Top income brackets should be taxed at 99%.

So is Germany sovereign over France or vice versa?

 

Why would a shift in production of consumer goods to the production of capital goods cause the economy to collapse. In fact, aren't production increases brought about through production of more capital goods?

 

So everyone but Georgists advocates feudalism. Okay, gotcha.

You still haven't convinced me that the state should own...oh wait..."administer use and control over"...all the land in the country. But I've lost interest. Try convincing someone else. Later.

 

The grog, junk food/sugar drinks, gambling, advertising and associated transport involve both 'capital' and 'consumer' goods.

 

No. They are both signed up to the EU, while maintaining jurisprudence over their own internal affairs. Britain pulled out because it objected to intrusion from Brussels, unlike France and Germany and the other 26 states of the EU.

 

No, that is just another fabrication on your part. Very few people are interested in living in the kind of post-apocalyptic, Mad-Max, autistic society ruled by sovereign private landowners that you advocate.

That was never a plausible outcome, and consequently is not my purpose. The idea is that honest readers who advocate liberty, justice and truth and are open to persuasion by fact and logic will learn from your disgrace.

Thanks for trying to be honest, but you still aren't understanding. That's not optional. The state is going to administer possession and use of all the land in the country no matter what, because that's what the state is: the sovereign authority over a specific area of land. It's not possible to do without the state any more. That ship has sailed. The only question is whether the state will discharge that function in the interest of and to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all citizens to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor, or only in the narrow financial interest of a rich, greedy, privileged, parasitic landowning elite.

Then you can imagine how I feel.

That is exactly what I have been doing. Thanks for serving as a foil.

 

The EU is a treaty. Sovereign states enter into treaties all the time. Try telling Germany it's not a sovereign state.

 

And yet Germany doesn't have its own currency.

 

Is that supposed to prove it's not a sovereign nation?

 

It's supposed to show that areas of jurisprudence ("sovereignty"), in treaties or federations, are negotiable.

 

Popular sovereignty is a myth conceived simply so the ruling elite could transfer their power from the justification of "the divine right of kings" to "the social contract".

I am an atheist, and I've signed nor consented to any such contract.

 

I like this!! (don't fall off your chair....)

But the next step is: how to eliminate entrenched, systemic (especially black) poverty in the US?

Which is a festering sore, the lancing of which - by Mr. Floyd's murder - is now tearing at the fabric of US 'democracy'.

The US has all the resources it needs to solve the problem (without having to "tax top income brackets at 99%"....

Suggestions?

PS I have noticed some instances of the world media, even on the Right, turning away from the Donald's handling of this crisis.

 

That's easy: eliminate entrenched, institutionalized, systemic (and almost entirely white-owned) privilege in the US. When everyone has had their rights to liberty forcibly stripped from them and given to the privileged as their private property, and consequently has to pay them full market value just for permission to access opportunity -- for permission to work, to shop, to access desirable public services and infrastructure, etc. -- that's not equal opportunity. It's involuntary servitude.

 

Why would anyone invest in capital goods if they don't expect people to buy goods and services to consume?

Yes, because when consumers buy stuff to consume, the money goes to producers. The most efficient producers, who are best qualified to judge what investments in capital goods will be most effective, are the ones who have the most money left over to invest in them.

The ultimate purpose of all economic activity is to enable consumption. Discouraging consumption is therefore anti-economic nonsense. The deeper meaning of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand is that by consuming we optimally encourage production, including investment in capital goods.

 

I must say your concept that PRIVILEGE itself is the reason for systemic disadvantage, while plausible on the face of it, is difficult to understand, when you describe it the terms you have, namely:

"When everyone has had their rights to liberty forcibly stripped from them and given to the privileged as their private property, and consequently has to pay them full market value just for permission to access opportunity -- for permission to work, to shop, to access desirable public services and infrastructure, etc. -- that's not equal opportunity. It's involuntary servitude."

1. "Forcibly stripped from them" ...….
I, and I presume many others, have not actually experienced the purchase of house ownership in those terms (though I did build my own house on inexpensive land outside a city, to avoid slavery to a mortgage).

2. " given to the privileged as their private property,...."
Since I had access to a steady income, how is my experience (described above) equivalent to my liberty being transferred to the 'privileged'?

3. " consequently has to pay them full market value just for permission to access opportunity"

Let's say I couldn't choose to live outside a city. In that case (on my income) I would face paying rent forever, rather than mortgage-free home ownership. But the idea that "permission" is the determining factor, rather than the size of my income, is difficult to sustain.

I can see why we disagree that an individual's ability to create "wealth" is at all relevant to economic justice.

That's why I contend a JG is vital, with sufficient public housing made available to by-pass high market prices set in "invisible hand" markets.

Why worry about price setting in private markets, when the sovereign currency-issuing government can fund both a JG, and the required quantum of public housing, without access to private commercial banks?

 

So you are (correctly) a 'demand-sider', Longshot a 'supply-sider'; we both know his stance is discredited.

But "invisible hand" ALONE, to achieve intelligent resource allocation, is not credible either.

 

You're just not used to thinking in terms of first principles. It's like I'm trying to explain evolution to medieval peasants: their world view can't get past their absolute knowledge that the earth and all life were created in six days by God some time around 4000 BC.

You haven't experienced it that way, but that is what actually happened. You have simply been prevented from developing a consciousness able to see it.

So what stopped you from just using the land you most wanted to use? Why would slavery to a mortgage have been your fate if you did?

Who stopped you from just using the land you considered the most desirable, and how?

Why would anyone need so much income, if not to pay the privileged for permission to access opportunity?

Right. Ability is an advantage, but not a privilege. It does not take from anyone else anything they would otherwise have, so it cannot cause injustice.

Housing is only expensive because a ticket on the landowners' escalator is expensive. Go to a place where land is cheap, like Detroit, and a perfectly serviceable house can be purchased for $20K because the land value is only ~$1K.

Many reasons. For one, because it creates a two-tier housing market: subsidized for those who can get into public housing, unaffordable for those who can't.

 

The Invisible Hand just denotes the subtle, indirect, unintended, and often counter-intuitive effects of market interactions: in Smith's example, by trying to make himself wealthy, the producer makes society wealthy; but also, by consuming, we create even greater abundance; by artificially suppressing rents to make housing affordable, we end up causing a shortage and making it unavailable; etc.

 

I know the feeling, trying to explain the utter simplicity of MMT: {"it's available resources NOT money, stupid"}….though I suspect I'm included in the peasants when you try to explain Geoism .

I admit to struggling with complexities, but I hope this doesn't bar me from grappling with big picture issues.

Given my abilities, and my desire to avoid mortgage slavery, purchase of a home in the city where I worked was unattractive.

Land in the city was already too expensive; as was established housing.

Could it just be that there IS a limited supply of land in a city's CBD (the 'most desirable land', for the sake of this argument), which therefore will be sold to the highest bidder, whether that bidder has the most ability (...OK) or the most privilege ('unearned' wealth?.. not OK).

I think I have shown (above) that ability OR privilege can have the same results, permitting access to the 'most desirable land'.

That's because global competition shifted vehicle manufacturing from Detroit to Japan and Germany. Hence the employment opportunities in Detroit were decimated.

The idea of public housing is for it to be available in sufficient quantity to cater for those who cannot access the private market.

I know you don't accept my concept of "intelligent consumption" ie informed by rationality inc, sustainability, health-promotion, and aesthetics. Sufficiency and abundance are not necessarily exclusive.

Addressed above. In effect, I conceive public housing to be like the JG wage an MMT system, ie of the minimum acceptable standard allowing for full participation in the social life of the community.

 

It's not complexity that is the barrier. It is not having the concepts.

I repeat: why not just use the land you want to use, as our ancestors did to survive for millions of years? It was already there, available to use, with no help from anyone.

Why would you have to pay anyone for what nature provided for free?

Certainly: the supply of land is not merely limited, it is fixed. Fixed supply implies two crucial facts: there won't be any more no matter how much you pay for it, and there won't be any less no matter how little you pay for it. So what makes that land so desirable that people willingly pay so much for it when that payment has no effect on its supply?

Who has the right to sell it to the highest bidder, and how did they get that right?

If owning the land is not itself a privilege that legally entitles the owner to take from the community, no one but the most able will be willing to bid that much.

Sure, but if owning the land is not itself a privilege, the privileged will have no motive to pay for it. It will just guarantee they lose money.

So in Detroit, you don't have to pay a landowner for permission to access economic opportunity because there is no economic opportunity. You might as well be off in the forest somewhere -- except that the risk you will be a victim of crime is far greater in Detroit. What about in other cities, like San Francisco?

So you will have some kind of arbitrary criterion that determines who "can" and "cannot" access the private market: a two-tier housing market consisting of those who have to compete and those who are privileged to get housing without competing.

By those criteria I am probably what you would call an intelligent consumer. But people want what they want. You can try to inform them, and advertisers will definitely try to persuade them, but unless you can demonstrate societal harm, their consumption is their business.

Where will the public housing authority get the land?

 

You could try asking migrants from the Third World who make successes of their lives in America. Or working class people who pull themselves up into the middle classes. Lot's of ideas in just those two groups alone. If you want a distillation though, there are just a few golden rules:

Stay in school
Don't have kids until you can afford them
Stay married

Those three factors alone are known to limit poverty more than anything else. I would wager that 99% of the two example groups above have adhered to those basics. After all, it's not like they're hard to do, or require wealth or education. They're simple decisions - free to make, and requiring only our self-discipline to effect. I would also add the following:

Never live beyond your means
Save money every week, no matter what
Always live on less than you make (which is not the same as not living beyond your means)

Those six things alone can cure almost any First World poverty. So there's your answer

 

Nature does not provide buildings.

 

So let's see: here is the current situation:

"You are living in poverty, your neighbourhood are like war zones, your schools and hospitals are broken; your young men are in prison...": D.J. Trump, spoken during the 2016 campaign , on conditions for blacks in the inner cities in the US.

So the question becomes: given the above circumstances, how can the community (government) teach and assist all of those people to:
1. stay in school,
(when the schools are broken)
2. Don't have kids until you can afford them
(when you can never afford them)

3. Stay married.
(when you are demoralised by poverty and lack the self-belief to form a strong relationship with another person)
4. Never live beyond your means
(when your means are already insufficient to access secure housing, in an environment of rising homelessness)
5. Save money every week, no matter what
(when access to secure above poverty employment doesn't exist; underemployment always greater than 10% is just a fact in neoliberal economies).
6. Always live on less than you make.
(And yet even the US government recognises the need for food assistance, given the wage and job structures in the US).

Just to remind you your microeconomic policies can only have application to half the economic reality faced by individuals, in a neoliberal economy. NAIRU.









​

 

First and foremost, what does 'the community' have to do with it? This stuff is ENTIRELY a responsibility of the home. But in answer to your questions:

1) Even the worst school has academic high achievers. Make sure your kids are in that group. It's on you, as the parent, to guide and shape kids with the drive and self-respect to do it. No one BUT you, as the parent.

2) So never have kids, obviously. Children are not a right.

3) You have to choose to be 'demoralised'. Choose otherwise. Choose determination. Choose your partner as though you are precious and deserve the best of good character and decency.

4) Everyone in America can afford to own a home, even those on welfare. When houses can be bought for $10k, you have no excuses. If your family is on welfare, move to the cheapest place you can find - no matter where it is - and live ultra frugally for a few years. You'll soon have that $10k saved, and will have secured your family's future. No rent or mortgage payments, plus all that free time to dedicate to making sure your kids succeed at school etc.

5) Saving every week means: don't live where you can't afford, or buy fast food, or buy beer, or buy cigarettes, or buy hair extensions or fake nails, or buy iphones, or run air-conditioners 24/7, etc etc etc.

6) Show me a single family accepting food assistance who is doing all the right things (as listed above). Just one.

 

I expect that as the consequences of this pandemic play out, governments will need to face ever-increasing debt and deficits (as a result of stimulus packages to avoid increasing unemployment), and the protests associated with the resulting ongoing 'austerity'.

As I see it, MMT is much more likely to be considered as a solution, when central bankers see resources laying idle because government cannot fund the necessary intervention in the economy, owing to the "lack of public money" mythology with which neoliberal orthodoxy has blinded the population.

Geoism seems rather abstract in the face of these future exigencies that governments will be forded to face, owing to lingering effects of the global pandemic.