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So then that shifts the tax burden to wealthy landlords. And the general idea is to tax land and only land.

PILON: So the single tax theory - the general idea was that you had a land value tax, also known as a single tax.

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She became friends with Henry George's son and became the secretary of the Woman's Single Tax Club of Washington, a club dedicated to advancing George's central theory on how to solve inequality. PILON: So she was absolutely a trailblazer.ĪBDELFATAH: As an adult, Lizzie kept going back to the ideas of Henry George, to the book her father gave her. And he made sure that his daughter Lizzie knew it, too - not just by giving her books, but by encouraging her to live a life that transcended the societal norms of the time. UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #1: (As Lizzie Magie) Ownership of land is the great, fundamental fact.ĪBDELFATAH: He strongly believed in the ideas Lizzie was reading about and understood that whoever owned the land made the profits and maintained all the power. RAMTIN ARABLOUEI, BYLINE: A growing number of Americans were fed up with the monopolies of the so-called Gilded Age - railroads, sugar, oil - and the growing riches of the elite few - the Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Rockefellers.ĪBDELFATAH: Among those fed up was Lizzie's dad, James Magie, a staunch progressive who traveled with Abraham Lincoln during the Lincoln-Douglas debates. And how does - how is it distributed? And what is the government's role in, you know, taking a cut? Or, you know, how does that pan out? And now it's - you know, we're rebuilding. PILON: And George was asking questions about - all this money is now coming in. And you had a very - you had a handful of people who were controlling it.ĪBDELFATAH: This is Mary Pilon, author of 'The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, And The Scandal Behind The World's Favorite Board Game.'

At this time, there was an incredible amount of wealth being created that hadn't been seen in this country anymore. MARY PILON: It's really important to understand that the United States after the Civil War. The ownership of land is the great fundamental fact which ultimately determines the social, the political and, consequentially, the intellectual and moral condition.ĪBDELFATAH: She's there, but not really there. UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #1: (As Lizzie Magie) The great cause of inequality in the distribution of wealth is inequality in the ownership of land. And as she dives into this book, the world begins to make a little more sense to her. Her family was struggling, never having recovered from the recession six years earlier. UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #1: (As Lizzie Magie) 'Progress And Poverty' by Henry George.ĪBDELFATAH: Lizzie had to stop going to school. RUND ABDELFATAH, BYLINE: It's 1879 in a small town in Illinois, where 13-year-old Lizzie Magie is curled up next to the fire with a book her father gave her. It turns out, there's more to passing go than people think. Today, Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei at NPR's history podcast Throughline take a look at one of the bestselling board games in history. And it just so happens that wealth, rent and land are topics many people first learn about when they play the game Monopoly. As inflation has increased to a 40-year high, home prices and rent has been on the mind of many Americans.