Henry George (September 2, 1839 – October 29, 1897) was an American political economist and journalist. His writing was immensely popular in the 19th century, and sparked several reform movements of the Progressive Era. His writings also inspired the economic philosophy known as Georgism, based on the belief that people should own the value they produce themselves, but that the economic value derived from land (including natural resources) should belong equally to all members of society.
His most famous work, Progress and Poverty (1879), sold millions of copies worldwide, probably more than any other American book before that time. The treatise investigates the paradox of increasing inequality and poverty amid economic and technological progress, the cyclic nature of industrialized economies, and the use of rent capture such as land value tax and other anti-monopoly reforms as a remedy for these and other social problems.
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Land tax is not a tax on economic activity. It presumes government ownership of land. It is more appropriately viewed as a leasehold. When the putative owner of the land stops paying land tax he forfeits the land.
At its root land tax is communist control and command in which all land is owned by the state and leased to citizens.