As relevant today as in 1879 -- and perhaps more so!

books:


	• Progress and poverty;: An inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with ... Henry George Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1939 - 571 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews
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Deep, spunky, and flourishes aplenty

This is a must-read, in part because this is just a brilliant work that doesn't fit in our normal intellectual history. It is also truly American in its way of thinking and the combination of radicalism and every-dayness. George demonstrates that ownership of land is the key to inequality; along the line he considers and sheds light on a number of other theories. He also makes predictions regarding the general development of the United States that have been very perceptive.

At the same time, he isn't afraid to wax poetic. Why shouldn't one? We know why Cain killed Abel--because the farmer requires fencing off land, and calling it his, and his crops will be watered with the blood of his excluded brother. Isn't that where we still are--sacrificing human beings for property? And can we even determine who is in the right and who is in the wrong? George sets out a way of formulating the problem that allows us to get beyond things. It is still worth thinking about, since these problems have grown. And we can't run away from them...as Cain found out all too well. [32]

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As relevant today as in 1879 -- and perhaps more so!

Progress & Poverty is the missing puzzle piece for those of us who look around at the combination of magnificent and accelerating technological progress and the increasingly distorted distribution of income and wealth in America, with many people lacking sufficient income to meet their most basic needs, and wonder what went wrong in a country which professes to be dedicated to the proposition that we're all created equal.

The book's subtitle -- An Inquiry in the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth... The Remedy -- describes it beautifully: why we have the ups and downs of our economy, which cause incredible human misery, and why we have increasing poverty at the same time that there is hugely increasing wealth.

And Henry George provides a logical and workable -- even elegant -- remedy, one which will untangle many of the perverse incentives we cope with today: we say we value work, but we tax it. We say we want to promote sales, but we tax them. We say we want to encourage entrepreneurial effort, but we allow huge barriers designed to discourage the person with an idea from being able to execute it. We say we want a society that naturally creates more jobs, but we allow a relative few of us to pocket the funds which would create those jobs. We say we value initiative, but we reward the "dog in the manger" far more than we reward the laborer. We say that urban blight is a bad thing, but our tax code encourages it. We say we dislike urban sprawl, and long commutes, and low wages -- but we've failed to implement the simple tax reform that will correct these ills. We work longer hours than our counterparts in other countries, and have less to show for it. We allow a relative few to own our airwaves, and resell them at higher and higher prices, collecting advertising revenues from all who would run for public office or advertise their products.

If we truly mean to end poverty, to reward initiative, to ensure that the next child born in America is truly the equal of all who are here today, to ensure that our environment is protected for the common good, George's framework for understanding provides the missing puzzle piece.

And as we consider what sort of country we'd like Iraq to be, it is worth considering that if we only give them a constitution without giving them an economic system that considers all people equal, truly equal, we've not accomplished much with the American lives we've lost there.

If we can figure it out for Iraq, with all its oil wealth, maybe we can figure out how to share America justly among Americans, too.

George lays out simply and elegantly what the underlying problem is and how to solve it.

He dedicates the book "To those who, seeing the vice and misery that spring from the unequal distribution of wealth and privilege, feel the possibility of a higher social state and would strive for its attainment." Might you be among those who see and feel, and would strive, if only you could see the source of the problem?

Churchill, Twain, Huxley, Shaw and many others came to see what George was pointing out. Will you?

This one is worth your time!

Get a copy for yourself, and send one to your favorite legislator, be he/she local, state or federal. Then start looking for other Georgists, also known as Geoists. You'll find them a lively group with a vision that might inspire you, too. And it is refreshing to be with people who seek a finer society, not more advantage or privilege -- "private law" -- for their own benefit! --

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