Harry, Your last message became gargantuan when in reply mode so I'm writing afresh.
I don't want to write further about "factors of production", whether three, four or forty.
Of course, as you say, there's a correlation between the blunting of a child's mind and degree of parental poverty. But you can make big inroads into cultural poverty (early nursery experience) even though you can never bring economic equality about -- every baby comes with a different genetic kit.
The real issue is not inequality as such but that any society which doesn't seek to maximise the full genetic potential of every new-born child -- and anew in every generation -- is an inefficient society and will sooner or later give way to one that is more efficient.
Yes, we are still short of plumbers and engineers in the UK but that's only because the state-school system, for a couple of decades now, adopted the philosophy of "teaching children to be versatile in a changing society". In other words, teaching them little of any practical value. But we won't be short for much longer. Many of our brightest university graduates who don't manage to be recruited into elite jobs in government, finance or multinationals are now binning their degrees and are re-training as carpenters, electricians and suchlike.
DNA-sequencing is bound to be a growth consumer service. Every mother wants the best possible children and, increasingly, they'll want to see the DNA-grading of their intended partner before committing themselves fully to parentage.
I agree with Henry George that "depressions arrive not because of over-production . . . nor because of under-consumption but of under-production". Over-production and under-consumption only produces relatively short hiccups -- one or two years at the most. But "under-production" can last for many years and must be qualified. The relevant goods must be at the right price.
Keynesianism would have worked in the 1930s because (choosing the UK as an example) there were plenty of new products being made in the Midlands and the South. The problem was that the pound was held at too high a price so there was no opportunity for exports to grow and thus employment to rise to produce more -- and, of course, to buy more domestically.
Money always had intrinsic value (paper money -- silk money in the case of British bank-notes) was a convenient representation of the real stuff until 1914.
I think Georgist taxation policy would do us very well. I've no quarrel with that. That would do nicely to prevent gross wealth inequalities (and it would have tempered the vast growth of bureaucracy also). But that's only the fiscal side of modern economics. It still wouldn't answer to many of the employment and consumerist problems of the industrial revolution which had hardly got started in his day.
Keith
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
