Georgism
Georgism holds that people own what they create, but that land and natural resources belong to everyone. It proposes replacing taxes on labour and enterprise with a single tax on the value of land, while otherwise supporting free markets and free trade.
- Land value is created by the community, not by the landowner, so it should be taxed.
- Taxes on wages, trade and production should be reduced or abolished.
- Free trade and competitive markets are otherwise the best way to organise the economy.
The American economist Henry George set out the argument in Progress and Poverty (1879), one of the best-selling economics books of its century. It influenced reformers worldwide, and land value taxes have been used in places such as Denmark, Estonia and parts of Australia and Pennsylvania. Economists across the spectrum, including Milton Friedman, have praised the land value tax as efficient.
Critics question how land value can be assessed separately from buildings, and whether a land tax could raise enough revenue on its own. Landowners object to what they see as confiscation of their property's value.
No country or historical regime in our data has Georgism as its closest ideology.
Method: each ideology is placed at a typical position on the 12 axes, scored from 0 to 100 toward the first pole. Ranks compare it with the other 45 ideologies; matches are 100 minus the average distance across all axes. The positions are our own calibration, not taken from any third-party source.