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The minimum investment is smart. Anyone from the developing world who can put down 500k Euros is an upper echelon family. A lot of the issue with immigration is the lowest class, most desperate people flee their homeland. But there are reasons why they were the lowest class, desperate people back home.

Seems absurdly cheap, this all works out to something like £350-400 an hour for his work. There are many specialist lawyers who charge out more than that an hour. And what they are working on isn't 1/1000th as important as the Governor of the bank of England.

If people hoarded money the government would just spend additional money into the economy through QE. If inflation started rising the central bank could just sell some of the bonds it owned from the QE for attractive rates, then extinguish the money it received. An interesting thing is that as fractional reserve banking is at a point where it is unable to expand the money supply to keep up with productive capacity, even with rates as low as they have ever been. In the 300 year history the lowest the central bank rate had ever been was 1.85%.. and now we have it at 0.5%.. and still mass QE is needed. So it seems like we may evolve into the new system by neccessity, even while trying everything to keep the fractional reserve system going. Hoarding is one the of the problems of a gold currency. When people start hoarding it, it actually rises in value. Not exactly an incentive to stop.

Elephants in the room like automation, the vast regulatory state command economy, global free trade, the problems of our banking system.. will not be mentioned by anyone in power in Europe. So without providing solutions to the challenges of our day any reforms will totally fail. Politicians will passionately debate trivial issues. The ideal issue for a mainstreamer is one which is controversial yet whichever way it goes has no impact on the power structure.

In a place like London the plumber, the IT consultant, even the janitor has to price in the cost of housing to your bill. And then when your corporation bills, it has to price in all those additional costs, and the housing costs of all its employees. It makes it hard to compete when a low cost area like vast areas in the USA doesn't have that overhead. The only thing that remains viable is the ultra high end areas. Like a New York City. For a patent lawyer charging £600 an hour its not a big deal.

Ahh the Greeks have used this card to extra 400 billion Euros out of Germany so far. Each time the Germans threaten them, they point at the Drachma switch, and the Germans insta-cave. Like you guys said it really is meaningless, a sovereign could simply rescind that law at any moment. The only way to enforce it in reality would be German tanks on the ground.. and now you know where wars come from. If it wasn't for nuclear weapons and the peace they create, this economic crisis surely would led to war, with Germany and other creditors enforcing the contracts.

In these stories I would like to find out what jobs the commuters were going to. I know in most of Britain the majority of commuters are going to their government job. Often you get into a circular argument. Like he commutes to work at the ministry who is in charge of commuter trains, to make sure the train runs to take him to the ministry of commuter trains.

Good writing, came across as very reasoned, mature.. with an argument outside of the normal thought. Imagine we are playing musical chairs. There is 10 chairs, but 15 of us playing. No matter how brilliant the redistributionist scheme, 5 people will not have a chair. The only sustainable answer is to add chairs. London should have near endless blocks of gorgeous modern 15-20 story condo towers. This density also makes public transit systems economically viable, and allows corporations who need a high population of talent nearby, to thrive.

Yes, but I hadn't read it carefully before. I agree with your point that the capital additions by man should not be charged tax, just the value of the raw land. It seems workable to me. And the community should be able to realize higher tax as technology allows the real value from the land to increase. For example the technological revolution in oil drilling that is horizontal drilling and fracturing means previously unaccessable/unknown resources are now able to be extracted. But by definition if I am the one extracting them, you cannot also be extracting them on the same well. It is fair that you as a citizen of the community would want compensation. I understand that the compensation for having your freedom restricted, is a stronger moral framework than my argument for the citizen's dividend which revolves around human needs and wants and the need in the market for consumers to have the means to buy the production. I believe the state can be financed without taxation on income or taxation on human created capital. For example the licenses for cell phone frequencies, fishing licenses, forestry, and much bigger the royalties on all the minerals. Then taxation on petrol to pay for all the roads. Land value taxation. And some form of alternative currency, where the newly issued currency to facilitate growing trade with rising production through technological advance. Even now the bank of england issued a £30 billion dividend this year to HM treasury. And to add additional currency to the supply, has funded £300 billion in national debt. As long as the money added is merely keeping the value of the currency stable, it is not a tax on anyone. Just a public gain, for growing productive capacity. The government would have to shrink, as all these revenues might bring in £300-£400 billion a year, versus £700 billion a year now. On the other hand if people have low taxes and are free to conduct commerce how they want, I think the economy would be so much larger, that revenues might actually rise beyond current levels. Just getting rid of the income tax would be a monumental stimulus to the economy. A thought experiment I like is say there was a 0% income tax. And you are a mechanic, me a roofer, both in the top income tax bracket. Right now I pay you £1,000 to repair my vehicle. But you only then get £550 to spend on roofing. And when you pay for roofing, I only get ~£300 to spend the next time I repair my car. While with no taxation you can spend the £1,000 back to me, and then I have the £1,000 to spend on the next thing.

Nations have a tough choice.. coal, nuclear, natural gas, or live in the dark/hope it doesn't get cold outside. I choose nuclear personally.. but natural gas is an amazingly clean burning fuel, and the industry has come so far in the efficiency of conversion to electricity.

If the new leader does go ahead with printing it will be interesting to see how much is needed to lift Japan out of perma-recession. Its a 20 year long recession now. My feeling is it will take monstrous amounts of printing. Krugman estimated for America that it would need about 10 trillion in printing. My estimate was 10-15 trillion. So far they have expanded the fed balance sheet from 1 trillion to 3 trillion. So 2 trillion. Things are better than they were, but still sort of weak. I wouldn't be surprised if Japan also needs 10 trillion USD in stimulus and printing to get off the ground. It is always going to be terrifying to take that step though. Because if the theories are wrong, you are going to go bankrupt no doubt about it. If the theories are right, you will be richer than seemed possible at the outset. In the 1930's America faced this very dilemna. And played it safe all the way through the 30's, accepting tough times. But with the outbreak of war, they faced another interesting dilemna. If they didn't print huge, they simply would not be able to fund a military capable of competing with Japan and Germany. If they did print huge and the Krugman's of the day were wrong, the country would be bankrupt. They decided well considering they were dead anyway, they might as well try the printing and borrowing. When the money flooded in, it was like rain in a desert. Life sprung up, money started flowing.

True there is still much labour involved in all steps, its just in decline, and the long term trend is towards the replicator. Of course there might not be an actual replicator, but from the perspective of the customer who pulls one of the shelf, and a replacement auto refills with no human labour involved at any step, it is in essence a replicator. One strain of thought is towards a citizen's dividend funded by a land value tax. So for those who have monopolized the land they have to pay compensation equal to the market value of the land, which is the highest value. For someone who say operates a mine, this tax should not be punitive but a relatively small part of his revenues. For someone who has an identical mountain, but is choosing not to develop it, the tax would be the same as for the operating mine, and presumably difficult to pay. One aspect I do not like about land value taxes around the world, is too often you get taxed on not just the value if it were raw land, but also on the value of the structures. This is punishing someone for developing capital.. something we want to encourage, not discourage. It is one reason why England is the greatest property market in the world, there is a capped tax on property. So you can be rich and spend a fortune on your dream home, and not have a yearly liability in taxation on it.

Honestly... good idea.. and since the people living there don't have jobs the government picks up the rent. No need to worry about bounced cheques.

This idea still rests on the philosophy that people should get money based on the value added of their labour. The whole point of automation is that machines are producing value, without needing human labour. (or ever less human labour needed). A foundation principle of our society is the value you get to spend is based on the effort you put in/value you create. Yet it makes increasingly less sense when we have things like farm combines. You jump in a small farm combine and it has the power of 100 horses, probably 1,000 men. The old morality which worked so well in the past, is breaking down in the face of technological progress. What I am talking about is ok the owner of the land/owner of the combine produces enough food for 200 people. But he can't eat all of that by himself. He also needs a market of consumers to sell that production to. Enter the citizen's dividend.

I would pay my share to have the queen in charge, and let those not in favour not pay. An American blogger was writing about liberty, and noted that all King George wanted was his 2%. The more successful you became the happier King George was as that 2% got bigger. King George couldn't care less if you had a beer with your breakfast at the pub.. even if you smoked tobacco with it. As a city developed in prosperity and commerce the crown land kept by the King became absurdly valuable. To fund the Royal Navy, the courts and so forth, parcles of this land were sold which also allowed the city to expand.

Exactly right. The Japanese have been following the German strategy of being great producers but without much internal consumption it makes them weak being reliant on foreigners for their market. Its amazing to see Germany in recession and America growing. The answer is to have a big robust internal market to match the big robust production. I am still skeptical whether Japan will get the political will to do it. But they may be at that fork in the road where there just is no other choice.

I'm buying more Japanese stocks hoping against hope that this time the Japanese will reflate.. they promised it the last two leaders, only to back down and do the usual.. just enough printing to avoid collapsing, but not anywhere near enough to get things going. Luckily I bought the ETF's when the Japanese stock market was/is a dead horse laying on the ground. So since I bought in early 2008, there has been a world economic crash, a monster tsunamai that knocked out 30-40% of production for a long period and shut down 40% of electric production, severe troubles in their electronics industry. Which is like half their exports. Toyota quality problems.. and now the Chinese consumer boycott of their car industry. After all that I am about breaking even. Thats the beauty of buying ridiculously low. So I'm buying more. Shinzo Abe needs to do absolute Godzilla level printing to get this thing off the ground... but once Japan is off the ground: watch out.

Unlike politicians, a monarch has a self-interest in seeing her Kingdom be ran in a stable and sane manner over the long run. A nation where your average man has a good job and can support his family.. is a nation that is not ever going to have a revolution.

This year I haven't given a single cent to organized charity. I don't know if I ever will again. For one thing taxes are so extreme that I view all the problems of poverty as on the government. The people asked for the government to solve it and empowered them to take the high taxes. And so the government did. But now the problem is the government's to deal with. Those in need can go down and knock on their democratically elected representatives doors and ask where the money went. Secondly on an ideological level I disagree with the philosophies of nearly all the charities. For example while I support protecting areas for wild nature, and reasonable emissions regulations and so forth... the environmental charities have gone off the deep end and in need of the white jacket with arm restraints. Thirdly nearly all the spending seems completely pointless. Like its big to 'raise awareness for breast cancer'. Are there any adult women in Britain who are unaware of breast cancer? I asked one poor guy raising money for some cancer research charity, what research projects they were funding - as this was an idea I could genuinely give to. He didn't know, but I did some researching and found the studies they were financing. Totally useless.. like looking at the relationship between West Indian women immigrants and social class and breast cancer. Thats not funding cures for breast cancer.. so misleading advertising.

Democracy does legitimize theft. That is how half of successful people's incomes are taken away from them in Britain.. and Britain is viewed as a right wing leaning democracy.

People are finding out the hard way that a highly leveraged bet, while it can yield huge returns on capital if things go up.. can not only rapidly destroy the capital but bankrupt people if it goes down. You put 5% down and a slight bump in the market wipes out all your capital.

Its sort of funny but I've heard in a number of industries in California the best and the brightest are moving across the border to Baja California in Mexico. They say taxes are lower and the government isn't a nanny state with a million regulations to comply with. One funny example was the porn industry, jurisdictions in California were passing laws that required actors to wear condoms. So they just relocated across the border in Mexico.. where Mexico being Catholics, I'm not even sure if they are allowed to wear a condom. For corruption, ironically the guy you are bribing has an interested in seeing you succeed and grow... hes getting a cut afterall. While these socialist get the same meager government salary either way, so make it their personal life goal to tear down successful people.

Yes that is the way it must work. In around 2005 there was multi-processors introduced in the CPU's. In time there will be hundreds of cores, and some cores will be designed specifically for certain problems. The big leap lately has been the video cards doing processing, they have several hundred small identical processing units. The human brain must constantly doing much thinking we are not conciously aware of. Like now my body is balancing on the chair, but I am not conciously controlling dozens of muscles to keep that balance. Now if I lose this balance as I lean back and start to fall, there must be a switch to bring the conciousness in. Of course even then the executive commands are carried out by lower level managers. Like I want to twist my torso rightwards.. I don't actually conciously send signals to the thousands of muscle fibers involved to contract, and time those signals so the movement is fluid. It is very interesting the schematics I have seen of the brain. Like the audio-subsystem, visual subsystem, vital organ control system, etc..

Taxation is an art.. its sort of like owning a whole stream that connects to the ocean and harvesting fish. You harvest some of the fish.. but not enough to lower the population of fish that come back next year. On the other hand if you follow this new French approach you net off the entire stream and don't let a single fish through. Then next year your fishing operation goes bankrupt because no fish come back. Which you then blame on greedy 'rightist' fish.

I guess from the banker's perspective surely California will never be able to pay these loans, but the collateral could be worth a fortune when California is reborn and casts off these ignorant, entitlement mentality leaders.