Henry George (September 2, 1839 – October 29, 1897) was an American writer, politician and political economist, who was the most influential proponent of the land value tax, also known as the "Single Tax" on land. He inspired the philosophy and economic ideology known as Georgism, that holds that everyone owns what they create, but that everything found in nature, most importantly land, belongs equally to all humanity. His most famous work is Pro...
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Henry George (September 2, 1839 – October 29, 1897) was an American writer, politician and political economist, who was the most influential proponent of the land value tax, also known as the "Single Tax" on land. He inspired the philosophy and economic ideology known as Georgism, that holds that everyone owns what they create, but that everything found in nature, most importantly land, belongs equally to all humanity. His most famous work is Progress and Poverty written in 1879; it is a treatise on inequality, the cyclic nature of industrial economies and possible remedies.
George was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a lower-middle class family, the second of ten children of Richard S. H. George and Catharine Pratt (Vallance) George. His formal education ended at age 14 and he went to sea as a foremast boy at age 15 in April 1855 on the Hindoo, bound for Melbourne and Calcutta. He returned to Philadelphia after 14 months at sea to become an apprentice typesetter before settling...
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