Back when I was a student majoring in the determinedly non-vocational humanities, I thought of college as a place to sharpen my reasoning and writing skills, expand my knowledge of the world and have some fun along the way. Coming from a comfortable home headed by two college-educated professionals, I didn’t think much about higher education as a path to a livelihood.

At 139 square miles, Detroit is more than a thousand times bigger than the tiny north Jersey enclave of Free Acres, which straddles the line between Union and Somerset counties. But in an effort to rejuvenate his much-maligned city, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has proposed a tax system with roots in the same intellectual soil that spawned Free Acres more than a century ago—the economic theories of Henry George, who died in 1897.