Many of us played the Monopoly board game when we were younger. True to its name, the goal was to create a “monopoly” in which you became the wealthiest player by buying, developing, and trading land and hotels while bankrupting all other players. But the game has an interesting history. Elizabeth “Lizzie” Magie grew up in Illinois in the mid-nineteenth century. Her father was a newspaper publisher who accompanied Abraham Lincoln during his many political debates. She inherited her father’s progressive ideals, including the abolition of slavery, and became a proponent of an idea in economics that taxes should not be levelled on income but on land. The tax should reflect the size, location and usefulness of the properties. Then, after funding the government, the leftover money should be distributed to the people. In 1903, Lizzie created a board game called “The Landlord’s Game” which could be used to teach about two economic systems. She provided two sets of rules. In the first set, every time a player purchased new property a small amount of money was given to every other player. This reflected a “land value tax”. The game was over when the player with the least amount of money doubled their savings, but every player slowly becomes more wealthy! In the second set of rules a player gained money by charging rent each time someone landed on his property. When Parker Brothers bought the game, they decided to include only the second set of rules.  After the parable of the talents, Jesus says, “For whoever has will be given more… whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” In other words, the world operates such that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But this is not how it is in the Kingdom of God. If only the original rules of the game had survived….. – – – Fr. Jim