Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy was written in 1879 by Henry George, an American writer, politician and political economist, who was the most influential proponent of the land value tax, also known as the “single tax” on land. The book is a treatise on the cyclical nature of an industrial economy and its remedies.

Progress and Poverty seeks to explain why poverty exists notwithstanding widespread advances in technology and even where there is a concentration of great wealth such as in cities.

In Progress and Poverty, George examines various proposed strategies to prevent business depressions, unemployment and poverty, but finds them unsatisfactory. As an alternative he proposes his own solution: a single tax on land values. This would be a tax on the annual value of land held as private property. It would be high enough to allow for all other taxes—especially upon labor and production—to be abolished. George argued that a land value tax would give landowners an incentive to use the land in a productive way, thereby employing labor and creating wealth, or to sell the land to those who could and would themselves use the land in a productive way. This shift in the bargaining balance between resource owners and laborers would raise the general level of wages and ensure no one need suffer involuntary poverty.

Soon after its publication, over three million copies of Progress and Poverty were bought.

Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is a utopian science fiction novel by Edward Bellamy, a lawyer and writer from Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts; it was first published in 1887. According to Erich Fromm — German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist — Looking Backward is “one of the most remarkable books ever published in America”.

It was the third-largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

It influenced a large number of intellectuals, and appears by title in many of the major Marxist writings of the day. According to Erich Fromm, “It is one of the few books ever published that created almost immediately on its appearance a political mass movement.”

In the United States alone, over 162 “Bellamy Clubs” sprang up to discuss and propagate the book’s ideas. Owing to its commitment to the nationalization of private property, this political movement came to be known as Nationalism, not to be confused with the political concept of nationalism. The novel also inspired several utopian communities.

14th Century “Illuminated Haggadah,” a piece of Jewish ceremonial art

This is the English Haggadah Text with Instructional Guide courtesy of Chabad.org

The Haggadah (Hebrew: הַגָּדָה‎, “telling”) is a Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder. Reading the Haggadah at the Seder table is a fulfillment of the Scriptural commandment to each Jew to “tell your son” of the Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt as described in the Book of Exodus in the Torah.

(“And thou shalt tell thy son in that day, saying: It is because of that which the LORD did for me when I came forth out of Egypt.” Exodus 13:8)



Source: Haggadah