#henrygeorge — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #henrygeorge, aggregated by home.social.
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This isn't a crazy branch of reality, this is the reality where we still don't touch the economy causes behind this craziness.
#TaxTheRich #LandValueTax #DemurrageOnMoney #HenryGeorge #SilvioGesell
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This isn't a crazy branch of reality, this is the reality where we still don't touch the economy causes behind this craziness.
#TaxTheRich #LandValueTax #DemurrageOnMoney #HenryGeorge #SilvioGesell
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This isn't a crazy branch of reality, this is the reality where we still don't touch the economy causes behind this craziness.
#TaxTheRich #LandValueTax #DemurrageOnMoney #HenryGeorge #SilvioGesell
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I wonder if #OpenStreetMap has urbex tags, I could tag the closed-down shell that used to be a Circuit City lol
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I wonder if #OpenStreetMap has urbex tags, I could tag the closed-down shell that used to be a Circuit City lol
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I wonder if #OpenStreetMap has urbex tags, I could tag the closed-down shell that used to be a Circuit City lol
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I wonder if #OpenStreetMap has urbex tags, I could tag the closed-down shell that used to be a Circuit City lol
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@benlockwood The environmental movement is just a negative application of the labor movements principle that workers ought to get the fruits of their labor. Nature isn’t the fruits of anyone’s labor, but everyone has an equal claim to it including future generations. #HenryGeorge had the right idea.
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@benlockwood The environmental movement is just a negative application of the labor movements principle that workers ought to get the fruits of their labor. Nature isn’t the fruits of anyone’s labor, but everyone has an equal claim to it including future generations. #HenryGeorge had the right idea.
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@benlockwood The environmental movement is just a negative application of the labor movements principle that workers ought to get the fruits of their labor. Nature isn’t the fruits of anyone’s labor, but everyone has an equal claim to it including future generations. #HenryGeorge had the right idea.
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@benlockwood The environmental movement is just a negative application of the labor movements principle that workers ought to get the fruits of their labor. Nature isn’t the fruits of anyone’s labor, but everyone has an equal claim to it including future generations. #HenryGeorge had the right idea.
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@benlockwood The environmental movement is just a negative application of the labor movements principle that workers ought to get the fruits of their labor. Nature isn’t the fruits of anyone’s labor, but everyone has an equal claim to it including future generations. #HenryGeorge had the right idea.
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"As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce." - Adam Smith
"Rent is the secret tax the wealthy charge the poor." - Joseph E. Stiglitz
"Solving the land question means the solving of all social questions." - Leo Tolstoy
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"As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce." - Adam Smith
"Rent is the secret tax the wealthy charge the poor." - Joseph E. Stiglitz
"Solving the land question means the solving of all social questions." - Leo Tolstoy
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"As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce." - Adam Smith
"Rent is the secret tax the wealthy charge the poor." - Joseph E. Stiglitz
"Solving the land question means the solving of all social questions." - Leo Tolstoy
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If we had the #singletax of #henrygeorge of 100% of #landrents and basically nothing else (except perhaps a few targeted pigouvian ones) you wouldn't have this farcical budget speculation. All this tinkering is destructive. Spend what you have or choose to borrow to invest and nothing else.
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If we had the #singletax of #henrygeorge of 100% of #landrents and basically nothing else (except perhaps a few targeted pigouvian ones) you wouldn't have this farcical budget speculation. All this tinkering is destructive. Spend what you have or choose to borrow to invest and nothing else.
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If we had the #singletax of #henrygeorge of 100% of #landrents and basically nothing else (except perhaps a few targeted pigouvian ones) you wouldn't have this farcical budget speculation. All this tinkering is destructive. Spend what you have or choose to borrow to invest and nothing else.
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If we had the #singletax of #henrygeorge of 100% of #landrents and basically nothing else (except perhaps a few targeted pigouvian ones) you wouldn't have this farcical budget speculation. All this tinkering is destructive. Spend what you have or choose to borrow to invest and nothing else.
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Recently learned that Half Price Books in Berkeley is closing on Nov. 30th due to a lease dispute with the landlord.
This is a real tragedy—Half Price is one of the best bookstores in the Bay Area. Many gems on my bookshelf came from Half Price.
I've long tired of great shops and stores across the Bay Area closing due to landlord rent increases w/ no property improvements. This is the kind of thing that makes me sympathetic to Georgism.
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Recently learned that Half Price Books in Berkeley is closing on Nov. 30th due to a lease dispute with the landlord.
This is a real tragedy—Half Price is one of the best bookstores in the Bay Area. Many gems on my bookshelf came from Half Price.
I've long tired of great shops and stores across the Bay Area closing due to landlord rent increases w/ no property improvements. This is the kind of thing that makes me sympathetic to Georgism.
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Recently learned that Half Price Books in Berkeley is closing on Nov. 30th due to a lease dispute with the landlord.
This is a real tragedy—Half Price is one of the best bookstores in the Bay Area. Many gems on my bookshelf came from Half Price.
I've long tired of great shops and stores across the Bay Area closing due to landlord rent increases w/ no property improvements. This is the kind of thing that makes me sympathetic to Georgism.
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#Enshittification. #UnitedHealthcare, and your monthly bills all have one huge thing in common.
#Business under #Capitalism will always attempt to turn returns from #Capital into returns from #Rent.
I think #HenryGeorge and #Marx both missed this. If a capitalist can artificially constrain supply, or make demand non-optional, then they are no longer engaged in a classical or neo-classical - not even #Marxist - mode of #capitalist production.
They are engaged in #rent extraction.
The entire reason why tech investors want companies to lose money and grow as quickly as possible is that they want to:
1. Push any competition out of the market
2. Get their users hooked on their product.To the extent that those two things are accomplished.
Likewise, drug companies would rather you have a drug you have to take forever, than one that cures you.
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#Enshittification. #UnitedHealthcare, and your monthly bills all have one huge thing in common.
#Business under #Capitalism will always attempt to turn returns from #Capital into returns from #Rent.
I think #HenryGeorge and #Marx both missed this. If a capitalist can artificially constrain supply, or make demand non-optional, then they are no longer engaged in a classical or neo-classical - not even #Marxist - mode of #capitalist production.
They are engaged in #rent extraction.
The entire reason why tech investors want companies to lose money and grow as quickly as possible is that they want to:
1. Push any competition out of the market
2. Get their users hooked on their product.To the extent that those two things are accomplished.
Likewise, drug companies would rather you have a drug you have to take forever, than one that cures you.
-
#Enshittification. #UnitedHealthcare, and your monthly bills all have one huge thing in common.
#Business under #Capitalism will always attempt to turn returns from #Capital into returns from #Rent.
I think #HenryGeorge and #Marx both missed this. If a capitalist can artificially constrain supply, or make demand non-optional, then they are no longer engaged in a classical or neo-classical - not even #Marxist - mode of #capitalist production.
They are engaged in #rent extraction.
The entire reason why tech investors want companies to lose money and grow as quickly as possible is that they want to:
1. Push any competition out of the market
2. Get their users hooked on their product.To the extent that those two things are accomplished.
Likewise, drug companies would rather you have a drug you have to take forever, than one that cures you.
-
#Enshittification. #UnitedHealthcare, and your monthly bills all have one huge thing in common.
#Business under #Capitalism will always attempt to turn returns from #Capital into returns from #Rent.
I think #HenryGeorge and #Marx both missed this. If a capitalist can artificially constrain supply, or make demand non-optional, then they are no longer engaged in a classical or neo-classical - not even #Marxist - mode of #capitalist production.
They are engaged in #rent extraction.
The entire reason why tech investors want companies to lose money and grow as quickly as possible is that they want to:
1. Push any competition out of the market
2. Get their users hooked on their product.To the extent that those two things are accomplished.
Likewise, drug companies would rather you have a drug you have to take forever, than one that cures you.
-
#Enshittification. #UnitedHealthcare, and your monthly bills all have one huge thing in common.
#Business under #Capitalism will always attempt to turn returns from #Capital into returns from #Rent.
I think #HenryGeorge and #Marx both missed this. If a capitalist can artificially constrain supply, or make demand non-optional, then they are no longer engaged in a classical or neo-classical - not even #Marxist - mode of #capitalist production.
They are engaged in #rent extraction.
The entire reason why tech investors want companies to lose money and grow as quickly as possible is that they want to:
1. Push any competition out of the market
2. Get their users hooked on their product.To the extent that those two things are accomplished.
Likewise, drug companies would rather you have a drug you have to take forever, than one that cures you.
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We don't need heavily subsidised Affordable *Housing*. We need Affordable *Land* in locations that make people's economic activity convenient and profitable. #theSingleTax of #HenryGeorge provides the mechanism.
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We don't need heavily subsidised Affordable *Housing*. We need Affordable *Land* in locations that make people's economic activity convenient and profitable. #theSingleTax of #HenryGeorge provides the mechanism.
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@Dianora There are a few other economic concepts which are IMO key to developing any remedies and/or alternatives. I'll try to touch on the major ones here.
Wage/Rent pricing, mentioned above, is a key stumbling point. Smith:
A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AThe_wealth_of_nations%2C_volume_1.djvu/135
The Law of Rent and Iron Law of Wages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages) dictate that these dynamics are always in conflict and play, and crush the working class, most especially those who live by wage labour (or worse: piecework pay, see Smith's discussion of this for an eye-opener), and rent rather than own their domeciles. Both concepts date to the 18th / early 19th centuries, but are largely ignored in contemporary orthodoxy.
The "obvious" solutions, of, say, providing free/subsidised essentials to the working class or of critical goods and services (food, clothing, housing, education, healthcare) largely further exacerbate the existing perverse market dynamics. I am not saying DON'T help those in dire need. What I am saying is that if this is the sole and widespread remedy, that the underlying problems get worse: wages fall (because "welfare" benefits subsidise its costs rather than employers paying a living wage), education, housing, healthcare and other services get more expensive (because subsidies provide additional revenues).
Winston Churchill (another unlikely champion) noted this in 1906:
Some years ago in London there was a toll bar on a bridge across the Thames, and all the working people who lived on the south side of the river had to pay a daily toll of one penny for going and returning from their work. The spectacle of these poor people thus mulcted of so large a proportion of their earnings offended the public conscience, and agitation was set on foot, municipal authorities were roused, and at the cost of the taxpayers, the bridge was freed and the toll removed. All those people who used the bridge were saved sixpence a week, but within a very short time rents on the south side of the river were found to have risen about sixpence a week, or the amount of the toll which had been remitted!
https://www.landvaluetax.org/history/winston-churchill-said-it-all-better-then-we-can
Instead, a dual strategy of taxing rents (generally: providers of the goods/services above or those acting similarly economically), and providing for increased labour bargaining power though an improved best alternative to negotiated agreement (BATNA) and coordinated negotiation power (a/k/a Labour Unionisation) is necessary. Both of course run into the Wealth is Power and Logic of Collective Action (Mancur Olson, 1965: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action) problems.
Direct subsidies / contributions as emergency measures directed at dire immediate circumstances are ABSOLUTELY of value. **But they should result in direction to directly addressing the rents/wages dichotomy.
A business which cannot pay a living wage and survive economically is a charity conducted to the benefit of its owner at the cost of its workers, or is provisioning public goods which should see a subsidy in their provision through tax revenues and transfer payments. Below-subsistence wages and labour supports only exacerbate the underlying problem.
Private ownership of real estate is a surprisingly recent development, displacing earlier feudal or monarchical rents (often very long-term leases) largely in the late 19th century. Among the few explorations of this history I've found is Simon Winchester's Land (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_(book)). And of course there's Henry George's Progress and Poverty (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty_(George,_D._Appleton_%26_Company,_fifth_edition)), championing the Land Value Tax (along with: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Milton Friedman (!!!), to name just a few. Social housing has its failures, but also successes, including the Fuggerei (Augsburg, Germany, created by the Fugger family in 1516 and continuing to serve to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuggerei), Vienna, and Japan (through both market and government actions, in part through some idiosyncratic practices).
Housing cannot be both affordable and an investment asset. And of the two, the first function is primal.
Incidentally, I suspect that a large part of the US growth in homelessness may be directly attributable to going off the gold standard, itself a response to the country's peak-oil moment and reliance on foreign energy imports, driving banks and financial institutions to find an alternate asset class: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21304603.
Next are some more obscure economic principles, somewhat addressed in the mainstream, but highly underappreciated ...
2/
#economics #orthodoxEconomics #critique #wages #rents #LawOfRent #IronLawOfWages #MancurOlson #UBI #unions #LogicOfCollectiveAction #RealEstate #homelessness #OilCrisis #PeakOil #Fuggerei #ProgressAndPoverty #HenryGeorge #DavidRicardo #SimonWinchester #AffordableHousing #AssetHousing #BusinessAsCharity #tootstorm
-
@Dianora There are a few other economic concepts which are IMO key to developing any remedies and/or alternatives. I'll try to touch on the major ones here.
Wage/Rent pricing, mentioned above, is a key stumbling point. Smith:
A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AThe_wealth_of_nations%2C_volume_1.djvu/135
The Law of Rent and Iron Law of Wages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages) dictate that these dynamics are always in conflict and play, and crush the working class, most especially those who live by wage labour (or worse: piecework pay, see Smith's discussion of this for an eye-opener), and rent rather than own their domeciles. Both concepts date to the 18th / early 19th centuries, but are largely ignored in contemporary orthodoxy.
The "obvious" solutions, of, say, providing free/subsidised essentials to the working class or of critical goods and services (food, clothing, housing, education, healthcare) largely further exacerbate the existing perverse market dynamics. I am not saying DON'T help those in dire need. What I am saying is that if this is the sole and widespread remedy, that the underlying problems get worse: wages fall (because "welfare" benefits subsidise its costs rather than employers paying a living wage), education, housing, healthcare and other services get more expensive (because subsidies provide additional revenues).
Winston Churchill (another unlikely champion) noted this in 1906:
Some years ago in London there was a toll bar on a bridge across the Thames, and all the working people who lived on the south side of the river had to pay a daily toll of one penny for going and returning from their work. The spectacle of these poor people thus mulcted of so large a proportion of their earnings offended the public conscience, and agitation was set on foot, municipal authorities were roused, and at the cost of the taxpayers, the bridge was freed and the toll removed. All those people who used the bridge were saved sixpence a week, but within a very short time rents on the south side of the river were found to have risen about sixpence a week, or the amount of the toll which had been remitted!
https://www.landvaluetax.org/history/winston-churchill-said-it-all-better-then-we-can
Instead, a dual strategy of taxing rents (generally: providers of the goods/services above or those acting similarly economically), and providing for increased labour bargaining power though an improved best alternative to negotiated agreement (BATNA) and coordinated negotiation power (a/k/a Labour Unionisation) is necessary. Both of course run into the Wealth is Power and Logic of Collective Action (Mancur Olson, 1965: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action) problems.
Direct subsidies / contributions as emergency measures directed at dire immediate circumstances are ABSOLUTELY of value. **But they should result in direction to directly addressing the rents/wages dichotomy.
A business which cannot pay a living wage and survive economically is a charity conducted to the benefit of its owner at the cost of its workers, or is provisioning public goods which should see a subsidy in their provision through tax revenues and transfer payments. Below-subsistence wages and labour supports only exacerbate the underlying problem.
Private ownership of real estate is a surprisingly recent development, displacing earlier feudal or monarchical rents (often very long-term leases) largely in the late 19th century. Among the few explorations of this history I've found is Simon Winchester's Land (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_(book)). And of course there's Henry George's Progress and Poverty (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty_(George,_D._Appleton_%26_Company,_fifth_edition)), championing the Land Value Tax (along with: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Milton Friedman (!!!), to name just a few. Social housing has its failures, but also successes, including the Fuggerei (Augsburg, Germany, created by the Fugger family in 1516 and continuing to serve to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuggerei), Vienna, and Japan (through both market and government actions, in part through some idiosyncratic practices).
Housing cannot be both affordable and an investment asset. And of the two, the first function is primal.
Incidentally, I suspect that a large part of the US growth in homelessness may be directly attributable to going off the gold standard, itself a response to the country's peak-oil moment and reliance on foreign energy imports, driving banks and financial institutions to find an alternate asset class: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21304603.
Next are some more obscure economic principles, somewhat addressed in the mainstream, but highly underappreciated ...
2/
#economics #orthodoxEconomics #critique #wages #rents #LawOfRent #IronLawOfWages #MancurOlson #UBI #unions #LogicOfCollectiveAction #RealEstate #homelessness #OilCrisis #PeakOil #Fuggerei #ProgressAndPoverty #HenryGeorge #DavidRicardo #SimonWinchester #AffordableHousing #AssetHousing #BusinessAsCharity #tootstorm
-
@Dianora There are a few other economic concepts which are IMO key to developing any remedies and/or alternatives. I'll try to touch on the major ones here.
Wage/Rent pricing, mentioned above, is a key stumbling point. Smith:
A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AThe_wealth_of_nations%2C_volume_1.djvu/135
The Law of Rent and Iron Law of Wages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages) dictate that these dynamics are always in conflict and play, and crush the working class, most especially those who live by wage labour (or worse: piecework pay, see Smith's discussion of this for an eye-opener), and rent rather than own their domeciles. Both concepts date to the 18th / early 19th centuries, but are largely ignored in contemporary orthodoxy.
The "obvious" solutions, of, say, providing free/subsidised essentials to the working class or of critical goods and services (food, clothing, housing, education, healthcare) largely further exacerbate the existing perverse market dynamics. I am not saying DON'T help those in dire need. What I am saying is that if this is the sole and widespread remedy, that the underlying problems get worse: wages fall (because "welfare" benefits subsidise its costs rather than employers paying a living wage), education, housing, healthcare and other services get more expensive (because subsidies provide additional revenues).
Winston Churchill (another unlikely champion) noted this in 1906:
Some years ago in London there was a toll bar on a bridge across the Thames, and all the working people who lived on the south side of the river had to pay a daily toll of one penny for going and returning from their work. The spectacle of these poor people thus mulcted of so large a proportion of their earnings offended the public conscience, and agitation was set on foot, municipal authorities were roused, and at the cost of the taxpayers, the bridge was freed and the toll removed. All those people who used the bridge were saved sixpence a week, but within a very short time rents on the south side of the river were found to have risen about sixpence a week, or the amount of the toll which had been remitted!
https://www.landvaluetax.org/history/winston-churchill-said-it-all-better-then-we-can
Instead, a dual strategy of taxing rents (generally: providers of the goods/services above or those acting similarly economically), and providing for increased labour bargaining power though an improved best alternative to negotiated agreement (BATNA) and coordinated negotiation power (a/k/a Labour Unionisation) is necessary. Both of course run into the Wealth is Power and Logic of Collective Action (Mancur Olson, 1965: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action) problems.
Direct subsidies / contributions as emergency measures directed at dire immediate circumstances are ABSOLUTELY of value. **But they should result in direction to directly addressing the rents/wages dichotomy.
A business which cannot pay a living wage and survive economically is a charity conducted to the benefit of its owner at the cost of its workers, or is provisioning public goods which should see a subsidy in their provision through tax revenues and transfer payments. Below-subsistence wages and labour supports only exacerbate the underlying problem.
Private ownership of real estate is a surprisingly recent development, displacing earlier feudal or monarchical rents (often very long-term leases) largely in the late 19th century. Among the few explorations of this history I've found is Simon Winchester's Land (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_(book)). And of course there's Henry George's Progress and Poverty (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty_(George,_D._Appleton_%26_Company,_fifth_edition)), championing the Land Value Tax (along with: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Milton Friedman (!!!), to name just a few. Social housing has its failures, but also successes, including the Fuggerei (Augsburg, Germany, created by the Fugger family in 1516 and continuing to serve to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuggerei), Vienna, and Japan (through both market and government actions, in part through some idiosyncratic practices).
Housing cannot be both affordable and an investment asset. And of the two, the first function is primal.
Incidentally, I suspect that a large part of the US growth in homelessness may be directly attributable to going off the gold standard, itself a response to the country's peak-oil moment and reliance on foreign energy imports, driving banks and financial institutions to find an alternate asset class: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21304603.
Next are some more obscure economic principles, somewhat addressed in the mainstream, but highly underappreciated ...
2/
#economics #orthodoxEconomics #critique #wages #rents #LawOfRent #IronLawOfWages #MancurOlson #UBI #unions #LogicOfCollectiveAction #RealEstate #homelessness #OilCrisis #PeakOil #Fuggerei #ProgressAndPoverty #HenryGeorge #DavidRicardo #SimonWinchester #AffordableHousing #AssetHousing #BusinessAsCharity #tootstorm
-
@Dianora There are a few other economic concepts which are IMO key to developing any remedies and/or alternatives. I'll try to touch on the major ones here.
Wage/Rent pricing, mentioned above, is a key stumbling point. Smith:
A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AThe_wealth_of_nations%2C_volume_1.djvu/135
The Law of Rent and Iron Law of Wages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages) dictate that these dynamics are always in conflict and play, and crush the working class, most especially those who live by wage labour (or worse: piecework pay, see Smith's discussion of this for an eye-opener), and rent rather than own their domeciles. Both concepts date to the 18th / early 19th centuries, but are largely ignored in contemporary orthodoxy.
The "obvious" solutions, of, say, providing free/subsidised essentials to the working class or of critical goods and services (food, clothing, housing, education, healthcare) largely further exacerbate the existing perverse market dynamics. I am not saying DON'T help those in dire need. What I am saying is that if this is the sole and widespread remedy, that the underlying problems get worse: wages fall (because "welfare" benefits subsidise its costs rather than employers paying a living wage), education, housing, healthcare and other services get more expensive (because subsidies provide additional revenues).
Winston Churchill (another unlikely champion) noted this in 1906:
Some years ago in London there was a toll bar on a bridge across the Thames, and all the working people who lived on the south side of the river had to pay a daily toll of one penny for going and returning from their work. The spectacle of these poor people thus mulcted of so large a proportion of their earnings offended the public conscience, and agitation was set on foot, municipal authorities were roused, and at the cost of the taxpayers, the bridge was freed and the toll removed. All those people who used the bridge were saved sixpence a week, but within a very short time rents on the south side of the river were found to have risen about sixpence a week, or the amount of the toll which had been remitted!
https://www.landvaluetax.org/history/winston-churchill-said-it-all-better-then-we-can
Instead, a dual strategy of taxing rents (generally: providers of the goods/services above or those acting similarly economically), and providing for increased labour bargaining power though an improved best alternative to negotiated agreement (BATNA) and coordinated negotiation power (a/k/a Labour Unionisation) is necessary. Both of course run into the Wealth is Power and Logic of Collective Action (Mancur Olson, 1965: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action) problems.
Direct subsidies / contributions as emergency measures directed at dire immediate circumstances are ABSOLUTELY of value. **But they should result in direction to directly addressing the rents/wages dichotomy.
A business which cannot pay a living wage and survive economically is a charity conducted to the benefit of its owner at the cost of its workers, or is provisioning public goods which should see a subsidy in their provision through tax revenues and transfer payments. Below-subsistence wages and labour supports only exacerbate the underlying problem.
Private ownership of real estate is a surprisingly recent development, displacing earlier feudal or monarchical rents (often very long-term leases) largely in the late 19th century. Among the few explorations of this history I've found is Simon Winchester's Land (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_(book)). And of course there's Henry George's Progress and Poverty (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty_(George,_D._Appleton_%26_Company,_fifth_edition)), championing the Land Value Tax (along with: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Milton Friedman (!!!), to name just a few. Social housing has its failures, but also successes, including the Fuggerei (Augsburg, Germany, created by the Fugger family in 1516 and continuing to serve to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuggerei), Vienna, and Japan (through both market and government actions, in part through some idiosyncratic practices).
Housing cannot be both affordable and an investment asset. And of the two, the first function is primal.
Incidentally, I suspect that a large part of the US growth in homelessness may be directly attributable to going off the gold standard, itself a response to the country's peak-oil moment and reliance on foreign energy imports, driving banks and financial institutions to find an alternate asset class: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21304603.
Next are some more obscure economic principles, somewhat addressed in the mainstream, but highly underappreciated ...
2/
#economics #orthodoxEconomics #critique #wages #rents #LawOfRent #IronLawOfWages #MancurOlson #UBI #unions #LogicOfCollectiveAction #RealEstate #homelessness #OilCrisis #PeakOil #Fuggerei #ProgressAndPoverty #HenryGeorge #DavidRicardo #SimonWinchester #AffordableHousing #AssetHousing #BusinessAsCharity #tootstorm
-
@Dianora There are a few other economic concepts which are IMO key to developing any remedies and/or alternatives. I'll try to touch on the major ones here.
Wage/Rent pricing, mentioned above, is a key stumbling point. Smith:
A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AThe_wealth_of_nations%2C_volume_1.djvu/135
The Law of Rent and Iron Law of Wages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages) dictate that these dynamics are always in conflict and play, and crush the working class, most especially those who live by wage labour (or worse: piecework pay, see Smith's discussion of this for an eye-opener), and rent rather than own their domeciles. Both concepts date to the 18th / early 19th centuries, but are largely ignored in contemporary orthodoxy.
The "obvious" solutions, of, say, providing free/subsidised essentials to the working class or of critical goods and services (food, clothing, housing, education, healthcare) largely further exacerbate the existing perverse market dynamics. I am not saying DON'T help those in dire need. What I am saying is that if this is the sole and widespread remedy, that the underlying problems get worse: wages fall (because "welfare" benefits subsidise its costs rather than employers paying a living wage), education, housing, healthcare and other services get more expensive (because subsidies provide additional revenues).
Winston Churchill (another unlikely champion) noted this in 1906:
Some years ago in London there was a toll bar on a bridge across the Thames, and all the working people who lived on the south side of the river had to pay a daily toll of one penny for going and returning from their work. The spectacle of these poor people thus mulcted of so large a proportion of their earnings offended the public conscience, and agitation was set on foot, municipal authorities were roused, and at the cost of the taxpayers, the bridge was freed and the toll removed. All those people who used the bridge were saved sixpence a week, but within a very short time rents on the south side of the river were found to have risen about sixpence a week, or the amount of the toll which had been remitted!
https://www.landvaluetax.org/history/winston-churchill-said-it-all-better-then-we-can
Instead, a dual strategy of taxing rents (generally: providers of the goods/services above or those acting similarly economically), and providing for increased labour bargaining power though an improved best alternative to negotiated agreement (BATNA) and coordinated negotiation power (a/k/a Labour Unionisation) is necessary. Both of course run into the Wealth is Power and Logic of Collective Action (Mancur Olson, 1965: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action) problems.
Direct subsidies / contributions as emergency measures directed at dire immediate circumstances are ABSOLUTELY of value. **But they should result in direction to directly addressing the rents/wages dichotomy.
A business which cannot pay a living wage and survive economically is a charity conducted to the benefit of its owner at the cost of its workers, or is provisioning public goods which should see a subsidy in their provision through tax revenues and transfer payments. Below-subsistence wages and labour supports only exacerbate the underlying problem.
Private ownership of real estate is a surprisingly recent development, displacing earlier feudal or monarchical rents (often very long-term leases) largely in the late 19th century. Among the few explorations of this history I've found is Simon Winchester's Land (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_(book)). And of course there's Henry George's Progress and Poverty (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty_(George,_D._Appleton_%26_Company,_fifth_edition)), championing the Land Value Tax (along with: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Milton Friedman (!!!), to name just a few. Social housing has its failures, but also successes, including the Fuggerei (Augsburg, Germany, created by the Fugger family in 1516 and continuing to serve to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuggerei), Vienna, and Japan (through both market and government actions, in part through some idiosyncratic practices).
Housing cannot be both affordable and an investment asset. And of the two, the first function is primal.
Incidentally, I suspect that a large part of the US growth in homelessness may be directly attributable to going off the gold standard, itself a response to the country's peak-oil moment and reliance on foreign energy imports, driving banks and financial institutions to find an alternate asset class: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21304603.
Next are some more obscure economic principles, somewhat addressed in the mainstream, but highly underappreciated ...
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#economics #orthodoxEconomics #critique #wages #rents #LawOfRent #IronLawOfWages #MancurOlson #UBI #unions #LogicOfCollectiveAction #RealEstate #homelessness #OilCrisis #PeakOil #Fuggerei #ProgressAndPoverty #HenryGeorge #DavidRicardo #SimonWinchester #AffordableHousing #AssetHousing #BusinessAsCharity #tootstorm
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The #singletax of #henrygeorge will liberate us! Don't tax more, Rachel! Tax smarter, Keir! @libdems.org.uk
#abolishtaxes on production, work and trade entirely. #sharetherents of land, locations and monopolies.
#superchargetheeconomy #makepovertyhistory #valueourplanet #undercutthetariffs
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The #singletax of #henrygeorge will liberate us! Don't tax more, Rachel! Tax smarter, Keir! @libdems.org.uk
#abolishtaxes on production, work and trade entirely. #sharetherents of land, locations and monopolies.
#superchargetheeconomy #makepovertyhistory #valueourplanet #undercutthetariffs
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@Heliograph Yes, she was a follower of #HenryGeorge and believed that we should work to build a better society by shifting taxes to land and off of consumption and production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game
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@Heliograph Yes, she was a follower of #HenryGeorge and believed that we should work to build a better society by shifting taxes to land and off of consumption and production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game
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@Heliograph Yes, she was a follower of #HenryGeorge and believed that we should work to build a better society by shifting taxes to land and off of consumption and production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game
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@Heliograph Yes, she was a follower of #HenryGeorge and believed that we should work to build a better society by shifting taxes to land and off of consumption and production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game
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@Heliograph Yes, she was a follower of #HenryGeorge and believed that we should work to build a better society by shifting taxes to land and off of consumption and production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game
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"The story goes that Magie intended her game to be a teaching tool about the injustices of #capitalism. She was a fan of the theories of political economist #HenryGeorge, who thought landlords were parasites and advocated a “single tax” on them to replace all other taxes.
You’re thinking: what an exciting premise for a board game. Depends on how it’s handled. If the idea was that the players, beaten down by exorbitant rents, were supposed to rise up and feed their evil landlord’s intestines to him with a fork, this might indeed make for a diverting family game night."
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"The story goes that Magie intended her game to be a teaching tool about the injustices of #capitalism. She was a fan of the theories of political economist #HenryGeorge, who thought landlords were parasites and advocated a “single tax” on them to replace all other taxes.
You’re thinking: what an exciting premise for a board game. Depends on how it’s handled. If the idea was that the players, beaten down by exorbitant rents, were supposed to rise up and feed their evil landlord’s intestines to him with a fork, this might indeed make for a diverting family game night."
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"The story goes that Magie intended her game to be a teaching tool about the injustices of #capitalism. She was a fan of the theories of political economist #HenryGeorge, who thought landlords were parasites and advocated a “single tax” on them to replace all other taxes.
You’re thinking: what an exciting premise for a board game. Depends on how it’s handled. If the idea was that the players, beaten down by exorbitant rents, were supposed to rise up and feed their evil landlord’s intestines to him with a fork, this might indeed make for a diverting family game night."
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"The story goes that Magie intended her game to be a teaching tool about the injustices of #capitalism. She was a fan of the theories of political economist #HenryGeorge, who thought landlords were parasites and advocated a “single tax” on them to replace all other taxes.
You’re thinking: what an exciting premise for a board game. Depends on how it’s handled. If the idea was that the players, beaten down by exorbitant rents, were supposed to rise up and feed their evil landlord’s intestines to him with a fork, this might indeed make for a diverting family game night."
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"The story goes that Magie intended her game to be a teaching tool about the injustices of #capitalism. She was a fan of the theories of political economist #HenryGeorge, who thought landlords were parasites and advocated a “single tax” on them to replace all other taxes.
You’re thinking: what an exciting premise for a board game. Depends on how it’s handled. If the idea was that the players, beaten down by exorbitant rents, were supposed to rise up and feed their evil landlord’s intestines to him with a fork, this might indeed make for a diverting family game night."
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@Heliograph She was a fan of #HenryGeorge and advocated for full Land Value Taxation. The game of #Monopoly always ending in ruin, is an attempt to show the principles of @Georgism.
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@Heliograph She was a fan of #HenryGeorge and advocated for full Land Value Taxation. The game of #Monopoly always ending in ruin, is an attempt to show the principles of @Georgism.
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@Heliograph She was a fan of #HenryGeorge and advocated for full Land Value Taxation. The game of #Monopoly always ending in ruin, is an attempt to show the principles of @Georgism.
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@Heliograph She was a fan of #HenryGeorge and advocated for full Land Value Taxation. The game of #Monopoly always ending in ruin, is an attempt to show the principles of @Georgism.
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@Heliograph She was a fan of #HenryGeorge and advocated for full Land Value Taxation. The game of #Monopoly always ending in ruin, is an attempt to show the principles of @Georgism.
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You can't fight trade war tariffs effectively while you gleefully impose tariffs on your own labour and productive investment at home. You are penalising your producers 30% or more already. #abolishtaxes #sharetherents #superchargetheeconomy #henrygeorge https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/george-protection-or-free-trade
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You can't fight trade war tariffs effectively while you gleefully impose tariffs on your own labour and productive investment at home. You are penalising your producers 30% or more already. #abolishtaxes #sharetherents #superchargetheeconomy #henrygeorge https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/george-protection-or-free-trade
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Is your country threatened by Trump-tariffs? Don't retaliate in kind! Retaliate by boosting your own economy by at least as much as the tariffs for long term gain: #abolishtaxes #sharetherents #superchargetheeconomy #henrygeorge https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/george-protection-or-free-trade
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Is your country threatened by Trump-tariffs? Don't retaliate in kind! Retaliate by boosting your own economy by at least as much as the tariffs for long term gain: #abolishtaxes #sharetherents #superchargetheeconomy #henrygeorge https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/george-protection-or-free-trade
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https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/tax-lessons-for-governments-from-henry-george/id3082594/ “governments should ensure that super-profits benefit their citizens. International tax co-operation is the way to do this” #equity #taxation #HenryGeorge
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https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/tax-lessons-for-governments-from-henry-george/id3082594/ “governments should ensure that super-profits benefit their citizens. International tax co-operation is the way to do this” #equity #taxation #HenryGeorge
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https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/tax-lessons-for-governments-from-henry-george/id3082594/ “governments should ensure that super-profits benefit their citizens. International tax co-operation is the way to do this” #equity #taxation #HenryGeorge
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https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/tax-lessons-for-governments-from-henry-george/id3082594/ “governments should ensure that super-profits benefit their citizens. International tax co-operation is the way to do this” #equity #taxation #HenryGeorge
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https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/tax-lessons-for-governments-from-henry-george/id3082594/ “governments should ensure that super-profits benefit their citizens. International tax co-operation is the way to do this” #equity #taxation #HenryGeorge