The "Golden Rule" is that "he who has the gold, makes the rules" and, as this, rather lengthy, essay proves, those who have the gold in today's world, have interests diametrically opposed to the transfer of taxation from the productive economy to land, in fact, precisely the reverse.
Sunday, 29 December 2019
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Even rentier Winston Churchill when he was Chancellor wrote in 1925 «I would rather see finance less proud and industry more content,»
But the problem with industry, especially of the manufacturing sort, is that it is easily "infected" with trade unionism, because it relies on large concentrations of physical capital and of workers, and the english (and american) elites have decided that therefore they want as little industry as possible in this country, and have offshored it to countries where trade unions and strikes are essentially non-existent. In this country the idea is to keep only light services, with small dispersed lumps of workers, like McDonalds or Amazon warehouses, for "hoi polloi" to earn rent, and finance and property for the elites to extract those rents.
I have now done a first reading of M Hudson's linked essay and it is very, very good, and I could mention so many supporting quotes. Whatever one thinks of "marxist" politics, his economist analysis was lucid and erudite and amazingly realistic. In particular I am pleased by Hudson's footnote 21 on depreciation, with the quote “Over the whole society, failure to provide adequate depreciation reserves is, Marx implies, to negate economic progress and to begin consumption of that portion of the value of the product which Marx believes belongs neither to the labourers in industry, nor to their employers, but to the economy itself, as something which must be ‘restored’ to it if the economic process is to continue.”.
What I have called sometimes Blissex Law of Depreciation is that all cases of non-trivial corporate fraud are forms of insufficient depreciation, and viceversa that nearly all cases of insufficient depreciation are corporate fraud (the other are "innocent", in the sense that they are unintentional, but those are few).
Bloody hell, that is lenghy.
Can you quote the actual KLN?
IMHO, the reason we don't have LVT is because people are lazy and complacent and want something for nothing.
The Tories - a party entirely free of any sort of principles whatsoever - pander to this by saying they are the party for the hard working and prudent. Home-Owner-Ists have been deluded into believing that they genuinely are the hard working and prudent, so they vote Tory (knowing that landowners will be looked after).
Labour voters are just the mirror image of that.
B, as I see it, what Mr Hudson is explaining, the problem is not so much that of the loss of workers' rights, but the confiscation of the surplus capital of the nation, the spare money of the middle classes that financed the industrial revolution, into interest payments to the money lenders. The whole of industry, both bosses and workers, suffer as a result of this.
"Can you quote the actual KLN?"
The point that this essay makes, and I don't blame you for not wading through it - things to do on a dull Sunday afternoon - is that the world economy has been taken over by the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) and their interests are in getting all taxation removed from their sector, so that they can then collect those taxes themselves in the form of interest and rent. Hence it is a Killer argument against LVT that it will never be implemented because those in charge do not want it integrated. The Argument is practical and political, but not, like the KLNs, theoretical.
"IMHO, the reason we don't have LVT is because people are lazy and complacent and want something for nothing."
People have always been lazy and complacent and have always wanted something for nothing, but a taxation system based largely on land tax, has been replaced by one almost entirely on the productive economy. If you can bear to read the essay, Mr Hudson explains how this has come about.
B: "the world economy has been taken over by the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate)"
Sure, I read that far, that is the reason WHY but it is not an argument AGAINST. And they succeed because subsidised sectors have lots of time on their hands to pump out more self-reinforcing propaganda, unlike proper businesses who are busy providing goods and services and keeping customers and employees reasonably happy.
It's circular - They are only in charge because they get subsidies, and They only get subsidies because They are in charge.
«The Tories - a party entirely free of any sort of principles whatsoever»
But they have a mission: furthering the interests of incumbents, whatever their type of incumbency. Once the dominant type was incumbency in a title and agricultural property, then incumbency in business, then in urban land.
«pander to this by saying they are the party for the hard working and prudent. Home-Owner-Ists have been deluded into believing that they genuinely are the hard working and prudent, so they vote Tory»
Everybody understands that the Conservatives are the party of incumbents, and London and Home Counties property incumbents have no delusions that they are the "hard working and prudent", just "winners" and they just want bigger property gains and rents to be paid by "losers".
«"the world economy has been taken over by the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate)"
Sure, I read that far, that is the reason WHY but it is not an argument AGAINST.»
Ah the argument AGAINST is indirect, and my summary is: since actual industry pollutes and gets infected with trade unionism, the elites should invest in unproductive assets that generate redistributive income rather than productive assets, and therefore taxing unproductive assets that generate redistributive income would penalize unproductive investment and investors. The model is of England as a green and pleasant land, a kind of arcadian parkland, where property owners live in lovely palaces, mansions, manors, and import the products of the earth, with the rest of the population working hard to pay rent, as servants. It is the pre-industrial age model, or more recently the southern american plantation model.
That's a killer argument against LVT that millions of tory voters with property in the Home Counties and London can support strongly, they want polluting, trade union industry discouraged (offshored to authoritarian countries that don't care about pollution and have made independent trade unions illegal or nearly impossible) and non-polluting, non-union property rentierism encouraged.
«It's circular - They are only in charge because they get subsidies, and They only get subsidies because They are in charge.»
That can last for hundreds of years.
"It's circular - They are only in charge because they get subsidies, and They only get subsidies because They are in charge."
That's like the arms industries: they get subsidies because they are a big slice of the economy and they are a big slice of the economy because they get subsidies, or News Corp: they can influence the result of any election because they control the press and they get to control the press because they can influence the result of any election.
B2: "But they have a mission: furthering the interests of incumbents, whatever their type of incumbency."
Agreed.
I don't agree on trade unions, outside the public sector they have more or less died out. The Stigler explains here.
"That can last for hundreds of years."
Agreed. It is my mission to shorten that period.
B: re Military Industral bloc - in USA, very much yes, in Europe, their influence is waning. Re News Corp - agreed.
There are endless examples of this - what about pensions 'industry'? They get enough subsidies to be able to pay for a mass propaganda campaign that without them, nobody would save up for their old age, which is clearly bollocks. Those that can afford to will, those that can't won't.
Post a Comment