Georgism consists of the ideas derived from the thought and works of the American economist and social philosopher, Henry George. The central issue is land, and the basic economic and ethical idea is that there should be a single levy on land rent or land value that replaces all other taxes. Georgist thought argues that prosperity for all members of a community requires the individual ownership of wages combined with an equal sharing of the land rent. Georgism posits that global justice requires that the benefits of nature be equally and globally shared.
Henry George was born in Philadelphia in 1837. He settled in San Francisco, where he became a printer. His first book was Our Land and Land Policy (1871), in which he told the history of land ownership in the USA, showing how much of the land was obtained at little or no price by land speculators, often dishonestly.
George’s major work was Progress and Poverty (1879), which became a widely read and influential book. The theme, as...
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Foldvary, F.E. (2011). Georgism. In: Chatterjee, D.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_679
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