Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy

by Henry George

Book Overview

Born in 1839, Henry George learned about poverty early in life, first as a boy-sailor and afterwards by working as a type-setter with a wife and children to support. A talented writer, he gradually rose to become managing editor of the San Francisco Times, and later set up his own crusading journal, the San Francisco Daily Evening Post, only to see his newspaper crushed by the combined power of the press and telegraphic monopolies. Undaunted, George...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1911405071
• ISBN13: 9781911405078
• Release Date: August 2016
• Publisher: Aziloth Books
• Length: 356 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Less is More

What a shame it would be to miss the message of Henry George because the original Poverty & Progress requires hours of reading. Most of us have read it for classes at one of the Henry George Schools. The original has 565 pages in the paperback form not including the glossary. Bob Drake's edition is short & simple. He changed none of the content. He did make the Preface the Afterword which was written by Agnes George de Mille, the choreographer, in New York in 1979. She was Henry George's grand-daughter.

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

Lots of words.

A thick book with way to many words to inform. This book dates itself, but does have something to say. It just takes to long to say it. There are some kernals to find and I would recommend it as a read.

Why isn't this book better known?

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this book, written over a hundred years ago, is the accuracy of the predictions that Henry George made on what would happen if solutions other than the one he proposed would be followed. The only alternative to his sollution which he said would also work to reduce the difference between rich and poor was the use of government regulation. This has to some extent been taken up in all countries of the world, and while it has indeed slowed the processes which Henry George described, it has led to exactly the problem he predicted. "For instance, to take one of the simplest and mildest of the class of measures...--a graduated tax on incomes. The object at which it aims is good; but this means involves the employment of a large number of officials clothed with inquisitorial powers; temptations to bribery, and perjury, and all other means of evasion, which beget a demoralization of opinion, and ptu a premium upon unscrupulousness and a tax upon conscience..." That seems to be a pretty good descrition of civic life today. When I have mentioned Henry George, the usual answer has been "Who?" Those who had heard of him mostly thought that his ideas only applied to agrarian societies. In fact, he recognized that land was only one (though the most fundamental) form of monopoly, and he makes it clear that he included all monopolies, not just land, into the realm of the rights of the community rather than a private owner. In this day, he would certainly hhave comments about how the airwaves have been distributed, for example. The main surprise to me about this book is how completely unknown it has become. Anyone who reads this with an open mind will be convinced by Henry George's arguments.

The most amazing book I've read!

That devastating cycles of boom and bust continue to bedevil the economies of the world at the end of the second millennium--more than 100 years after Henry George explained their cause and cure in this book--acts as testament to the distorting influence of power and privilege in the body politic. As George puts it in the closing pages: "Beauty still lies imprisoned and iron wheels go over the good and true and beautiful that might spring from human lives." Humanity's real hope lies in our acceptance of the truths so articulately espoused throughout the pages of Progress & Poverty.