Joe Collins — Getting to the bottom of this ‘shitty rent business’…

The rent-seeking argument emerging out of the progressive side of the mainstream economics community runs something like this: the top 1% are socially unproductive and receive obscene amounts of money by securing themselves into positions of ownership that permit them to misappropriate wealth. Taken to its logical conclusion this argument would suggest that ‘elites’ are the problem and once we mitigate their ability to appropriate unearned gains, we can get on with establishing a good society where there is relative equality of opportunity and a more desirable amount of economic inequality. Sounds great! But does it work and is it enough?

David Ruccio’s ‘sense’ on why this is happening is accurate – grotesque inequality has made marginal productivity theory untenable so the search is on for an alternative means to understand the post-GFC world....

Progress in Political Economy

Getting to the bottom of this ‘shitty rent business’…
Joe Collins | Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney