The failure of the land value tax

In the late nineteenth century, the ideas of American economist Henry George were popular around the English-speaking world. His best-known work, Progress and Poverty, examined the importance of land in economics and proposed taxing land value as much as possible. It sold several million copies and was one of the best-selling books of its era. Across the Atlantic from George, the wealthy landowners who dominated British politics predominantly supported the Conservative Party. In response, their opponents, the Liberals and Irish nationalists, increasingly harnessed tenant agitation for political support and with it, support for land taxation. George’s argument was perfectly timed for the Edwardian left. Local government was in crisis as new infrastructure enabled people to move out of the city center while budgets were burdened with ever more statutory obligations. The existing property tax base could not be managed. By the early 1900s, Progress and Poverty was more popular than Shake ... Read full article.