rent summary

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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see rent.

rent, In common usage, payment made in return for the right to use property belonging to another. In classical economics, rent was the income gained from cultivated or improved land after the deduction of all production costs. In modern economic usage, rent is the difference between the total return to a factor of production (land, labour, capital) and its supply price, the minimum amount necessary to attain its services. Rent plus opportunity cost make up the total income paid to a productive resource. Efforts made by a resource owner to obtain monopoly profit is considered rent-seeking behaviour.

Henry George Summary

Henry George was a land reformer and economist who in Progress and Poverty (1879) proposed the single tax: that the state tax away all economic rent—the income from the use of bare land but not from improvements—and abolish all other taxes. Leaving school before his 14th birthday, George worked for