesell rejected the association of "blood" with "land"
The whole earth is an integral organ; everyone should be free to travel and settle anywhere." Gesell advocated an open world market without monopolies, customs frontiers, and colonial conquest. Inspired by Henry George, whose Single Tax on land value had become known in Germany, Gesell called upon government to buy land and lease it to the highest bidder and to forgo taxation. Since the amount of Rent depends on population density, Gesell would distribute Rent to mothers, freeing them from working fathers, letting the sexes relate for love.
Consider Georgist economics with a just sense of their permanent importance and with regard to the soundness of their underlying principles. Sound economists in every land accept and support economic opportunity as fundamental.
Abolish special privileges and Government interference in industry. Give to all equal natural opportunities – equal rights to the inexhaustible storehouse of Nature – and wealth will distribute itself in exact accordance with justice. This, the ideal of Henry George, is what I would place before our people.
I have studied Henry George. The idea of a Single Tax could contribute to the economic restoration of our country.
Henry George is one of the great names among the world's social philosophers. It would require less than the fingers of the two hands to enumerate those who, from Plato down, rank with him... No man, no graduate of a higher educational institution, has a right to regard himself as educated in social thought unless he has some firsthand acquaintance with the theoretical contribution of this great American thinker.
Of all the American economists since the early days of the republic, none treated as comprehensively the interfiliation of economy and civilization as George did.
Men like Henry George are rare, unfortunately. One cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form, and fervent love of justice.
"Progress and Poverty" was the most closely knit, fascinating and convincing specimen of argumentation that, I believe, ever sprang from the mind of man.
No one should be allowed to speak above a whisper or write more than ten words on the general subject (of economics) unless he has read and digested "Progress and Poverty".
For some years prior to 1952 I was working on a history of American reform and over and over again my research ran into this fact: an enormous number of men and women, strikingly different people, men and women who were to lead 20th century America in a dozen fields of humane activity, wrote or told someone that their whole thinking had been redirected by reading "Progress and Poverty" in their formative years. In this respect no other book came anywhere near comparable influence, and I would like to add this word of tribute to a volume which magically catalyzed the best yearnings of our fathers and grandfathers.
In church it occurred to me that it is time for the public to hear that the giant evil and danger in this country, the danger which transcends all others, is the vast wealth owned or controlled by a few persons. Money is power. In Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the courts, in the political conventions, in the press, in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented, its influence is growing greater and greater. Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many… Henry George is strong when he portrays the rottenness of the present system. We are, to say the least, not yet ready for his remedy. We may reach and remove the difficulty by changes in the laws regulating corporations, descents of property, wills, trusts, taxation, and a host of other important interests, not omitting lands and other property.
I have always regarded Henry George as a man of honest and sincere convictions and ever held a high opinion of him.
This country needs a new and sincere thought in politics, coherently, distinctly and boldly uttered by men who are sure of their ground. The power of men like Henry George seems to me to mean that.
Wilson put Louis F. Post, a Georgist, into the post of labor secretary who founded Labor Day on the Monday closest to George's birthday.
I believe that Henry George was one of the really great thinkers produced by our country.
The man who, by good fortune, sells a narrow right-of-way for a new highway makes a handsome profit through the increase in value of all of the rest of his land. That represents an unearned increment of profit – a profit which comes to a mere handful of lucky citizens and which is denied to the vast majority.
The basic assumptions of Henry George are sound. Nothing could be more useful than to bring these fundamentals to the attention of perplexed Americans.
We ought to tax all idle land the way Henry George said – tax it heavily, so that its owners would have to make it productive.
I believe that Henry George was one of those really great thinkers produced by our country.
If I had read Dr. Mason Gaffney's Corruption of Economics prior to writing Shoveling Fuel, I also would have had a lot more to say about Henry George. After reading Corruption and a paper by Bill Batt from New York, I can see the connection of Georgist to ecological economics.
Henry George sees his movement as an alternative... By taxing land more than we do and in a special way, we will be able to tax work and income derived from it considerably less..
Another way out of the (land) cost dilemma might be to look for some variation on the proposals of that 19th century San Francisco economist and prophet-ahead-of-his-time, Henry George, author of the classic "Progress and Poverty"... Why not a land tax--paid when the land changes hands--to capture some portion of the increase in value resulting from population growth? And why not channel that revenue into incentives for affordable housing?"
Henry George must be in his grave spinnin' like a cyclotron. We, the people at large, make the land more desirable; and then the landowners want us to pay them because we won't allow them to poison the air or to pollute the rivers.
The Utne Reader, in listing Pittsburgh among its "Ten Most Underrated Towns in America", noted that the city's "unique tax system, inspired by 19th-century economic theorist Henry George, assesses land at a higher rate than buildings, thus encouraging historic preservation, discouraging downtown parking lots, and reducing sprawl.
Can a land tax reduce sprawl and strengthen urban economies? The evidence is persuasive though not conclusive. Political economist Henry George first proposed a land value tax over 100 years ago, as a way to eliminate land speculation and make more land available for production.
…tax the site-value of all land in its unimproved state. This tax was first proposed by the 19th century American economist Henry George. We should envisage the eventual removal of all taxes on incomes and value added, savings and financial capital. Taxes will take the form of Rents and charges reasonably paid in exchange either for the use of resources that would otherwise be available for other people, or for damage caused to other people.
If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer a third alternative ... the possibility of sanity. Economics would be decentralist and Henry Georgian.
Henry George, the great American political economist and land rights philosopher (1839-1897), eloquently confronted the enigma of the wealth gap in his masterwork "Progress and Poverty" and set forth both an ethical and practical method for holding and sharing the land as a sacred trust for all. He made a clear distinction between property in land and property in wealth produced by labor on land. He said that private property in human made wealth belonged to the producer and that the state should not tax wealth produced by human labor.
"American Heritage" published a list of "ten books that shaped the American character" (1985 April/May) compiled by Jonathan Yardley. With George's classic "Progress and Poverty" were titles by writers who endorsed his idea, such as "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) and" The Shame of Cities" by Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936).