Wayne Jett talks about the popularity of the land value tax proposed by Henry George

Wayne Jett from Classical Capital LLC tells how Americans near the end of the 19th century were attracted to Henry George’s idea of a land value tax.

Henry George (1839–97) was an American politician and political economist who was a leading proponent of the land value tax, also known as the Single Tax. He inspired the philosophy and economic ideology known as Georgism that holds that everyone owns what they create but that everything found in nature, most importantly land, belongs equally to all humanity.

“Progress and Poverty” was George’s most famous work that was written in 1879 and is a treatise on inequality, the cyclic nature of industrial economies, and possible remedies.

According to Agnes de Mille, “Progress and Poverty” and its successors made her grandfather (Henry George) the third most famous man in the United States, behind only Mark Twain and Thomas Edison.

George twice ran for Mayor of New York City and died of a stroke four days before the election of 1897.

Wayne Jett is a regular guest who last appeared on our show on August 18.

In today’s program, Jett and Rayelan also provide a historical look at the Rothschild and Morgan interests who tipped the Presidential election of 1912 in Woodrow Wilson’s favor and spearheaded Wilson’s appointment of Edward Mandell House as his foreign policy advisor.