Great Minds Think Alike

Henry George read widely but was largely self-educated. Progress and Poverty (self-published in 1879, published more widely beginning in the following year) is his "working out" of what he observed in his travels. But other people had arrived at many of these ideas long before George, and at roughly the same time, the Bishop of Meath in Ireland wrote a long letter to the clergy and laity of his diocese. George mentions in his speech "The Land for the People" that at the time he wrote it, Dr. Nulty had never heard of George.

Wherever these phenomena are to be seen the natural element on which and from which all men must live, if they are to live at all, is the property, not of the whole people, but of the few. We point to the adequate cure; the restoration to all men of their natural rights in the soil — the assurance to every child, as it comes into the world, of the enjoyment of its natural heritage — the right to live, the right to work, the right to enjoy the fruits of its work; rights necessarily conditioned upon the equal right to that element which is the basis of production; that element which is indispensable to human life; that element which is the standing place, the storehouse, the reservoir of men; that element from which all that is physical in man is drawn. For our bodies, themselves, they come from the land, and to the land they return again; we, ourselves, are as much children of the soil as are the flowers or the trees. We call ourselves today Single Tax men. It is only recently, within a few years, that we have adopted that title.

It is not a new title; over a hundred years ago there arose in France a school of philosophers and patriots — Quesnay, Turgot, Condorcet, Dupont — most illustrious men of their time, who advocated, as the cure for all social ills, the impôt unique, the Single Tax. We here, on this western continent, as the nineteenth century draws to a close, have revived the same name, and we find enormous advantages in it. ... Read the entire article

Wealth and Want
... because democracy alone is not enough to produce widely shared prosperity.
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... because democracy alone hasn't yet led to a society in which all can prosper