Synopsis
An argument that persistent poverty amid progress stems from private capture of land value, remedied by a single tax on land that returns that value to society.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Public domainAs society advances, rising land values are captured by landowners rather than the people who created them, so taxing land value alone could abolish poverty without burdening labor or industry.
It locates the root of inequality in land monopoly and offers the single tax as a remedy that preserves enterprise while reclaiming unearned rent.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with Gary Chartier and Charles W. Johnson, Markets Not Capitalism.
Reading note
Read it as nineteenth-century political economy with reformist fire; the core is the diagnosis of land rent and the single-tax solution.
Best paired with
Gary Chartier and Charles W. Johnson, Markets Not Capitalism