Thomas Piketty identifies an important ill of capitalism but not its cure
Editorials like this are arriving all over the globe, from many diverse sources who feel that their ill-gotten status is threatened by Piketty re-lifting the same waistcoat .... as well as by the many who already knew the ailment, had seen the flab before the waistcoat was donned, and are impatient for a cure - not just yet another description.
A diagnosis is only half way to a cure? And a description is only half way to a diagnosis of how the ailment was brought to be.
There's an old saying in philosophy.
To know the truth, ask "why" five times.*
* example:
1) Why is there declining resilience & growing Output Gaps? Inequality.
2) Why is there inequality? Biased incomes & taxes.
3) Why are there biased incomes & taxes? Biased policy.
4) Why is there biased policy? Grossly impaired feedback loops.
5) Why are there grossly impaired feedback loops? Neglected practice at democracy?
[It seems that we have constipated democracy.
It's backed up more than 5 steps!]
(This calls for more than just political_ExLaxPlus.)
(Our PolicyColon needs some DemocracyProBiotics, as systemic replacement therapy.)
(If Adaptive Rate is going to stay the same, everything must change - sooner.)
If it takes 700 pages to say "inequality" ... then we're going nowhere, as fast as Henry George did, 100+ years ago.
2 comments:
Scott Baker writes:
"the author is wrong. In practice, it is quite possible to separate land from what's built upon it. It's been done in cities all over the world, with uniformly positive results, from Altoona to NYC (in the 1920s and early 1930s) to Hong Kong and Singapore. No economic policy is ever pure, of course, but wherever the Single Tax is applied it "works and works always" in the words of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's 27-year Mayor, who saw his city transformed, he says, because of the Land Value Tax, taxing land vs. buildings at a 6:1 ratio:"
https://vimeo.com/48907519
Yes, one can't help but notice that that's exactly what's BEEN done - in order to discriminate in the opposite direction. Translation: the editorial author knows which side his bread is buttered on. :(
Interestingly, I've been talking to city & county EconDev offices here in Maryland, and they all have incentive packages geared to physical capital.
When queried why, the std answer - post dull surprise - is that it's easy to see & track tangible capital, and too difficult for them to manage & track more amorphous capital such as level of organization, democracy, or return-on-coordination.
That mostly still completely side-steps the issue of taxing "capital improvements" more than land itself, yet the pat answer there is that it's easier to provide public incentives for physical capital improvement vs taxing the physical OR human capital itself.
Which of course only opens up the issue of payroll taxes.
Bottom line seems to be that this electorate lacks the context awareness to look deeply into context management ... which surely implies that we are NOT an "informed electorate."
ps: don't ask about incentives for public support of educational capital; that's apparently asking for subsidies for the unfit, uneducable & undeserving (aka, the 99% who didn't yet steal any significant physical capital)
go figure
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