Truth To Power wrote:That can never happen under capitalism, which inherently takes a larger and larger fraction of GDP and gives it to landowners in return for nothing. As Henry George demonstrated in "Progress and Poverty" (and we have seen repeatedly proven by the history of capitalist countries), the relentless depredations of all-devouring rent, if left unchecked by government, will beggar and destroy the landless working class and the economy. The more the economy advances, the greater the population and accumulation of capital and technology, the lower natural market wages are in absolute terms. It's the Law of Rent, and there is no escape from it. All we can do to save ourselves and our societies is stop giving the publicly created land rent away to privileged private parasites.
Harmattan wrote:And yet since Henry George's book was published we observe that workers became far richer (in actual quality of life and labor), that many people no longer work at all (<25 and >65) or only a few hours a week.
Because GOVERNMENT has over-ruled the capitalist market outcome through massive interventions: welfare, unemployment insurance, minimum wage laws, union monopoly privileges, labor standards laws, publicly funded health care, education and pensions, subsidized housing, workers' compensation systems, etc. In EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY where a capitalist system of private property in land is well established and well enforced, but government does NOT undertake those massive interventions to rescue working people from its effects, idle landowners are fabulously wealthy, while the wages and condition of typical landless workers are approximately equivalent to those of slaves: India, Bangladesh, Guatemala, the Philippines, Pakistan, El Salvador, etc. And it is not that those workers are unproductive. They are producing goods similar to those produced in wealthy countries, using similar capital. The difference is that their governments serve
only landowners, rather than just
mainly landowners, as the governments of advanced capitalist countries do.
Henry George was of course right regarding the inevitable rise of rents and their detrimental effects on the economy. But because this capital concentration destabilizes the system, the pendulum always end up swinging to the other side.
Tell it to the landless workers of Bangladesh, the Philippines, or any other country where capitalism unrelieved by massive government interventions to mitigate the effects of private landowning holds sway.
So not only this is cyclic but, besides of that, productivity improvements offset this trend and make everyone richer year after year, almost every year.
That claim is flat false, as the rapid capital accumulation in the countries identified above, combined with continued and even worsening poverty for working people, proves.
No, it is CREATING money by lending it at interest that is so damaging. Lending at interest carries its risks, but it is a vital way of allocating purchasing power productively through time.
Who cares?
Only people who care about liberty, justice, and prosperity (i.e., not you).
How much are economic crises worth when this system managed to eliminate hunger and provide us with warm houses, cascades of hot water in the morning, plenty of enjoyments and intellectual stimulations.
It didn't, as shown by the countries listed above, where your favored system is also in effect. It was governments serving all the people rather than just landowners in the advanced democracies that eliminated hunger, provided warm houses and hot water, etc.
Of course capitalism creates crises, of course traders are nothing more than dangerous gamblers, etc.
Traders aren't the problem, but rather rent seekers who find ways to force others (especially taxpayers) to shoulder the downside risks, while they pocket the upside rewards themselves.
But other systems are also cyclic and at least the average results of capitalism are nothing less than excellent. Look at the past two centuries!
In the last two centuries, I see a stark contrast between what happens where government lets landowning take its natural course under capitalist market conditions -- i.e., where landowners take everything but subsistence from everyone else -- and what happens where democratic governments try to mitigate the worst effects of capitalism on the landless through the kind of massive interventions I identified above (though of course they still shovel large fractions of GDP into landowners' pockets in return for nothing).
Your "argument" is logically equivalent to one that apologists for slavery made in the antebellum South: that the slaves' health, diet, safety, material living conditions, life expectancy, etc. were distinctly better than those of free people still living in West Africa. Sure. That's true. But that better outcome was largely the result of
laws protecting slaves' interests, not of the institution of slavery, which would otherwise have reduced them to worse conditions than the free but less advanced peoples of West Africa -- as the appalling condition of
slaves in West Africa proved.
Truth To Power wrote:We have been through this over and over again. Check out any of half a dozen threads on banking and money.
Nunt wrote:Unfortunatly, only several threads with your claims unsubstatiated by evidence.
That is flat false. Others as well as I have posted quotations from authoritative sources, including the Fed and other central banks and senior bankers. The de novo creation of money through lending in typical modern banking systems in advanced countries is a fact well known to economists. It is just a fact that is not known to
you, because you do not know any economics.