Is Henry George’s Land Value Tax Fair, Efficient, Both, or Neither?

Abstract

In this essay, we believe that land value tax is efficient in the short term while being unfair in the general term. In 1935, the United States was in the midst of the Great Depression, and to make a living, Charles Darrow sold the “Monopoly game” to the toy manufacturer Parker Brothers (Pilon, 2015). The game became an overnight hit, but the real inventor behind this century-old game was Elizabeth Magie, one of the followers of George. Henry George’s book Progress and Poverty deeply influenced Magie, “the right to use the land is like people breathing equally”. Magie spent the rest of her life proving that George’s philosophy was right. In the second mode of the game, Prosperity, which Monopoly never came out with, the lands are not being owned privately. As long as someone makes money from the trade of land, all other players can gain from it. This design reflects Magie’s advocacy of land value tax, which rejects private ownership of land and promotes land as the common property of mankind.