Henry George

Biography

Henry George (1839–1897) was an American political economist, journalist, and reformer whose ideas about land taxation and economic justice made him one of the most influential thinkers of the nineteenth century. Born in Philadelphia, George went to sea as a young man before settling in California, where he experienced firsthand the paradox of increasing wealth alongside deepening poverty in the booming post-Gold Rush economy. His masterwork, Progress and Poverty (1879), attempted to explain why economic progress produces poverty and proposed a “single tax” on land values as the solution. The book became an international sensation—one of the bestselling economic works in history—and inspired reform movements across the globe. George ran for mayor of New York City in 1886, finishing ahead of Theodore Roosevelt in a race many believed was stolen from him. His ideas influenced figures from Leo Tolstoy to Sun Yat-sen to Albert Einstein, and the Georgist movement he inspired continues to influence economic policy debates today. George died during his second New York mayoral campaign, and an estimated 100,000 people attended his funeral.