Matthew Stillman

Matthew Stillman works professionally in cable television production and development. He worked for Food Network for five years and developed some of their hit shows like Iron Chef and Good Eats. Additionally he has worked for numerous other cable networks and productions hopefully making their television shows better.

Matthew first encountered Henry George when he had to write an economics paper as a junior at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. The book his father told him to read and write about was Progress and Poverty. This event was remarkable in two ways: It made a huge life-long impact on Matthew in its simplicity and with its pure and just philosophical underpinnings; and it was probably one of the few things that Matthew did during his teen years that his father suggested.

Matthew’s father was and is a member of The School of Practical Philosophy in New York City, and Matthew has become a life-long student. The School of Practical Philosophy is the sister school to The School of Economic Science in London that was founded right after World War II by Leon MacLaren, an adherent of Henry George. In his search to truly understand the principles of economics MacLaren came to the realization that one had to first know the nature of Man. So the School continued with the study of economics even as it turned towards the study of philosophy.

While he has always been interested in economics and justice avocationally, the ember of Matthew’s interest remained unfanned until the early Spring of 2003. In a matter of weeks after writing casual letters to the Howard Dean presidential campaign and the Comptroller’s office of New York City about Henry George and the possible implementation and benefits of a Land Value Tax on national scale (for Dean) and to help the flagging New York City economy, he got interested responses back from each.

Having been thrown out of the philosophic purity of George into the deep end of applied Georgism, he made contact with other Georgists and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, the same organization that gave him pamphlets about Henry George fifteen years earlier. While Howard Dean's campaign went the way of all flesh, Matthew continues to meet with New York City officials pressing for some version of a Land Value Tax. 

Matthew also conceived of the original idea and wrote the initial treatment for what turned into a film he co-produced: a powerful expose of global poverty in Cinema Libre's acclaimed documentary "The End of Poverty?"

Matthew lives in Harlem, New York City, with his wife Susan. He can be reached at mstillman@gmail.com.