Progress and Poverty

As a bystander, I am baffled. You are clearly misunderstanding the core ideas of the book, yet adamant that you wouldn’t learn anything from reading it. Your reduction of the ideas to communism is juvenile. In fact, the alternative tax system proposed would keep value produced from labor in the private hands of the laborer — in essence the exact opposite of communism. Taxation can take many forms, and the details matter quite a lot. Until you open your mind to realize this, even if you still disagreed with the proposals, I think you’ll continue failing to understand why Progress and Poverty is globally one of the most widely distributed political economy books in history.

Henry George’s Progress & Poverty conducted what can only be described as a coup on my worldview, and I am not alone in that experience. It is an incredible argument that will just utterly transform how you understand a walk down the street. If you’ve been seeing references to the Land Value Tax (LVT) here on HN, this is the book that originated the concept. Like most conceptual breakthroughs, it didn’t emerge solely from George with no related ideas in the vicinity, but this is definitely “the book” behind it.

Progress & Poverty (1879) by Henry George Orthodoxy (1908) by G.K. Chesterton The Brothers Karamazov (1880) by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Henry George: Progress and Poverty. Explains how taxing land instead of labour is the path to a far better world. Versus now where progress means higher land prices which means poverty for those excluded from land. Once nearly got to be mayor of New York. Sold 6 million copies (at the time only the bible outsold it). https://www.aier.org/article/amazing-influence-henry-george-... (https://www.aier.org/article/amazing-influence-henry-george-ec-harwood) As recommended by Albert Einstein and many others.

Henry George, Progress and Poverty. http://www.henrygeorge.org/pdfs/PandP_Drake.pdf His ideas are fabulous, but that aside reading it is a joy. He truly has a love for his fellow man that transcends all the usual pity-via-charity and sees real value in all. A forgotten favourite of many great thinkers. Forgotten for a reason!