Progress and Poverty

Progress and Poverty is Henry George’s 1879 book arguing that economic growth can deepen poverty when rising land values concentrate wealth. It proposes taxing land value while exempting improvements.

Economic rent: Economic rent is income received from control of a scarce resource beyond the minimum needed to keep it in use. George treats land rent as the channel through which social progress enriches landowners.
Henry George: Henry George was an American political economist and reformer best known for Progress and Poverty. George developed the book’s diagnosis and land-tax proposal.
Georgism: Georgism is a political and economic tradition centered on taxing land value while reducing taxes on labor and production. It turns the book’s central proposal into a broader reform program.
Malthusianism: Malthusianism is the view that population tends to outgrow the resources needed to sustain it. George argues that unequal access to land, not population alone, explains persistent poverty.
Ricardian theory of rent: Ricardian theory explains rent as arising from differences in productivity among cultivated plots as demand expands. George adapts this account to explain why population and production raise land values.
Thomas Malthus: Thomas Malthus was an English cleric and political economist known for his theory of population growth and subsistence. George challenges the Malthusian explanation that population pressure makes poverty unavoidable.
Single tax: The single tax is a proposal to fund public revenue chiefly or entirely through a tax on land value. George’s followers popularized his land tax as a replacement for other taxes.
Marxism: Marxism is a tradition of social and economic analysis centered on class conflict and the ownership of productive capital. George and Marx offer different accounts of how private ownership produces economic inequality.
Land value tax: A land value tax charges owners according to the value of land, excluding buildings and other improvements. George’s proposed remedy captures socially created land value for public use.
David Ricardo: David Ricardo was a British political economist whose work shaped classical theories of rent, wages, and distribution. George builds on Ricardo’s account of rent while drawing different conclusions about poverty.

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