Land value tax, also called the Single Tax in the provided context, is a taxation idea associated with economist Henry George. It is based on the principle that profits arising from shared resources such as land and nature should be returned to society as a whole. In George’s Georgism, goods produced by human labor and capital are treated as private property, but unearned income derived from land ownership and rising land values is seen as a force that entrenches urban inequality and poverty. For that reason, George and his followers argued for abolishing income tax and consumption tax, and instead taxing only the site value of land.
The context also shows that this idea influenced Lizzie Magie’s board game, The Landlord’s Game. Magie designed the game as an educational experiment to make the effects of land monopoly understandable through play. The game presents two rule sets: a “monopoly rule,” in which players accumulate land and drive others into bankruptcy, and a “prosperity rule,” in which gains from land value are shared by everyone. In this way, the game demonstrates how different institutional designs can shape economic behavior and ethics. Based on the provided sources, land value tax is therefore both a fiscal proposal and a key ideological background for The Landlord’s Game.