In the United States, approximately 3% of the population own or control 97% of the privately owned land area. The largest landholding entities are oil and timber companies, holding many millions of acres. The ownership of land value is not as concentrated as the ownership of land area, however. The United States has a large number of individual landholders; as we have discussed already, some two-thirds of all American families have title to some land. However, center-city land is by far the most valuable of all, and its ownership is highly concentrated in relatively small groups of politically-connected people.

At the turn of the 20th century, a worldwide movement emerged for the implementation of George's remedy, called the Single Tax. In this 1898 cartoon from the Australian magazine The Beacon, the Land Monopolist, aided by his vicious mutt "Protection," locks labor out of the natural opportunities.

In "underdeveloped" countries, especially in Asia and Latin America, land ownership is often extraordinarily concentrated. In these societies the land problem is not masked and diffused as it is in wealthier nations. A small group controls nearly all the land in a nation, and the need for land reform is keenly felt.

This reform usually consists of breaking up large estates, with compensation to landlords, and making small holdings available to tenants on supposedly favorable terms.

Thus several small owners -- and private collectors of rent -- are substituted for a few large owners. The rights of all are not established. Besides the injustice of paying compensation to landowners, this measure does not take into account the changes in society, such as fluctuating populations, changes from generation to generation or the tendency of rural workers to move into urban areas. In many cases, the tendency to monopolization asserts itself and smaller holdings are taken over and absorbed into large estates.

If, on the other hand, a popular revolution - whose original goal may have been land reform -- succeeds in installing a socialist regime, the common result will be the seizing of nearly all the land and capital in the nation. The rights of wealth producers are not upheld when their capital goods are seized and held as government property.

Henry George's brand of land reform, on the other hand, establishes equal land rights for all. It gives people the freedom to take as much or as little land as they can productively use -- provided the obligation to society is paid. Thus, it enables the economy to progress under free conditions. Here's how Henry George's remedy compares with other ideologies.