59 responses so far ↓

• Adam C

  Mar 20, 2010 at 11:36 am

  

  Dr. Michael Hudson — The New Road to Serfdom: An Illustrated Guide to the Coming Real Estate Collapse (PDF)
  http://michael-hudson.com/articles/debt/Hudson,RoadToSerfdom.pdf

  ‘Never before have so many Americans gone so deeply into debt so willingly. Most members of the rentier class are very rich. One might like to join that class. And so our paradox (seemingly) is resolved. With the real estate boom, the great mass of Americans can take on colossal debt today and realize colossal capital gains—and the concomitant rentier life of leisure—tomorrow. If you have the wherewithal to fill out a mortgage application, then you need never work again. What could be more inviting—or, for that matter, more egalitarian? — The bubble will burst, and when it does, the people who thought they would be living the easy life of a landlord will soon find that what they really signed up for was the hard servitude of debt serfdom.’ — ‘…commercial real estate investors hide most of their economic rent in “depreciation” write-offs for their buildings, even as those buildings gainmarket value.’

  The Daily Bell — Ingo Bischoff on why a land tax is good and the enduring popularity of Henry George
  http://www.thedailybell.com/503/Ingo-Bischoff-Henry-George.html

  Bischoff: “George’s economic analysis has lost popularity due partly to a concerted effort by land and natural resource “owners” to protect their privilege of collecting community created land values. In this, they are aided by politicians who implement favorable tax policies and by the educational profession which has redefined land as “private” capital, thereby destroying the distinction between land and real capital. Taxation on land value reacts totally different from taxation on real capital. — Americans have long deemed it a right to profit from community created land values. Now that land values are declining [due to deindustrialization], people feel themselves deprived of an assumed entitlement. They are beginning to wonder about the efficacy of speculating in land, particularly when it involves the land underneath their houses. It is quite likely that the present dilemma of declining land values will bring about a resurgence of the land value tax idea.”

  Bischoff: “The kind of taxation for which the school argues is the only tax that when applied does not provide less of what is taxed, namely land values. Any other tax applied causes a diminishing effect to the matter taxed.” — On America: “The only way the crises can be resolved is by returning to the gold standard, by reviving the Bill Market, by returning to the provisions of the original Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and definitely by suspending paragraph (b) of Section 14 of the act, and by repealing “legal tender” laws. Thereafter, the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith will take over and launch us on the road to an unimaginable prosperity, provided of course that the only tax collected by sovereign States and governments is Henry George’s “single [land value] tax”. Due to its constitution, and due to the work ethics, the general common sense and the goodness of its people, the United States is uniquely positioned to overcome the present economic and government crises.”
• Carmen Azul

  Mar 20, 2010 at 12:03 pm

  

  Has anyone seen the new Black Visa Card? I think it’s for people who do black ops, or deal in dark pools or who are good at black (money) holes. Still even for them, if they don’t pay on time they will pay the new “standard” 30% rate, but they will probably have a way around that anyway.
• jim

  Mar 20, 2010 at 12:54 pm

  

  the G financed itself through tariffs
• WL

  Mar 20, 2010 at 2:14 pm

  

  @roach

  Money is a claim on future labour,,…energy is a major component in the productivity of such labour

  @Max
  As I have said,, the colour for a global revolution against the bankster theftocracy is…

  GOLD GOLD GOLD GOLD GOLD GOLD GOLD
• gaspode

  Mar 20, 2010 at 2:50 pm

  

  @ Adam C

  Thanks for the links. Most of the I actually had bookmarked already, but forgotten about.
  We don’t see the forest , for all the trees – as we say in Norway.

  The great Chesterton in his essay Utopia of Usurers :

  “The great difficulty with the English lies in the absence of
  something one may call democratic imagination. We find it easy
  to realise an individual, but very hard to realise that the great
  masses consist of individuals.”
• solipsist

  Mar 20, 2010 at 2:53 pm

  

  Anybody knows Adam Russo’s Movie:
  http://video.google.ch/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173&ei=ddukS76WNJfS-Ab1rsmLDQ&q=Aron+Russo&hl=de&dur=3&client=safari#

  It’s a doku investigating on the topic of US income tax: Seems not to be legal at all!!
  funny isn’t it! Or is the the docu a hoax?????(Don’t think so..)
• Adam C

  Mar 20, 2010 at 6:31 pm

  

  @gaspode

  A very good quote!
• Sam

  Mar 21, 2010 at 4:44 am

  

  @the other sam,I thought we had a lot in common but am realizing that you think of Henry George as some sort of a utopia where I see it as natural law. It doesn’t matter if anyone adopts it, you can still use it to predict market behavior. I think the guys that created the financial crisis understood it well.

  As far as funding a war, you need resources and incentives for the machines of wars. Simply killing taxes on resources that supply the war machine and offering up good old fashioned war bonds should allocate the funds.
• Sam

  Mar 21, 2010 at 4:46 am

  

  @Giuseppe, thanks for checking it out, I hope it helps you filter out the chaos like it did for me.