What kind of system would let you have it both ways? Well, it turns out there is such an economic system, and it has been around for 130 years, but going back in a more diffuse form for thousands of years. It's called Georgism, named after the political economist, Henry George, who said "tax the use (and abuse) of the world's resources, but not the results of production (wages, capital).' What would this do? It would:
A. Spur innovation
and productivity
B. End speculation by taking away the 'fuel' for it
C. Eliminate most poverty by freeing up natural resources now lying idle
and 'owned' by speculators just waiting for the price to go up
D. Eliminate urban sprawl (see C. above)
E. Reduce squandering of scarce natural resources by taxing them at their
true, market-determined, value (we have a whole army of land and resource
'assessors' whose job it is to determine the raw value of land, oil, water,
copper etc. and if that doesn't work, we can just hold an auction)
F. Reduce (greatly) pollution by treating clean air, clean water, clean
land, as a natural, and finite resource, and not as something nature
provides for 'free' or as an externality that business does not have to account
for in their balance sheet. Whether pollution is accounted for or not in
a business balance sheet is irrelevant to the cost, because someone pays
-right now, that is the taxpayer, or perhaps in the case of people living in
Appalachia, or Tennessee, the people living near coal mining companies, for
example.
G. End most forms of debt, which are really based on speculators cashing
in due to (unrightful) ownership of land. After all, J.P. Morgan or Wells
Fargo did not create the land, did they? Why should they profit from
writing a mortgage upon it? Sure, you can borrow to build a home, but
that cost is typically much, much smaller than the cost of the underlying
land. Think of it this way: imagine a brand new home being built in
central Kansas, where land is cheap. What would the cost of that be for
just the home, taking out the cost of land? Maybe $40,000. Now, imagine
the cost of building that home in midtown Manhattan - it's actually the same cost.
You might be saying that no one could afford to build a home like that in
midtown Manhattan, but that is because of the high cost of land, not the
home itself. Where people are concentrated, as George recognized, the
cost of land goes up.
OK, this is a bit more than I promised at the beginning of the article, but remember the test at the beginning, and consider that the common opponent of both Progressives and Conservatives may be the same: the Monopolizers of resources -- natural, but also including political power. Now, knowing that it is not the country that is poor, it is the people (or, at least, too many of the people), where should our focus lie? Should we spend our time making largely false accusations at people we have allowed others to label as different from us, or at the real source of the problem, the 1% of the people who own 90% or the country's wealth, via a monopoly and not from production (which cannot provide that kind of wealth alone)? Maybe we should return to that question I discarded earlier after all: In whose interest is it that we fight against each other and not against"them?
If you want to learn more, see my Geonomic petition here:
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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