Week in Insights: An 1879 Tax Proposal Is a Modern Eye-Opener

Curated by Daniel Xu

A treatise from the 1800s might provide a policy solution to rising wealth disparities and skyrocketing land values: the “simple tax.”

Political economist Henry George in 1879 proposed levying a tax solely on land values to counter economic inequality. The underlying fairness argument is that land, detached from any improvements to it, generates wealth due to communal efforts rather than only to the owner’s labors. This means a tax on the land’s value would redistribute collectively produced wealth.

Advocates consider it not only a remedy for issues related to land value, such as housing shortages ...