Henry George Quotes
We plow new fields, we open new mines, we found new cities, we girdle the land with iron roads and lace the air with telegraph wires. We add knowledge to knowledge and utilize invention after invention. Yet it becomes no easier for the masses of our people to make a living. On the contrary, it is becoming harder.
George was one of the first people to notice that with all the great development and technological breakthroughs, it does not become easier for the lower educated people in society to earn a living. He had not totally focused on education but made the observation for the lower classes where there is a high correlation with education.
Henry George, 1839-1897, Political economist, Unsuccessful Candidate for New York Mayor, Quoted in Eric F. Goldman, Rendezvous With Destiny, 1952
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The last 5 years of the 1990s were the last of the Clinton administration where he was the principle architect of economic policies for that period. While this statement was somewhat self serving, the economic and fiscal performance of the Clinton years were astoundingly superior to those before and after.
It is not only the companies of rich nations that equip their people, but also the non-profit sector including the universities.
The problem she described has generally not been solved. The only thing that saved most of rural America is the remarkable increase in agricultural productivity, but that has become so good that farming requires fewer and fewer workers each year and migration to the cities has continued since before WWII. However to avoid higher city wages, unionization, higher taxes, and higher energy costs, many industrial operations deliberately moved to small or medium sized after WWII, and many communities then became one company towns. Then the companies would relocate elsewhere if the mover would save some costs, and the small towns who did get factories were again in the predicament that Mrs. Roosevelt describes. In the 1980s, off shoring eliminated the major job source for thousands of small towns and cities as well. Some cities and suburban areas attracted knowledge industry companies and jobs, but the small town problem is in much of America just as it was when Mrs. Roosevelt wrote this in her column in 1936.
The good jobs that support middle and upper middle class lifestyles are growing at a lesser rate than the minimum and low wage jobs.
Henry George was an American political economist and journalist. His writing was immensely popular in 19th-century America and sparked several reform movements of the Progressive Era. He inspired the economic philosophy known as Georgism, the belief that people should own the value they produce themselves, but that the economic value derived from land (including natural resources) should belong equally to all members of society. He argued that a single tax on land would create a more productive, more just society.
