We can have one without the other
This post draws on a four-part case study series produced by the Africa Urban Lab with support from the Progress and Poverty Institute, covering property tax reforms in Addis Ababa, Freetown, Lagos, and Tanzania Mainland On the morning of August 20, 2021, Tanzanians buying prepaid… Read More »The Hardest Tax to Collect Is the Best One: What Four African Cities Teach Us About Property Taxation
In Part 1 of this blog, we looked at Olivier De Schutter’s case that capitalism doesn’t fail to serve the poor by accident. De Schutter is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. He says capitalism is structurally built to follow… Read More »Part 2: What Does Economic Democracy Actually Look Like?
As the cost of living is skyrocketing, policy proposals tied to fairness and equality are making a comeback. Think about, for example, Mamdani-style socialism, a type of “consumer socialism” that attacks consumer prices through government supplied services, such as universal childcare and city-run grocery stores.… Read More »Part 1: Reclaiming the Economy Through Structural Redesign
Implementing a land value tax (LVT) would require accurate and efficient assessments of land value across all properties in a city. Colleagues from the National Center for Smart Growth, Center for Open Geographical Science, and I investigated the potential to estimate land value using a… Read More »Modeling Land Values in Baltimore
Sometimes the calendar lines up just right. For the Progress & Poverty Institute team, the last week of April 2026 was one of those moments. We traveled to Chicago for the Urban Affairs Association’s annual conference, and while we were there, our distributed team got… Read More »PPI in Chicago: Research, Coalition-Building, and Community
Most Americans associate the Red Scare with historical events like the Hollywood Blacklist, House Unamerican Activities Committee, and the televised McCarthy hearings. What they may not know is that this was actually the second instance in which fear of radicals led to massive Federal law… Read More »An Unsung Georgist Hero of the First Red Scare
Several new opportunities were just created for land value tax (LVT) in Virginia. Earlier this week, the General Assembly passed HB 282, which allows four more cities to voluntarily adopt a split-rate land value tax. After Governor Spanberger signs the bill into law (which passed… Read More »Virginia takes four more steps towards LVT
In my role as Executive Director of the Progress and Poverty Institute I get to travel a fair amount and talk to all kinds of people about Henry George’s ideas, in particular, the Land Value Tax (LVT). Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking at… Read More »Bringing Henry George to Frederick, MD
In the United States, the machinery of government usually faces substantial inertia to any major change. Democrats and Republicans have long kept the core spending and revenue model from administration to administration, even as they changed some social and fiscal priorities. The last election, however,… Read More »Henry George Warned Us: Protectionism Breeds Conflict
I could sense something was wrong the moment Lourdes spoke into her phone. We’d met through our shared affinity for community empowerment and local advocacy; the urgency in her voice signaled a deep crisis. I listened as my neighbor from Playa de Ponce detailed her… Read More »When the Taxman Comes for the Doghouse: Property Taxes, Sweat Equity, and Dispossession in Puerto Rico
