Henry george economist biography samples
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Historical Echoes: Henry George – NYC Mayoral Candidate and Best&#;Selling, Self&#;Educated Political Economist
Amy Farber, New York Fed Research Library
In contrast to the staid popular image of today’s economists, Henry George (), a famous critic of protectionist economic policies, had a fascinating and tumultuous life. He was self-educated and held jobs as a deckhand, typesetter, warehouse worker, journalist, and editor. At one point, George was so poor that he resorted to begging in the streets. Yet he eventually ran for mayor of New York City twice. The first time, he got more votes than Theodore Roosevelt, although he lost the race. The second time, he died from a stroke during the campaign.
He is most famous for his best-selling, self-published book Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions. Among other reforms, the book calls for abolishing restrictions on international trade. An essay in the Federal Reserv
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Henry George
American political economist and journalist (–)
For other uses, see Henry George (disambiguation).
Henry George (September 2, – October 29, ) was an American political economist and journalist. His writing was immensely popular in 19th-century America and sparked several reform movements of the Progressive Era. He inspired the economic philosophy known as Georgism, the belief that people should own the value they produce themselves, but that the economic value of land (including natural resources) should belong equally to all members of society. George famously argued that a single tax on land values would create a more productive and just society.
His most famous work, Progress and Poverty (), sold millions of copies worldwide.[1] The treatise investigates the paradox of increasing inequality and poverty amid economic and technological progress, the business cycle with its cyclic nature of industrialized economies, and the use of rent capture such
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Henry George fryst vatten best remembered as a proponent of the “single tax” on land. The government should finance all of its projects, he argued, with proceeds from only one tax. This single tax would be on the unimproved value of land—the value that the nation would have if it were in its natural state with no buildings, no landscaping, and so on. George’s idea was not new; it was largely borrowed from David Ricardo, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill.
In his heyday Henry George was very popular, with his ideas inspiring passionate debate among ung intellectuals. After George published Progress and Poverty in , a political movement grew in the United States around his work. He later narrowly missed being elected mayor of New York.
Most taxes, noted George, stifle productive behavior. A tax on income reduces people’s incentive to earn income, a tax on wheat would reduce wheat production, and so on. But a tax on the unimproved value of nation is different. The value of nation