Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Peter Barnes — Don’t Ditch Capitalism. Tax Its Extractive Side Effects and Use it to Fuel Growth

How to create a bottom-up stimulus machine in which the people rather than the government do the spending.
Evonomics
Don’t Ditch Capitalism. Tax Its Extractive Side Effects and Use it to Fuel Growth
Peter Barnes

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Rent takes away from the real economy and adds to the cost of doing business which makes the economy less competitive. That is why I suggested that there needs to be a tax on rent, not because I thought that it funded government. Until the US taxes rent and excess incomes then there is no reason to talk about equality.

Ignacio said...

Gary yes, take for example the huge rent extraction scheme that is US pharma. Like you pay above 300% on average than most countries, in some cases 5000% more. Yet you have people thinking this is not rent extraction and is 'perfectly normal'. But the non-american Pfizer CEO's need to live too, no?

And all those insurance and outrageous medical salaries, someone has to pay for (with a dysfunctional healthcare system). Or the corrupt justice-police-prison complex? MIC, big oil, etc. etc. etc.

The "problem" is if you fixed all the shit jobs that are around you would end up with an economy 50% the size it is now and without as many billionaries, and then you would have to look at how to create real productive jobs, etc.

A conundrum.

Unknown said...

"The "problem" is if you fixed all the shit jobs that are around you would end up with an economy 50% the size it is now and without as many billionaries, and then you would have to look at how to create real productive jobs, etc."
Ignacio: I disagree. I suspect that if all of the money that is extracted from us as rent and goes to the FIRE sector was spent in the real economy then there would be almost complete employment. The money wouldn't be going to insurance, banks, and real estate which would leave the rest of us more money to spend on goods and services.