Thursday, December 20, 2012

Ishani Chatterjee Shukla — Economic Rent


Here is a simple explanation of economic rent as gain unnecessary to production.

Buzzle
Economic Rent
Ishani Chatterjee Shukla

4 comments:

LVTfan said...

"Land (this term includes geographical land, building and manufacturing equipment)" -- this is just plain wrong!

Land includes "geographical land"l it includes water, minerals, other non-renewable natural resource; electromagnetic spectrum, geosynchronous orbits and many other like things.

Buildings and manufacturing equipment are NOT Land; they're Capital.

If we take seriously the notion that we are all created equal, then we are all equally entitled to access to the land, and to the value of the land.

But that which we create -- capital -- belongs to he who creates it, after he has paid his fellows for the exclusive access to Land, in the form of paying rent to the community for that secure possession.

Tom Hickey said...

LVTfan said...
"Land (this term includes geographical land, building and manufacturing equipment)" -- this is just plain wrong! 

Land includes "geographical land"l it includes water, minerals, other non-renewable natural resource; electromagnetic spectrum, geosynchronous orbits and many other like things.


Exactly/

Shukla is buying in to the neoliberal collapsing of land as a factor into capital as the factor.

The Arthurian said...

Good link.

I came upon the term "rent" in Adam Smith's TWON and had trouble broadening "payment for a place to live" into "payment for natural resources" but I got there eventually.

I think it was Smith who used the term "rent" for the payment of gold to the king of Spain, when gold was brought back from the New World, because a share was quite obviously owed to the king. That one example helped clarify Smith's rent for me.

These days the word seems to be used in a different way, largely subjective (excessive charges) and confused with the interest of money.

Based on what Shukla says, rent is similar to Marx's profit, simply the excess over labor cost.

I'm still confused.

Tom Hickey said...

Art, the way I conceive of economic rent the way it is generally is as an aspect of the "free rider" problem. I think that the terms "economic rent" is confusing if only because the term "rent" is used differently there from the ordinary language usage that most people are accustomed to and automatically think of when the they encounter it. So I would frame it as productive contribution with value received proportional to value provided v. free ride due to some "privilege," subterfuge, market anomaly, govt capture, illegal activity, etc. that is essentially parasitical because the gain is unearned and the exchange is disproportional. In any exchange there may different proportions of earned and unearned between 100% earned (usually wage labor) and 0% unearned (e.g., crime).