Henry George was an American writer, politician and political economist, who was the most influential proponent of the land value tax and the value capture of land/natural resource rents, an idea known at the time as Single-Tax. His immensely popular writing is credited with sparking several reform movements of the Progressive Era and ultimately inspiring the broad economic philosophy often referred to today as Georgism, the main tenet of which is that people legitimately own value they fairly create, but that resources and common opportunities, most importantly the value of land, belongs equally to all humanity. His most famous work, Progress and Poverty, sold millions of copies worldwide, probably more than any other American book before that time. It is a treatise on inequality, the cyclic nature of industrialized economies, and the use of the land value tax as a remedy.
The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt. imagination
What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power. power
The methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive its organization is necessarily tyrannical. alone
There is danger in reckless change, but greater danger in blind conservatism. change