#henrygeorge — Public Fediverse posts

@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.

#Georgism #Georgist

@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

Which way #liberal?

#meme #philosophy #liberalism #libertarian #libertarianism #Georgism #HenryGeorge #Georgist #LibertarianLeft #LeftLibertarian #DavidEllerman #leftism #leftist #EconomicDemocracy #WorkplaceDemocracy #WorkerCoops #coops #cooperatives #selfmanagement #ThomasHodgskin #ElizabethAnderson #FrankKnight #Bastiat #mutualism #capitalism #capitalist #anticapitalism #anticapitalist #postcapitalism

So what does this all mean?

It means that #Marx and #Riccardo, and #HenryGeorge were all correct.

There is no workable system of #Capitalism that will not become some form of #Manorialism then #LateStageCapitalism and finally #Fasicsm.

Here I'm defining Capitalism specifically a any system that allows arbitrarily large wealth accumulation.

I do not think there is any possible purely #political nor purely #economic solution. Rather, every solution proposed must inherently be a #PoliticalEconomy that is resistant to the accumulation of power and a political system that is resistant to the accumulation of power.

Do I think #Marxist #Socialism is such a system? No! Absolutely not. I think #HenryGeorge was prescient when he called #Marxism a recipe for #Authoritarianism.

Marx never proposed a political system that was even moderately robust to corruption.

Likewise, I think preventing returns to capital is bad. We _want_ individual people to invest their surplus into making bursts of short term profit. That is the actual value add capitalism brings.

Assuming you had a political system resistant to corruption, then #Taxes are a possible solution. One could, for example, place a small tax on wealth, creating gravitational pressure of the returns to capital. Set to the right level, this should be able to resist massive wealth accumulation.

I'll have to save my thoughts on political systems to later.

4/4

"It's not your own fault. It is the fault of the way we have organized our #economy, the way we've allowed certain things to develop unchecked and uncontrolled. There's no reason for anybody to be poor in #America." – #ProgressAndPoverty, 1879, by #HenryGeorge

We've long known yet nothing fundamentally has changed.

#TheGildedAgePBS #PBS #AmericanExperience

#link: https://www.pbs.org/video/the-vote-part-1-3kph5d/?continuousplayautoplay=true

#link: https://youtu.be/yjpYzFtxfjU?si=3SwIhgMBKhp0ZzuM

@Mulgrew I would highly recommend #HenryGeorge 's #ProgressAndPoverty. It starts out dry, but if you push past that, it is a really engaging book. You can listen to the whole thing for free here...
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3MzLmFtYXpvbmF3cy5jb20vYXBsdDFyc3MvNzUwNS5yc3M?ep=14

@mwlucas
Fair enough.

We see reports like this all the time and they always seem to elevate the flawed #profitLoss based #taxation methodology and decry greater #enforcement, which won't work. The #kleptocrats know how to engineer losses.

Following on from #HenryGeorge and his book #ProgressAndPoverty, the best way forward is still a Progressive Land Tax on Improved (Rental) Value.

@PokemonGameName
Pokemon Progress and Poverty

#Pokemon #ProgressAndPoverty #HenryGeorge

@nygal
*Silently supports a #ProgressiveLandTax based on #rentalValue of the #land, because the extremely wealthy and well-connected game #profitLoss-based #taxation so they never pay taxes.*

Also #incomeTax doesn't much sense, when compared to #consumption and #landTax'es

And some people just own too much land and engage in #rentseeking that drains the real #economy.

#henryGeorge #georgism #geoism

Henry George's Progress and Poverty is now available as aa beautifully formatted, free, ebook

Progress and Poverty, first published in 1879, was American political economist Henry George’s most popular book. It explores why the economy of the mid-to-late 1800s had seen a simultaneous economic growth and growth in poverty. The book’s appeal was in its balance of moral and economic arguments, challenging the popular notion that the poor, through uncontrolled population growth, were responsible for their own woes. Inspired by his years living in San Francisco and his own experience with privation, George argues instead that poverty had grown due to the increasing speculation and monopolization of land, as landowners had captured the increases in growth, investment, and productivity through the rising cost of rent.

To solve this, George proposes the complete taxation of the unimproved value of land, thus returning the value of land, created through location, to the community. This solution would incentivize individuals to use the land they own productively and remove the tendency to speculate upon land’s increasing value. George’s argument was profoundly liberal, as individuals retain the right to own land and enjoy the profits generated from production upon it.

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/henry-george/progress-and-poverty

h/t Paul Beard
https://nitter.net/paulbeard/status/1333221817696149505#m

#HenryGeorge #ProgressAndPoverty #Georgism #LVT #LandValueTax #StandardEBooks

@meowski
#FractionalReserveBanking is a scam hidden with #complexityTheatre.

The #HenryGeorge model of #LandTax based on improvedValue (aka #rentalValue). You would make it progressive, starting at 15% of rentalValue to 50% for the extremelyWealthy.

For grandma a #UBI (from landTax that goes up a bit with age will help (1.6 units of UBI) For one child, half a U approx. Two, 3/4 U. No extra support for 3rd/4th children.

At adulthood 1U increasing with age.
@realcaseyrollins @alex @sean @moth

@fruechtchen
#LandTax reform now. Tax 15%-50% of the #rentalValue of the land depending on how much they own. If a person owns too much #RentalValue, including in #trusts they have two years to sell #land until they are below the threshold, or face #prison time.

Watch how this solves a lot of #inequality issues.

:)

#geoism #georgism #HenryGeorge #progressAndPoverty #book #reading

@realcaseyrollins
The #msm and #gab will try to keep this about #race when its grown into a greater struggle.

Its morphed into a statement against #classism and #inequality.

#bailout #trailout #forcedNews #twoParadigmDebate #neighbourVsNeighbor #neighbourHate #class #kleptocracy #billionaireClass #classStruggle #cantillonEffect #speculators #wallstreet #ubi #henryGeorge #landtax #progressAndPoverty

@Cyph

@pzmyers
If you disapprove of extortionate #landlords, have you had a chance to read about #LandTax based on #RentalValue?

Otherwise known as #Georgism or #Geoism, it was popularised a century ago by the #HenryGeorge, who wrote a very compelling book titled, #ProgressAndPoverty.

In today's world houses are not treated as #shelter, but instruments for #speculation and #taxOffsets, creating a ponzi or #pyramidScheme largely centered on #populationGrowth to constantly boost #propertyPrices.

@publius
@strypey

<see prev comment>

The #extremelyWealthy #onePercenters love that we are distracted from #HenryGeorge-style #taxation. Until its adopted the #elite will continue to continue with #taxEvasion via #financialEngineering. Its too easy to claim losses to #shellCorporations and mates.

See also #Georgism, or 18th century book, #ProgressAndPoverty.

Quick question: Does NZ non-organic #bread and other confections also have #soyFlour (as they do in #Australia)?