Hi, my name is Paul Martin. I am a USA ex-patriot, organizer, teacher, builder, farmer, and father of six living part-time in Nicaragua and the USA. From 1999 to 2015, I worked in Nicaragua with minimal funding and personal compensation, building and leading a comprehensive adult education program in which I personally taught nearly 1,000 students in Nicaragua how to read, understand, and advocate for the socio-economic remedy set forth in the revolutionary tome Progress and Poverty (1879) by Henry George .

Progress and Poverty (comprised of ten “books”) explains the true cause of the unending poverty and political-economic dysfuncion which has stagnated and regressed all civilizations, including our own at present time. Then, the author reveals how any sovereign nation, by means of a simple adjustment to their tax laws, can usher in an age of unending shared prosperity, with real freedom and economic justice for all individuals and peoples, while eliminating the negative social and environment effects of material progress currently afflicting the world today.

During my 15 years as the Director of the

Henry George International Education Center (USA-Nicaragua), I designed a highly effective course curriculum , translated the original full text of Progress and Poverty into a Spanish version, created an abridged (half sized) version and a supercondensed (1/5th sized) version of the text (both in the Spanish language). I also produced an audio-book of the aforementioned abridged Spanish language version.

Now, I am asking for your support to help me to complete the job of editing the original text in English into abridged and supercondensed versions, and then synchronizing these two versions and the original text with their parallel Spanish translation versions, to create a fully cross-referenced bilingual six-volume study and teaching bookset (digital and in print) which can be studied by individuals and effectively employed in group presentations, workshops, seminars, and intensive and full length courses on the subject of classic political economy and the Henry George economic reform proposal.

The final goal of the project is to make the bilingual Progress and Poverty bookset available, as separate books and as a full set, to economists, academicians, policy makers, community leaders, and the general public.

I would appreciate any financial support you can share with me to help bring this project to completion. Thank you... Paul Martin

About Progress and Poverty

Progress and Poverty has a long history in print, beginning with its first publication in English in the United States in 1879. Since then, it has been published countless times in every major language in every country in the world. In its time, it was the most widely read book in human history except the Bible, with its success bringing the author, Henry George, to international prominence. (He almost became the Mayor of New York City, but he died during his second campaign.) Progress and Poverty influenced the progressive political movement of the first two decades of the 1900’s in the United States; in countries from Denmark to Taiwan; and the thinking of leaders such as Martí of Cuba and Sun Yat-sen of China. It inspired the rise of communities modeled on its teachings, such as those in Arden, Delaware, and Fairhope, Alabama, in the United States; and it inspired the establishment of educational foundations such as the Robert Shalkenbach Foundation in New York and the Henry George Foundation in London.

The revelations, insights, and conclusions of Progress and Poverty are so powerful and irrefutable that its opponents have continuously attempted to erase the book and its teachings from human awareness, even sacrificing to obscurity the classical science of political economy, and leaving in its place the pseudoscience now known as “neoclassical economics.”*

But, as much as its opponents have attempted to bury and obfuscate the message of Progress and Poverty, it has been inevitable that the truth revealed by George continues to resurface again and again. Today, influential economists are speaking out for economic reforms that express principles identical to those explained in Progress and Poverty. The states of California and Alaska, USA, and the cities of Melbourne, Australia, and Mexicali, Mexico, and countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Denmark: all of these have recognized and successfully applied a part of the economic formula proposed by George.

What Progress and Poverty reveals to the world is nothing more than the common sense and wisdom of justice and morality scientifically applied to political economy. In fact, the economic principles and the logical reform explained by George are so universal that they can be simply, immediately and fully applied in any sovereign nation, even in “underdeveloped” countries, and already have been to some extent. However, only with a full understanding of the principles so convincingly explained in Progress and Poverty can their importance to collective and individual life be fully appreciated.

The purpose of the abbreviated and super-condensed editions of Progress and Poverty is to bring Henry George's irrefutable argument to the public in a more easily understandable format, with the original text as the final source of clarity and detail. But, even with the extensive work invested in editing and fine-tuning the abbreviated and condensed texts, it still will require an earnest mental effort to read and comprehend George's argument, for it presents a paradigm of economic analysis that challenges the established habits of thought which unreasonably justify economic privilege and refutes the erroneous but universally accepted ideas that keep the majority of the modern world complicit in their own economic slavery.

In Progress and Poverty, then, you will find more than a redundant lamentation about social ills, more than a superficial and disjointed list of possible causes, and more than a dubious proposal for contradictory and impotent reforms. For in this text, you will find the definitive explanation of the cause of poverty and social unrest in the midst of increasing plenty, and you will see revealed, as out of a fog, the logical and practicable economic reform solution that can be immediately applied in any sovereign nation to open the way to a natural freedom and prosperity that can be shared by all of humanity.