Henry George and Modern Economics

Abstract

There was a time when Henry George was not merely one of the most widely read American economists, he was also one of the country’s most widely read authors in general. Many of his contemporary economists would have been inclined to consider him a political journalist rather than an economist. His most famous work, Progress and Poverty, had gained a wide, general readership both in and beyond the United States,¹ although it was a scholarly work more serious than today’s trade books written by economists cum political commentators.