How the Rentier Class Cannibalizes the Economy

[K]

The following is an excerpt from Michael Hudson’s book “The Bubble and Beyond,” published in July 2012 by the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends:

As the Industrial Revolution gained momentum, economists anticipated that banking and finance would be absorbed into the industrial system. The attention of economic theorists still remains focused on industrial technology and innovation, and the population shift from agriculture to urban industry. Textbooks (and lobbying exercises) depict bankers as extending credit to enable industrialists to build new factories and employ workers to produce more goods. Loans do not become problematic, but can be paid out of profits generated by the capital investment they finance. This appealing story is used to plead for special tax treatment for financial institutions on the ground that their credit creation adds to economic welfare. Interest is deemed as tax-exempt expenditure, even when corporate raiders use predatory credit.

Yet the symbiosis that has emerged over the past century has been primarily between the financial, insurance and real estate sectors. The great bulk of assets in modern economies—and hence, collateral for bank loans—has been real estate. Some 70 percent of commercial bank lending in the United States and England takes the form of mortgage credit. The estimated market value of real estate exceeds the depreciated value of all the plant and equipment in the entire United States. Loan officers know that the bulk of growth in their bank’s portfolio will consist of mortgage loans. The more rapidly such credit is created, the more funds are channeled into new mortgage financing to bid up the price of real property, making such lending appear self-justifying, at least in the short and intermediate run.

Of the properties financed, land (the value of the site) typically represents about half the total, and all of the capital gain when the property is sold. And the great bulk of depreciation (capital consumption allowances) is reported in the real estate sector. This is because when an industrial machine wears out, it usually must be scrapped in order to keep up with the paces of technological advance. But buildings can be depreciated over and over again, thereby shielding their owners from income-tax liability (especially inasmuch as their interest charges are tax deductible). The upshot is that the tax system (especially in the United States) is much more favorable to real estate than to industry. It is easier to borrow against real property, and the total returns (after-tax earnings plus capital gains) are higher.

The financial industry has fought to support special tax breaks for real estate, recognizing that the money that is freed from the tax collector will be available to pay interest. Political contributions and lobbying efforts by real estate owners are followed by those of the financial sector, overshadowing those of manufacturing. Yet in lobbying for cuts in special gains taxes, both the real estate and financial industries (backed by the insurance industry) present these gains as accruing to industry as a result of innovation, as if this typified modern capitalism. The reality is that most capital gains continue to accrue to real estate. It is only since about 1996 that, for the first time, stock-market gains are beginning to overshadow the growth in real estate gains in the U.S. national balance sheet. The effect is equally corrosive and the reasons for this development are set out in chapter 8 below.

Why don’t economists call a spade a spade and come right out and start their analytic description of modern economics with a profile of where most wealth is accumulated, and the fact that it consists more of land-price gains than growth in manufacturing enterprise? The explanation is to be found in the fact that real estate is by no means as romantic as industry. Most people admire innovators and creators, but resent landlords—and usually also bankers and insurance companies as well, for being more parasitic than creative. There is a general awareness of the obvious fact that the growth in mortgage lending does not add to the supply of land, whose site value is created by public infrastructure investment and the general level of prosperity. In any case, the great bulk of property loans are for land and buildings already in place. The growth of real estate lending thus provides borrowers with credit to compete against each other to buy as many properties as they can, bidding up land prices in the process. The upshot is a bubble, not an industrial boom.

Financial spokesmen argue that this kind of asset-based lending is productive, inasmuch as it provides real estate owners with properties that enable them to pay the interest charges and still (they hope) come out with a capital gain in the end. To help spur this large credit market, the financial lobby has joined hands with the real estate lobby in the United States to gain special tax breaks for real estate.

Bankers know that whatever the tax collector does not take will be left available to pay interest to lenders. Developers bid against each other with regard to the size of the mortgage they will pay the lender, and hence the volume of mortgage debt service they will pay their banker out of rent. This bidding normally continues up to the point where all the available net rental income over costs is paid in the form of interest.

Mortgage lending commonly provides from 80 to 100 percent of the property’s purchase price (or even more as seen in the bubble Economy’s years leading up to the September 2008 crash). This is a highly leveraged rate—it has a high debt/equity ratio. This kind of mortgage debt pyramiding provided the model for junk-bond financing used by corporate raiders in the 1980s, and for the flood of public assets being privatized in Britain, continental Europe and Third World countries. The distinguishing feature of such purchases of real estate, corporations or public entities already in place is that new loans are attached without creating new tangible investment. Instead of new tangible-capital formation there is more typically a downsizing and carve-up as revenue is used to pay interest and amortization up to the maximum extent available over and above operating costs.

The fact is “post-industrial” practice made this dynamic quite different from that which optimists envisioned at the outset of the Industrial Revolution. Instead of mobilizing savings to fund new means of production, today’s banking system merely is loading the economy’s assets down with debt. What seem to be occurring is functionally akin to the pre-industrial mode of lending. The difference is that pre-industrial usury was dominated by individual family lenders, but the new post-industrial debt system is occurring on a large, corporate scale. It has merged with industry primarily to the extent that the financial sector has gained control of the economy’s manufacturing companies, treating them like real estate to squeeze out as large a rentier income as possible and then sell the companies off for a capital gain.

There is a reason Monopoly was originally called The Landlord's Game. Every time I see somebody cheer the rich on as "heroes" or "job creators" or "innovators", etc. I feel like puking, because the vast majority of the time, that's not he case. All they do is make money through privilege and pocket publicly created values (like land value), impoverishing others in the process.

[Blue&Orange]

[QUOTE=K

[fiddy]

Nice read. Repped

[fiddy]

Land value is not publicly created. It takes $ to maintain and often time has high long term risks.

Who pays for infrastructure?

[K]

Land value is not publicly created. It takes $ to maintain and often time has high long term risks.

Of course land value is publicly created. The unimproved value of land is the same whether or not there is any improvements on it. Think of vacant lots that parasite speculators keep empty for speculative gain. They still have enormous prices. Pure publicly created value independent from anything the landowner does with the land.

[I<3NBA]

great read. paper pushers produce nothing of value. we should go back to rewarding people that produce real value in the economy.

[MavsSuperFan]

You know you could just get a better job if you didnt waste all of your time thinking of excuses about how the man holds you down.

[MavsSuperFan]

Who pays for infrastructure?
In america its largely off taxes, at the Federal level income tax and at the state level property tax.

Because of progressive taxation (which I support) mostly rich people.

[ispin69]

If you have to pay property tax, you don't own it..you're renting land from the government.

[OldSkoolball#52]

Only the usual right wing retards think we should be thankful for rich people. Everything we have is thanks to nobodies, people that had nothing but their intellect and hard work. I had a discussion about this with some idiot a few days ago, the idiot mentioned Coca cola and McDonalds trying to argue in favor of rich people, both were invented by poor people, that eventually had to sell their business for peanuts otherwise the "rich" people would have set a similar model and drove them to poverty with the sheer force of their money.

Only retards don't get this.


:facepalm


Do chicks just openly laugh in your face when you try to talk to them?? You are the softest, whiniest, unmanliest loser. The people who sit around complaining about capitalism are the ones who are crazy insecure, effeminate, pathetic, and cant compete.

In short, you are a retarded bitch woman.

[MMM]

:facepalm


Do chicks just openly laugh in your face when you try to talk to them?? You are the softest, whiniest, unmanliest loser. The people who sit around complaining about capitalism are the ones who are insecure and cant compete.

In short, you are a retarded bitch woman.

the problem is not everyone gets to compete but i believe that is a separate issue from capitalism. Capitalism, greed, etc. can be good but like anything else can be exploited and abused, and if you have the resources it becomes easy to exploit and abuse the existing system.

[kNicKz]

U broke son?

[OldSkoolball#52]

the problem is not everyone gets to compete but i believe that is a separate issue from capitalism. Capitalism, greed, etc. can be good but like anything else can be exploited and abused, and if you have the resources it becomes easy to exploit and abuse the existing system.



Nobody is forced to do or buy a single thing in this country. Aside from health insurance, apparently.

If you dont like the system and all the opportunity it gives to people who pay attention and aspire to move up, you are free to go live in the woods. Go build a cabin and hunt your food, bring some seeds and clear out a lil area and grow some food. Nobody will bother you. Theres so much open land out there, if u go find a spot nobody's usin I dont think youll get too much hassle from the government.


Otherwise there has to be an organized system. Otherwise its just chaos. You divide the land up and give every person an equal share right now how do you decide who gets souther california and who gets west kansas? Hmm, maybe whoever pays the taxes that end up goin to support the welfare liberals love to pass around.


I mean seriously, OP, Orange and Blue, and the pansy morons that complain about this stuff are just losers. Bottom line. They cant handle shit so the. Just whine n complain. Homoz.

[plowking]

Start investing your money a little better. How about that?

You act as if these investments are risk free and its all gravy.

[MMM]

Nobody is forced to do or buy a single thing in this country. Aside from health insurance, apparently.

If you dont like the system and all the opportunity it gives to people who pay attention and aspire to move up, you are free to go live in the woods. Go build a cabin and hunt your food, bring some seeds and clear out a lil area and grow some food. Nobody will bother you. Theres so much open land out there, if u go find a spot nobody's usin I dont think youll get too much hassle from the government.


Otherwise there has to be an organized system. Otherwise its just chaos. You divide the land up and give every person an equal share right now how do you decide who gets souther california and who gets west kansas? Hmm, maybe whoever pays the taxes that end up goin to support the welfare liberals love to pass around.


I mean seriously, OP, Orange and Blue, and the pansy morons that complain about this stuff are just losers. Bottom line. They cant handle shit so the. Just whine n complain. Homoz.

Sensible people are somewhere between splitting land equally or having to go out in the woods.

BTW as a conservative shouldn't you be just as upset if not more by Republican spend and deficit governments, if you are genuine about you conservative beliefs how can you not be irked by the entire gong show in DC. Why do you always speak about made up liberal BS that doesn't really exist? As American liberals are relatively conservative.

[I<3NBA]

typical of idiots to go and rant without understanding what the issue is about. the article isn't a criticism of capitalism but rather a criticism of rent-seeking. there's good capitalism and then there's bad capitalism.

rent seeking is of the worst kind. it perverts the true intention of capitalism which is to create wealth and instead just moves wealth around. for those of you who hate the dirty word "socialism," well, rent-seeking is wealth redistribution -- to the upper .1%

true wealth creation is that which creates something tangible of value. moving money around and rent-seeking creates nothing of value. understand your economics please.

[Legends66NBA7]

we should go back to rewarding people that produce real value in the economy.

Who are these people today ?

[plowking]

typical of idiots to go and rant without understanding what the issue is about. the article isn't a criticism of capitalism but rather a criticism of rent-seeking. there's good capitalism and then there's bad capitalism.

rent seeking is of the worst kind. it perverts the true intention of capitalism which is to create wealth and instead just moves wealth around. for those of you who hate the dirty word "socialism," well, rent-seeking is wealth redistribution -- to the upper .1%

true wealth creation is that which creates something tangible of value. moving money around and rent-seeking creates nothing of value. understand your economics please.

If you read more of the OP's posts on here, you'd see his problem doesn't lie in whether or not wealth is created or not; simply that he isn't part of the money being moved around to him.

[OldSkoolball#52]

typical of idiots to go and rant without understanding what the issue is about. the article isn't a criticism of capitalism but rather a criticism of rent-seeking. there's good capitalism and then there's bad capitalism.

rent seeking is of the worst kind. it perverts the true intention of capitalism which is to create wealth and instead just moves wealth around. for those of you who hate the dirty word "socialism," well, rent-seeking is wealth redistribution -- to the upper .1%

true wealth creation is that which creates something tangible of value. moving money around and rent-seeking creates nothing of value. understand your economics please.


Holy christ that is dumb.

Moving money around creates nothing of value? You know how many small businesss and even large ones start from loans? People dont have enough money to enterprise their good idea on their own so they borrow. The peole who lend need a reason to take the risk of lending money so they collect interest. This is like the most basic fundamental economic principle. I mean seriously, how retarded and salty must one be not to get this???

We also have a democracy. The people can impose their collective will by informing themselves and voting. You can vote property taxes up or down. Hardly anybody in America does that. Successful people take advantage of Americas opportunity and the rest just complain and never do anything. Your beef is with the inherent inequality resulting from a free system. You dont have the guts to call out the little guy so you wrongly take aim at the big guy. Thats simply testice-less f@ggotry.

[MadeFromDust]

Go away dammm pinko commie

[K]

If you read more of the OP's posts on here, you'd see his problem doesn't lie in whether or not wealth is created or not; simply that he isn't part of the money being moved around to him.

Stop making up rubbish.

If I had to stick a label on my position, this comes closest to it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism

[K]

Go away dammm pinko commie

You just called Thomas Paine and Winston Churchill pinko commies. Congratulations, dumbass.

[MadeFromDust]

[QUOTE=K

[K]

You know you could just get a better job if you didnt waste all of your time thinking of excuses about how the man holds you down.

It's not about me, I love my job. It's about people's rights being violated for the unearned profit unproductive, legal entitlement owning, government handouts demanding, parasites. The super wealthy at whose altars you pray just happen to be the biggest parasites.

I used to complain about welfare recipients and so on until I realized that it's the rich who get by far the most government handouts. And it's not even close.

[MadeFromDust]

bla bla bla bla go cry a river. Yur never gonna change shiite. Stop breathing our air, drinking our water, and eating out food ewe slimy parasite.

[K]

Start investing your money a little better. How about that?

You act as if these investments are risk free and its all gravy.

Actually, land prices appreciate nicely along with the economy most of the time.

Either way, just because one takes a risk does not mean one deserves anything or contributes anything to the economy.

[K]

In america its largely off taxes, at the Federal level income tax and at the state level property tax.

Because of progressive taxation (which I support) mostly rich people.

There are a plethora of taxes other than the income tax. Most taxes are paid by the middle class. Progressive income taxes also fall mostly on the middle class and high income working people, not the wealthy (although there is some correlation, a lot of productive people are harmed in the process while a lot of unproductive legal entitlement owning wealthy people pay very little.). I propose to get rid of the income tax.

The property tax is the best tax there currently is because it recovers a small portion of the publicly created subsidy landowners get for doing nothing, and the wealthy own by far the most land (which is how a lot of them got undeservedly rich in the first place).

The only problem with the property tax is that it also partially falls on improvements so it creates an equilibrium where less improvements are offered but at higher prices, so that's a burden on the economy.

[K]

No EWE are the pinko commie scum, diipshiite. Go spew your buulshat over in China where they give a dammm about that cr@p

This moron claims that the author of 'Common Sense', Thomas Paine, who is by many considered the father American Revolution, and whose views were very similar to mine, was pinko commie scum.

GTFO you anti American piece of shit.

Thomas Paine: "There could be no such thing as landed property originally. Man did not make the earth, and, though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the first title-deeds should issue."

Ethered.

[HarryCallahan]

[QUOTE=K

[K]

tbh, Churchill was a commie...

:lol How did you arrive at that?

[Dresta]

lol @ the tools that think what we have now is capitalism.

The same tools that think the state will solve all these problems, when it created most of them in the first place, and it is widely acknowledged that an altruistic politician is about as common as an honest burglar.

Stop putting your faith in government and politicians!

[K]

lol @ the tools that think what we have now is capitalism.

The same tools that think the state will solve all these problems, when it created most of them in the first place, and it is widely acknowledged that an altruistic politician is about as common as an honest burglar.

Stop putting your faith in government and politicians!

Land and capital are privately owned ergo what we have is capitalism.

[Dresta]

[QUOTE=K

[I<3NBA]

If you read more of the OP's posts on here, you'd see his problem doesn't lie in whether or not wealth is created or not; simply that he isn't part of the money being moved around to him.
not really. read it again. the complaint is about unproductive activity. there's nothing productive about sitting on a land and then collecting rent on it. productive economic activity has always been industry and manufacturing. you're producing real goods that boosts the quality of life. collecting rent is a parasitic economic activity. produces absolutely nothing.

Holy christ that is dumb.

Moving money around creates nothing of value? You know how many small businesss and even large ones start from loans? People dont have enough money to enterprise their good idea on their own so they borrow. The peole who lend need a reason to take the risk of lending money so they collect interest. This is like the most basic fundamental economic principle. I mean seriously, how retarded and salty must one be not to get this???
maybe i've not been clear, so i'll make it clearer. the act itself of moving money around creates nothing. it's the activity after this which creates something. so the one who deserves the tax breaks are the ones who create, not the ones who move the money around. who gets all the tax breaks? is it the inventors and innovators?


We also have a democracy. The people can impose their collective will by informing themselves and voting. You can vote property taxes up or down. Hardly anybody in America does that. Successful people take advantage of Americas opportunity and the rest just complain and never do anything. Your beef is with the inherent inequality resulting from a free system. You dont have the guts to call out the little guy so you wrongly take aim at the big guy. Thats simply testice-less f@ggotry.
the system you have now isn't free nor is it true democracy. the big guy you so idolize do deserve to be put down seeing as the same activity you consider fa990try is being done by them.

government bailout being the biggest fa990try of all. lol, you're getting screwed and you're defending the one screwing you. holy christ, that is what's really dumb.

[Sarcastic]

Pure capitalism, and pure socialism is pretty much impossible to ever implement in the real world. What we have in this country is closer to the capitalism end of the spectrum. Anyone who denies that is pretty much delusional, and not worth debating with.

[K]

And it is controlled by the state and state-sustained monopolistic corporations, ergo, not capitalism.

What we have now is closer to the Mercantilism of the 17th century rather than the capitalism forwarded by the likes of A. Smith.

Try to read in the future rather than just parroting trivial platitudes.

All an economy requires for it to be capitalist is that the means of production are privately owned (land and capital). Landowning is always a state enforced legal entitlement (BTW,
'Ownership' itself is defined as A protecting B's right to C against D). State-sustained monopolistic corporations are not contradictory to capitalism. Mercantilism is capitalist. State protection against competition (intellectual property, etc.) can be a part of capitalism.

I suggest you take your own advise, since I just schooled you.

BTW, Adam Smith also shared some of my views:

"Both ground- rents and the ordinary rent of land are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. The annual produce of the land and labour of the society, the real wealth and revenue of the great body of the people, might be the same after such a tax as before. Ground-rents, and the ordinary rent of land are, therefore, perhaps the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them." - Adam Smith

[Blue&Orange]

:facepalm


Do chicks just openly laugh in your face when you try to talk to them?? You are the softest, whiniest, unmanliest loser. The people who sit around complaining about capitalism are the ones who are crazy insecure, effeminate, pathetic, and cant compete.

In short, you are a retarded bitch woman.
:lol

Obvious if you tried to argue, you know i would make you look like that incredible retarded you are, like i did many times before, so you just go for the insult this time, because you got nothing else.

Talk about pathetic, retarded, effeminate and insecure loser.

:lol


Go ahead ph@ggot try to argue facts with me, make my day bitch.

:lol

[Dresta]

Pure capitalism, and pure socialism is pretty much impossible to ever implement in the real world. What we have in this country is closer to the capitalism end of the spectrum. Anyone who denies that is pretty much delusional, and not worth debating with.
Ah, yes, 'i'm so sure i'm right that no one that holds the contrary opinion is worth debating with.' What an argument you have there: really mature and insightful.

There is a difference between 'pure capitalism' and a system that best utilises the strengths of capitalism to increase capital accumulation, enhance labour productivity, and thus increase the living standards of all. The increases in living standards in the West have all been a result of capitalism, and not the socialist policies that are now somehow conflated with capitalism. You actually think what we have is capitalism?:

The state spends almost 40% of total GDP; it has the ability to print money as it likes, and as a result inflation has spiralled, diminishing savings and leading to excessive risk taking; the compulsory nature of social security takes the ability to save out of the hands of individuals and grants this power to the state; the blind adherence to the socialist doctrine of progressive taxation, that is so readily accepted that it would be impossible to revoke (this increases inequality btw, it doesn't reduce it, and leads to quasi-monopolies who last long past their sell-by date); the state control over education and the dissemination of information to the young; the protection of agriculture at the expense of everyone else; the granting of special privileges to certain groups.

This you call capitalism? That is like calling a $80 smartphone an iphone because it looks a bit like one and works in a fairly similar way. It is erroneous to say the least.

At the moment we have a disgusting hybrid that combines the worst elements of capitalism with the worst of socialism to make the corrupted crap-heap we have today.

[QUOTE=K

[K]

Your definition of capitalism is so broad that the word is rendered completely meaningless.

Wrong. My definition of capitalism is correct. Private ownership of the means of production, capital and land.


And i'm not surprised Adam Smith agrees with you considering he spent half his time attacking Mercantilism, and as what we have now is a type of corporate mercantilism where government and big business combine to **** over the rest. But to put down what you're complaining about to 'the evils of capitalism' or some other such hokum is to be misleading and disingenuous to say the least.

Landowning is enforced by the state and is necessary for an economic system to be called capitalist, it is therefore always inherently corrupt. This will naturally lead to wealth inequality not because of unequal contributions but because but because of state enforced monopolies, which landowning always is: A monopoly. Supply can't be increased and each location is unique. Naturally, the privileged will seek for other monopolies too. You're under the false impression that the state is naturally not involved in capitalism.

"The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price." - Adam Smith


Almost everything we have and value is a product of capitalism, and it's about time the masses of morons who protest against it realised this; they are not making the problem better, they are making it worse. But then i wouldn't expect any intellectual maturity from someone who goes around declaring that he 'schooled' people.

:sleeping Can dish it but can't take it.

[K]

Capitalism > Socialism

Geoism >>>>>>>>> Capitalism

[KingBeasley08]

OP is beta as **** :oldlol:

[K]

OP is beta as **** :oldlol:

Lack of content noted.

[K]

OP is beta as **** :oldlol:

http://www.childlaborofbd.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/13.jpg

That's the kind of evil you support by being an apologist for privilege. These children in Bangladesh have no right to exist anywhere because all the good land is private property, so they have no choice but to do slave labor for a landowner somewhere to help themselves and their family get mere subsistence. This is what happens when landowner privilege takes it's natural course with the government intervening very little or not at all to rescue the landless from it. They effectively become slaves as the law of rent pushes them down to subsistence level. But I'm sure you favor the immoral property rights in land over the right of these people to exist somewhere and keep what they earn rather than be forced to give most of it to parasitic landowners or go to starve.

[K]

I'm not going to let the rent seeking apologists get away from this thread so easily.

:applause:

[K]

Rent seeking:

"When a company, organization or individual uses their resources to obtain an economic gain from others without reciprocating any benefits back to society through wealth creation."

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rentseeking.asp


"rent-seeking is an attempt to obtain economic rent, (i.e., the portion of income paid to a factor of production in excess of that which is needed to keep it employed in its current use), by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

[MavsSuperFan]

[QUOTE=K

[K]

So if you are so against renting, how do you propose poor people obtain housing? Should they just live on the street?

How do you propose people who rent space for their commercial business get space otherwise? Eg. restaurants, beauty parlors, etc.

Edit: and actually respond in your own words please, and not just a text wall you found on the internet.

Sigh, you're creating a straw man (I also think you have some confusion with 'rent' which has a different meaning in economics. That may be my fault.)
Anyways, for now I'll just answer your question (although I think I've explained it before):

Think of a car. The car manufacturer produces a car and then you pay for the car. Win win. The problem is, when you put a building somewhere, you not only charge for the building, but, because it's a fixed improvement, you also charge for the land below it, which you did not provide or produce. You impose a deprivation on everyone else and then demand to get paid for it. Furthermore, the reason land has value, and the reason you are able to charge as much as you do for it, is because others make it so valuable: The population around it, the infrastructure around it, the services around it, and so on and so forth. The public has created this value, not you. What I want to do is make the real estate market a win win market just like car manufacturing. You provide/produce a building, you get paid for the building, but NOT for the land. The way you do that is not by forbidding people to collect rent, but by implementing the land value tax. This will funnel what you get paid for the land to be used as tax revenue. Then you get rid of the income tax, the sales tax, and a plethora of other harmful taxes.

Think of this for a second: You're a middle class worker and you pay income tax, sales tax, etc. Then the government taxes you on that productive activity and spends it on infrastructure and services, which makes land more valuable in locations where those are available, and then you have to PAY AGAIN for the same stuff when you pay a landowner for land (whether you pay it periodically as part of a lease agreement or pay it upfront as part of a purchase.) The government squeezing the productive to subsidize landowners is unjust, unfair, oppressive, and I'm sure I could find plenty of other words to describe it.

And, remember, I'm ONLY referring to what's paid for the land, NOT what's paid for the building. Please stop making the claim that I'm opposed to people collecting rent, or other claims along those lines. You should get paid for any buildings you provide just like a car manufacturer gets paid for the cars he provides. I just want to turn the real estate market into a purely productive market instead of an extract as much publicly created value as possible while contributing as little as possible market.

[K]

Can't let this thread die. Gotta spread the truth. Instead of taxing productive economic activity, we could base all taxes on economic rent instead. Land value (by far the most important), natural resource value (still in the ground, not the product of labor at the pump), electromagnetic spectrum, and so on. Just tax the pure economic rent of things in perfectly inelastic supply. Get rid of the damn income tax, get rid of the damn sales tax, get rid of the damn VAT, get rid of the damn improvement portion in the property tax, and so on. We could have completely burden free production with wealth distributed according to productive contributions to the economy. Overall prosperity would skyrocket and we would have much less wealth inequality (Though addressing wealth inequality is not the point of such a tax system, justice is, it just happens to be that injustice is what caused the wealth inequality.).

[K]

Bump.

[MavsSuperFan]

[QUOTE=K

[DCL]

everyone's opinions probably depends on what stage they're in.

i'm out of the renter class, so my personal interests are not in line with renters now. in fact, i actually hope rent can go up as high as possible forever while everything else remains the same, but that's not in my control.

right now, the top 1% owns about 40% or 50% of the wealth. i'm not getting what the very top are getting, but i'm not complaining much yet because i'm still getting some of the pie, however small it is. capitalism is great. capitalism is justice. blah blah blah...

but okay, what if the trend continues and the top 1% starts to own 90% of the wealth and my portion becomes didly squat?

or worse, it hits 99% of the wealth??

i'm sure by that point i would had already said FU(K this capitalism bullshit, we need to socialize this shit! lol

[gigantes]

just came across this...


http://img.izismile.com//img/img7/20140114/1000/morning_picdump_483_42.jpg