The Lost Generation

[TGP]

I recently had to make an Oxford economics graduate aware of the debt-based monetary system, and also make him aware of the social credit movement that became popular as a reaction to it in the 1930s.

He wouldn't believe me at first and had to look it up (I'm sure his calculus is much better than mine though!)

I think history is probably a better qualification than economics for warning people about debt bubbles. (Indeed that was pretty much his excuse for not knowing)

He also said that JP Morgan (who have offered him a job once he's finished his Masters) were very prudent and ethical during the bubble and have a solid financial position.

A future central banker perhaps?

Strictly IMO........... he's suffering from too much economic theory, in particular relatively popular theoretic assumptions of "rational markets"....... and also from a lack of experience. It's relatively easy to understand there are bubbles in an intellectual sense, but being young enough not to have lived through a crash in his working life he's having trouble applyin that "intellectual" understanding that there are bubbles/crashes to the real world.

Again IMO........ undergraduate economics courses are good for giving you the tools to think about the economy........ but they DO teach you to think about it in a very unrealistic idealised way. Let this guy bump up against the real world for 5-10 years and he'll ditch the unrealistic theoretical model, and apply the tools his education has given him to the real world and so come to different (and vastly more accurate) conclusions.

I'd say in regards the history/economics thing in predicting bubbles....... I don't think teaching him history would have improved his understanding. What WILL is having the economic tools he has aquired, then actually LIVING through a boom/bust cycle.

Wheras a history graduate may have a slightly better grasp of boom/bust than an economics student immediately upon leaving university......... give them both 10 years......... and the economics gradusate will have moved way ahead as his personal experience filled in the blanks the history guy had upon graduation, and his superior intellectual economic tools would then push him ahead.

Strictly (and my last) IMO......... university is NOT about teaching you how the world works....... it IS about teaching you all the tools you need to understand how the world works in a particular sphere, and THEN you go off and start applying that to the real world.

I think thats what this oxford economics grad is going to do for the next 10 years......... and 10 years down the line he won't come accross as so naive to the workings of economics in the real world.

Yours,

TGP

[Tired of Waiting]

I recently had to make an Oxford economics graduate aware of the debt-based monetary system, and also make him aware of the social credit movement that became popular as a reaction to it in the 1930s.

He wouldn't believe me at first and had to look it up (I'm sure his calculus is much better than mine though!)

I think history is probably a better qualification than economics for warning people about debt bubbles. (Indeed that was pretty much his excuse for not knowing)

He also said that JP Morgan (who have offered him a job once he's finished his Masters) were very prudent and ethical during the bubble and have a solid financial position.

A future central banker perhaps?

To be fair, in my previous post I forgot the magazine The Economist. They have been warning of the credit/debt/property prices bubble for many years. I think since 2004? Not sure. But for a long time.They got it right. I've been a subscriber for many years, and thanks mainly to them we didn't buy near the peak.

[Cogs]

I recently had to make an Oxford economics graduate aware of the debt-based monetary system, and also make him aware of the social credit movement that became popular as a reaction to it in the 1930s.

He wouldn't believe me at first and had to look it up (I'm sure his calculus is much better than mine though!)

I think history is probably a better qualification than economics for warning people about debt bubbles. (Indeed that was pretty much his excuse for not knowing)

He also said that JP Morgan (who have offered him a job once he's finished his Masters) were very prudent and ethical during the bubble and have a solid financial position.

A future central banker perhaps?

On a completely different tack, ditch economics and indeed history and ask a Human Geographer. They do economics so much better than "Economists" its quite ridiculous really. If you want to know about tractor production stats, ask an economist. If you want to know how many tractors actually got made and where they ended up and why they ended up there, ask the geographer

Edited February 9, 2010 by Cogs

[Tired of Waiting]

On a completely different tack, ditch economics and indeed history and ask a Human Geographer. They do economics so much better than "Economists" its quite ridiculous really. If you want to know about tractor production stats, ask an economist. If you want to know how many tractors actually got made and where they ended up, ask the geographer.

God no.

I know this topic well. Please believe me, these geographers are a danger to mankind. Many are even in favour of protectionism! Criminal. racist actually. Genocidal! Don't get me started on geographers getting into economics.

[Cogs]

God no.

I know this topic well. Please believe me, these geographers are a danger to mankind. Many are even in favour of protectionism!  Criminal. racist actually. Genocidal!  Don't get me started on geographers getting into economics.

Interesting. The New Economic Geography by any chance? Wasn't that economists trying to get spatial rather than the other way round? I just think the sort of data human geographers deal with is more useful on the whole, particularly as I have completely lost faith in the markets to be "about" anything except themselves. When you have a situation where entire areas of the market are "made" by what amount to layed-off bets geared in complicated ways, what on earth can you believe they are telling you? I'd prefer to know what is moving about, where it is moving to and why. Goldman Sachs can do a lot of things, but making shipping containers or people vanish into thin air isn't one them (AFAIK).

[Tired of Waiting]

Interesting. The New Economic Geography by any chance? Wasn't that economists trying to get spatial rather than the other way round? I just think the sort of data human geographers deal with is more useful on the whole, particularly as I have completely lost faith in the markets to be "about" anything except themselves. When you have a situation where entire areas of the market are "made" by what amount to layed-off bets geared in complicated ways, what on earth can you believe they are telling you? I'd prefer to know what is moving about, where it is moving to and why. Goldman Sachs can do a lot of things, but making shipping containers or people vanish into thin air isn't one them (AFAIK).

Of course markets wobble, in the short term, but the historic direction is clear: We've had about 300 years since the start of the industrial revolution, and mixing it with some democracy (UK since the 1680s, USA and France since the 1770s-80s, etc.), and all that as a consequence of the renaissance/enlightenment process. That is what matters. And that process must be allowed to continue, including free trade amongst nations. Make trade not war. Liberalism is right.

And the current financial markets ("Goldman Sachs") are just a small part of the real global market. The most important part of this global market is its real productive capacity - labour and installed capital (machinery, buildings, etc).

If you are good in economics you will realise that the last decade was the best in mankind's history, with 2 billion human beings lifted out of poverty, in developing countries, thanks to globalisation. Most geographers didn't notice that, astonishingly.

By the way, the ethical goal of economics is: The greater good of the greater numbers.

Edited February 9, 2010 by Tired of waiting

[Stars]

Interesting. The New Economic Geography by any chance? Wasn't that economists trying to get spatial rather than the other way round? I just think the sort of data human geographers deal with is more useful on the whole, particularly as I have completely lost faith in the markets to be "about" anything except themselves. When you have a situation where entire areas of the market are "made" by what amount to layed-off bets geared in complicated ways, what on earth can you believe they are telling you? I'd prefer to know what is moving about, where it is moving to and why. Goldman Sachs can do a lot of things, but making shipping containers or people vanish into thin air isn't one them (AFAIK).

Actually, if you think about economics in terms of physical things coming into being and moving and people causing this or blocking it, you can cut out 99% of the junk that is confusing the presently popular picture

[Bear Goggles]

Strictly IMO........... he's suffering from too much economic theory, in particular relatively popular theoretic assumptions of "rational markets"....... and also from a lack of experience. It's relatively easy to understand there are bubbles in an intellectual sense, but being young enough not to have lived through a crash in his working life he's having trouble applyin that "intellectual" understanding that there are bubbles/crashes to the real world.

Again IMO........ undergraduate economics courses are good for giving you the tools to think about the economy........ but they DO teach you to think about it in a very unrealistic idealised way. Let this guy bump up against the real world for 5-10 years and he'll ditch the unrealistic theoretical model, and apply the tools his education has given him to the real world and so come to different (and vastly more accurate) conclusions.

I'd say in regards the history/economics thing in predicting bubbles....... I don't think teaching him history would have improved his understanding. What WILL is having the economic tools he has aquired, then actually LIVING through a boom/bust cycle.

Wheras a history graduate may have a slightly better grasp of boom/bust than an economics student immediately upon leaving university......... give them both 10 years......... and the economics gradusate will have moved way ahead as his personal experience filled in the blanks the history guy had upon graduation, and his superior intellectual economic tools would then push him ahead.

Strictly (and my last) IMO......... university is NOT about teaching you how the world works....... it IS about teaching you all the tools you need to understand how the world works in a particular sphere, and THEN you go off and start applying that to the real world.

I think thats what this oxford economics grad is going to do for the next 10 years......... and 10 years down the line he won't come accross as so naive to the workings of economics in the real world.

Yours,

TGP

Yeah - I just took it as youth and inexperience. It's funny, when I was his age I had a deep feeling that "the system" was rigged against me, and I vowed to reject it and find my own way through life.

This guy was someone who has taken the establishment path. It certainly places you in a better position to become a cynic 10 years down the line if you want to take the blue pill. If that big old banker's salary doesn't keep you in your bubble that is.

I would say the fundamental problem with economics as a subject is that too much of it is treated as a science, whereas much of it is more of a philosophy. There are many things taken as 'facts' that are actually just ideology. It is not like physics, the knowledge of the great masters of physics throughout history such as Newton and Einstein can be used as a solid base to build upon to make new discoveries. (Standing on the shoulders of giants, and all that.)

Economics has its great masters, but it seems to me that they mainly use mathematical models to reinforce their political ideologies. Freidman was not an Einstein or a Newton, he was much more a Thatcher or a Kennedy or a Blair. He was an influential ideologue.

For me this is one of the main reasons we have financial crises again and again, we believe economics to be a science, but it isn't. We "prove" things can't happen and then they do. I guess this is the whole "black swan" argument. I think we just need to look upon economics a little more like a philosophy.

Edited February 9, 2010 by Bear Goggles

[Stars]

Economics has its great masters, but it seems to me that they mainly use mathematical models to reinforce their political ideologies. Freidman was not an Einstein or a Newton, he was much more a Thatcher or a Kennedy or a Blair. He was an influential ideologue.

Economics was a young but relatively honest science which was deliberately hijacked and perverted at about the turn of the last century. The language of economics was deliberately distorted and changed to prevent, what was becoming increasingly obvious, being communicated effectively. At this time, professional economists defending the status quo were regularly publicly humiliated in debate by lay people using a particular argument form and so economics was deliberately changed to make this argument form far more difficult to express

The modern polarities of left and right have grown around the perversion and have an vested interest in keeping the mistaken concepts and camouflage in place.

Edited February 9, 2010 by Stars

[Tired of Waiting]

Economics was a young but relatively honest science which was deliberately hijacked and perverted at about the turn of the last century. The language of economics was deliberately distorted and changed to prevent, what was becoming increasingly obvious, being communicated effectively. At this time, professional economists defending the status quo were regularly publicly humiliated in debate by lay people using a particular argument form and so economics was deliberately changed to make this argument form far more difficult to express

The modern polarities of left and right have grown around the perversion and have an vested interest in keeping the mistaken concepts and camouflage in place.

How do you think this huge groups manage to co-ordinate themselves, and in secret?

This conspiracies do not exist. Reality is actually worse than that - it is chaos. There is nobody in full control of the planet, or human destiny. Sorry.

Edited February 9, 2010 by Tired of waiting

[Si1]

How do you think this huge groups manage to co-ordinate themselves, and in secret?

This conspiracies do not exist. Reality is actually worse than that - it is chaos. There is nobody in full control of the planet, or human destiny. Sorry.

Am reading "Think Twice" - a book about counter-intuitive (or counter-herd) thinking that cites the economic crisis liberally. These crises are simply group-think imposing itself on a previously more heterogenous market.

[MarkG]

We're supposed to say "Well we want these kinda things...... a better NHS...... higher/lower taxes...... this balance between defence and domestic programmes".

Meanwhile, back in the real world, democracy means that every few years people get a chance to vote for either Tweedledum or Tweedledumber.

[aa3]

The problem is that nobody wants believe that is the case. I see comments here saying, people expected the government to protect them and so on but frankly, its rubbish. Because whatever a government does, half the bloody country on the basis of a Daily Mail editorial dumbed down to the point its barely recognisable thinks they know better. I mean, there are some people who think climate science is blissfully unaware of both solar flare activity and the existence of water vapour, the days when it was considered there was some sort of entry fee of learning and diligence required to enter a debate has long since gone. Our politicians are smaller people than they used to be, but to be honest they have to be, the 'great men' of the past would last less than days against our rabid moron-media. It used to the idea that you picked someone to represent you, he listened to the advice of the most knowledgeable and qualified, and you trusted he did the right thing. We don't defer to authority figures anymore and sometimes thats a good thing, but it also means our democracy enforces the view of the lowest common denominator on everything. If the sort of person who thinks the Daily Express is a newspaper can't understand it, it isn't a valid argument and it doesn't matter, it is irrelevant whether it is true or not.

Yes that is it. In a democracy to function the people vote on someone they believe in, then need to let them run the country how they see fit. Anyone with big ideas now is marginalized.. so we get people who just promise to not change anything - part of the problem of voting against things instead of for someone you believe in. Cameron has to promise that he won't cut anything in order to become prime minister. The cynic argument is Cameron became leader of his party precicesly because he wasn't a threat to anybody.

There also seems to be a paralysis of decision making. As imo too many people have a say, and too many voices can veto something. Sometimes just going with one idea is better than doing nothing.

And now appears to be an era where we need great leaders. All over the industrial world the free market is failing to deliver good jobs and opportunity for people, so it is up to the state to step in. And big ideas are needed when the current ones have run out of steam.

Edited February 10, 2010 by aa3

[Stars]

How do you think this huge groups manage to co-ordinate themselves, and in secret?

This conspiracies do not exist. Reality is actually worse than that - it is chaos. There is nobody in full control of the planet, or human destiny. Sorry.

It's not a conspiracy - each individual fights for his intellectual corner, but all the corners are in the wrong room

[TGP]

Economics was a young but relatively honest science which was deliberately hijacked and perverted at about the turn of the last century. The language of economics was deliberately distorted and changed to prevent, what was becoming increasingly obvious, being communicated effectively. At this time, professional economists defending the status quo were regularly publicly humiliated in debate by lay people using a particular argument form and so economics was deliberately changed to make this argument form far more difficult to express

The modern polarities of left and right have grown around the perversion and have an vested interest in keeping the mistaken concepts and camouflage in place.

I have my doubts.

My immediate question upon reading that is........ go on then......... expose us to that "debate form" that was so damming. I understand that, according to you, "economic language was formed deliberately to hide in some way from this argument". But I'm no real slouch with economic language, if there was a point to be made in debate that was such a "killer app" then lets hear it, expressed as it used to be.

I also have my doubts that in the 100 years or so since it hasn't resurrected itself and stormed the political/economic sphere in one way or the other if it's so "damming" (and damming of what exactly also springs to mind).

Nevertheless, despite what I consider the low liklihood of it working as you laid it out, there is one acid test for it......... you're a lay person.......... hit me with that killer argument dude.

Yours,

TGP

[PopGun]

How do you think this huge groups manage to co-ordinate themselves, and in secret?

This conspiracies do not exist. Reality is actually worse than that - it is chaos. There is nobody in full control of the planet, or human destiny. Sorry.

Yeah, they're too stupid to orchestrate anything right?

The most effective camouflage is the veneer of ineptness, never underestimate the wolf in a pack of fools.

The young have already been thrown to the lions. Maybe once everyone else starts getting pushed into the grinder, people will actually realise we've all been led down the garden path.

[TGP]

Yeah, they're too stupid to orchestrate anything right?

Well, no....... they can co-ordinate some things. Generally where they have to co-ordinate for a short period, for a huge profit, which by it's nature is equally shared.

An attack on a currency, for example. Organization and Co-ordination can form in that example......... or in another example, a short term push to lobby a govt. into accepting a rule change/or preventing a rule change.

Here we are talking about co-ordinating for a long period......... to change an entire academic discipline....... for no real immediate profit I can see.... a project that was (apparently) successful and that was not later "unpicked" be future generations of economists.

I can't see that coming off. The rewards for being the one guy to buck the system and becomming the "Einstein of the Economics Field" are too great. The profit to the conspirators is too low.

But the proof is in the pudding, if there is this killer argument......... then lay it on me.

Yours,

TGP

[Stars]

Nevertheless, despite what I consider the low liklihood of it working as you laid it out, there is one acid test for it......... you're a lay person.......... hit me with that killer argument dude.

It is outlined by Mason Gaffney in The Corruption of economics

A synopsis -

'The mystery of persistent economic failure can now be explained. Professor Mason Gaffney charges his colleagues with using a theoretical apparatus that is fatally flawed. But he goes further: he accuses the founders of neo-classical economics - the paradigm taught in schools and universities - of acting in bad faith. They distorted the science of econnomics to protect vested interests, and prevented governments adopting policies that would yield prosperity for everyone. How did it happen? A century ago the programme which synthesized social justice with efficient market economics was endorsed by millions of people in Britain, the United States, Ireland and Australia. Their champion was Henry George. Armed with the language of classical economics, he challenged the power elites whose riches were built on the poverty of the masses. To stop Henry George the fortune hunters hired professors to pervert the language of economics and confuse democratic debate. The use of this corrupted economics continues to this day, explain the authors, who analyze recent attempts to intimidate reforming politicians such as Nelson Mandela.

If the full potential of the market economy is to be enjoyed by everyone, taxes must be transferred from consumption and production onto the rent of land. This was the theory - developed and endorsed by the greatest economist - that the landlords would not tolerate, their stratagem succeeded. But, in debasing their discipline, economists deprived themselves of the ability to diagnose problems, forecast trends and prescribe solutions, thereby condemning the 20th century to protracted periods of economic malaise. Mason Gaffney is the editor of "Extractive Resources and Taxation". Fred Harrison is the author of "Land and Liberty" and "The Power in the Land". '

An excerpt -

http://www.politicaleconomy.org/gaffney.htm

Edited February 10, 2010 by Stars

[TGP]

It is outlined by Mason Gaffney in The Corruption of economics

A synopsis -

'The mystery of persistent economic failure can now be explained. Professor Mason Gaffney charges his colleagues with using a theoretical apparatus that is fatally flawed. But he goes further: he accuses the founders of neo-classical economics - the paradigm taught in schools and universities - of acting in bad faith. They distorted the science of econnomics to protect vested interests, and prevented governments adopting policies that would yield prosperity for everyone. How did it happen? A century ago the programme which synthesized social justice with efficient market economics was endorsed by millions of people in Britain, the United States, Ireland and Australia. Their champion was Henry George. Armed with the language of classical economics, he challenged the power elites whose riches were built on the poverty of the masses. To stop Henry George the fortune hunters hired professors to pervert the language of economics and confuse democratic debate. The use of this corrupted economics continues to this day, explain the authors, who analyze recent attempts to intimidate reforming politicians such as Nelson Mandela.

If the full potential of the market economy is to be enjoyed by everyone, taxes must be transferred from consumption and production onto the rent of land. This was the theory - developed and endorsed by the greatest economist - that the landlords would not tolerate, their stratagem succeeded. But, in debasing their discipline, economists deprived themselves of the ability to diagnose problems, forecast trends and prescribe solutions, thereby condemning the 20th century to protracted periods of economic malaise. Mason Gaffney is the editor of "Extractive Resources and Taxation". Fred Harrison is the author of "Land and Liberty" and "The Power in the Land". '

An excerpt -

http://www.politicaleconomy.org/gaffney.htm

So the "killer app" that we had to corrupt economic language in order to avoid was

If the full potential of the market economy is to be enjoyed by everyone, taxes must be transferred from consumption and production onto the rent of land.

If you'll permit me...... maybe I can take this apart without having to corrupt any language or obfuscate in any way......

1) So the entire public sector GDP of the nation (40% or so of total output) is going to hang off of taxes on rent ? Yes ?

Won't the upshot of this be......... anyone who already OWNS land is going to be able to produce on it entirely tax free ? While anyone who doesn't currently own land is going to be made highly uncompetative due to their requirement to rent the land the production takes place on at extremely high tax rates ? Doesn;t this transfer "productiuve wealth" into the very hands of the "big landowners" it is meant to take this wealth from ?

Lets say I'm the lord of Devonshire...... and I have a factory producing widgets on land I own. Then my factory can operate entirely tax free. I make money.

Lets say I am Joe Smith, who invents a new widget production technique 10% more efficient than the dukes. How am I to enter the market and provide the additional efficiency if I don't own land ? The taxes applied would be so high as to make my factory uncompetitive next to his despite it's higher efficiency. The duke keeps his income, and the nation loses a new productive technique (or, more likely, the duke buys the technique off of Mr Smith for a fraction of the wealth it could generate Mr Smith if he could apply it in his own factory).

2) As I noted on another thread (entirely coincidentally only about an hour ago)...... if there are no substitute goods taxes on goods get passed to the consumer, if there ARE substitutes taxes on goods get passed to the producer.

So..... if apples and oranges are substitutes...... if you levy a tax on apples, the producer must swallow that tax in his profit. If he passes it on, he will lose business to the orange producers as his good becomes more expensive and people switch to the substitute. If there is NO substitute for apples, this is not the case. The producer can raise the price of apples (and retain his original profit margin despite the tax) as people have nowhere to go, they still have to buy the apples if they want fruit.

There is.... famously....... no substitute for land. If I want to build a factory I need land. Nothing else will do, it has to be land. Consequently, why would this end up as a tax on the "landlords" rather than on the "renters" ? The assumption seems to be that it will. Why ? Why wouldn't the landlords simply raise the rent to cover the taxes ? Where would the tenants go ? Where is the "substitute" for land that allows them to switch away from it if the cost of renting land is far too high ?

If this made renting land unaffordable....... thats no problem to the landowners either....... they then produce on that land themselves (tax free) and hire the previous tenants as rented labour. The tenant goes from a "self-employed businessman" on rented land, and becomes "waged labour" working in the land owners business, on which the land owner pays no taxes (being a land owner, not renter).

3) This argument assumes that land+labour is the basis of all economic productivity. This may have been a marginally true assumption at the turn of the century, most production was still agricultural. How would this work in a modern economy where capital+labour is the basis of economic productivity ? Surely (given the change in where the productive capacity is) this should be altered to be a capital tax in today environment.

4) This forces all production into the hands of land owners by the progressive ratcheting of higher taxes on rents. If the whole public sector is to be supported from a rent tax....... that will make renting expensive....... which will force people off rents........ which will lower the tax base....... which will force (in order to continue to pay for the public sector) a rise in the taxes on rents...... which will force more renters out...... which will lower the tax base......which will raise taxes on the remaining renters....... and so on........ until you are receiving 0 taxes and the only productive industry going on in the nation is that run by the land owners on their own land, tax free. All productive capacity still standing would be owned by the people who OWN the land.

I hope I haven't used to many "technical terms" there......or attempted to "obfuscate" the problem......... or used any of those economic terms invented to avoid this argument. I think, in plain and simple language, I've explained why it wouldn't work.

Why would economists completely rip to shreds their own discipline......to the point of crippling it for 100 years...... instead of just making these simple and understandable arguments ? Why hasn't any economists since then made himself the "einstein of the field" by a) pointing this out and so getting economics working again and so c) totally re-creating the field in a more accurate and useful way ?

Just asking........

Yours,

TGP

[right_freds_dead]

the LOST GENERATION and also the GENERATION IN DENIAL.....

ITS THE GENERATIONS GAME... G G Good game my loves.....

[timothyw]

TGP you are missing the point entirely. The idea is a tax on all land, not a tax on renting land from landowners. In Henry George's own words, "We must make all land common property." It would have taken you a mere few moments to do a bit of research- probably a lot quicker than writing that reply:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George#The_Single_Tax_on_Land

The fact is, land is in the possession of a small number of people- just what gives them the right to lay claim to this Earth on which we were all born? You go back far enough, and it's just a bunch of thugs kicking out the other people who need a place to live, because the king or whoever else has said that this parcel of land can now be theirs- the whole idea is pretty abhorrent really, and a Land Tax is considered a fairly passive way to redress the balance.

Edited February 10, 2010 by timothyw

[Tired of Waiting]

Yeah, they're too stupid to orchestrate anything right?

The most effective camouflage is the veneer of ineptness, never underestimate the wolf in a pack of fools.

The young have already been thrown to the lions. Maybe once everyone else starts getting pushed into the grinder, people will actually realise we've all been led down the garden path.

Yes, but there are tens of thousands of wolves, amongst the 6 billion sheep. And the wolves fight each other all the time - individually and in sub-packs. There is no effective world-wide co-ordination. Not even effective country wide-co-ordination. Not even effective family-wide co-ordination!

[Tired of Waiting]

It is outlined by Mason Gaffney in The Corruption of economics

A synopsis -

'The mystery of persistent economic failure can now be explained. Professor Mason Gaffney charges his colleagues with using a theoretical apparatus that is fatally flawed. But he goes further: he accuses the founders of neo-classical economics - the paradigm taught in schools and universities - of acting in bad faith. They distorted the science of econnomics to protect vested interests, and prevented governments adopting policies that would yield prosperity for everyone. How did it happen? A century ago the programme which synthesized social justice with efficient market economics was endorsed by millions of people in Britain, the United States, Ireland and Australia. Their champion was Henry George. Armed with the language of classical economics, he challenged the power elites whose riches were built on the poverty of the masses. To stop Henry George the fortune hunters hired professors to pervert the language of economics and confuse democratic debate. The use of this corrupted economics continues to this day, explain the authors, who analyze recent attempts to intimidate reforming politicians such as Nelson Mandela.

If the full potential of the market economy is to be enjoyed by everyone, taxes must be transferred from consumption and production onto the rent of land. This was the theory - developed and endorsed by the greatest economist - that the landlords would not tolerate, their stratagem succeeded. But, in debasing their discipline, economists deprived themselves of the ability to diagnose problems, forecast trends and prescribe solutions, thereby condemning the 20th century to protracted periods of economic malaise. Mason Gaffney is the editor of "Extractive Resources and Taxation". Fred Harrison is the author of "Land and Liberty" and "The Power in the Land". '

An excerpt -

http://www.politicaleconomy.org/gaffney.htm

When Adam Smith founded economics, in 1776 (publishing his "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations") a worker could not be sure if his wages would be enough to buy enough potatoes for him to survive. "Persistent economic failure"???

[ken_ichikawa]

TGP you are missing the point entirely. The idea is a tax on all land, not a tax on renting land from landowners. In Henry George's own words, "We must make all land common property." It would have taken you a mere few moments to do a bit of research- probably a lot quicker than writing that reply:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George#The_Single_Tax_on_Land

The fact is, land is in the possession of a small number of people- just what gives them the right to lay claim to this Earth on which we were all born? You go back far enough, and it's just a bunch of thugs kicking out the other people who need a place to live, because the king or whoever else has said that this parcel of land can now be theirs- the whole idea is pretty abhorrent really, and a Land Tax is considered a fairly passive way to redress the balance.

What stops them passing the cost on to the end users of the land? , like VAT is passed onto consumers, or if council tax was to be paid by landlords it would be added to rent. Corporation tax for example is reflected in the higher cost of goods as it is factored into the end price.

[Cicero]

TGP you are missing the point entirely. The idea is a tax on all land, not a tax on renting land from landowners. In Henry George's own words, "We must make all land common property." It would have taken you a mere few moments to do a bit of research- probably a lot quicker than writing that reply

+1