On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 10:34 AM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > Sabri Oncu wrote: >>>> The "solution" of course, would be to figure out how to raise the rate >>>> of profit, by ending the political/economic/technical problems that >>>> are depressing it. > >>> One step in that direction can be taxing all the rents (including >>> capital gains on real estate and financial assets) heavily to >>> discourage nonproductive investements, that is, speculation and/or >>> ponzi. If the buildings depreciate, how is it that the house prices >>> appreciate? It is the land underneath whose price appreciates, not >>> price of the building . Tax that appreciation, adjusted for inflation, >>> heavily, for example, and the like. That would discourage the >>> "rent-seeking" a recent Financial Times article was complaining about. > > Gar wrote: >> Georgism. Marx was very respectful of Henry George. > > The first of the "demands" in the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO was "Abolition > of property in land and application of all rents of land to public > purposes." Some followers of George would endorse that, since > land-rents wouldn't exist. > > On the other hand, Marx saw land-rent (and by extension, other kinds > of scarcity-rents that economists have talked about since then) as > only one form of surplus-value. It's the latter which he wanted to > abolish.
But Henry George did NOT just focus on land rents, but on all rents that stemmed from monopoly, and considered excessive wealth inequality to be the result of monopoly. So this had a huge overlap with simply abolishing capitalism. I don't know if Marx actually learned from George, or was simply impressed that without access to the the great libraries and great left and liberal intellectuals Marx had, George got as far as he did. > -- > Jim Devine / "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to > be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But > in poetry, it's the exact opposite." -- Paul Dirac > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l -- Facebook: Gar Lipow Twitter: GarLipow Solving the Climate Crisis web page: SolvingTheClimateCrisis.com Grist Blog: http://grist.org/author/gar-lipow/ Online technical reference: http://www.nohairshirts.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
