What's striking about Henry George proposals is how relevant they are in the 21st Century #LVT

18 Sep 2015

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Policy proposals

  • Tax on land and natural resource monopoly
  • Free trade - opposed to tariffs, which were at the time both the major method of protectionist trade policy and an important source of federal revenue
  • Supported the use of government issued paper currency such as the greenback. He opposed the use of metallic currency (such as gold or silver) and money issued by private commercial banks
  • Citizen's dividend - proposed to create a pension and disability system, and that excess public revenues from land rents could be distributed to residents "as a right" instead of as charity
  • to end or restrict the use of intellectual property
  • to have government own and manage all right-of-way and "natural" monopolies, such as utility companies and mass transportation,
  • to replace contract patronage with the direct employment of government workers, with civil-service protections,
  • to implement campaign finance reform and political spending restrictions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George#Policy_proposals

Henry George (September 2, 1839 - October 29, 1897) was an American journalist, philosopher 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 that is today often referred to as Georgism, the main tenet of which is that people legitimately own value they fairly create, but that natural resources and common opportunities, most importantly the value of land, belongs equally to each person in a community. His most famous work, Progress and Poverty (1879), sold millions of copies worldwide, probably more than any other American book before that time.

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