🚀 go-pugleaf

On 9 Oct 2004 19:20:20 -0700, fbonsignore@beethoven.com (Fabrizio J.
Bonsignore) wrote:

>It looks like America was from the
>beginning a rich country (population against available land)

Population per land area is almost irrelevant to development or
prosperity, as the contrasting situations in Singapore, HK, etc.
compared to Brazil, Mozambique, Sudan, etc. prove.  What matters is
freedom to produce, and to keep the value one's productive efforts
yield.

>and so
>its initial conditions were such that even under the existence of
>predatory competition the momentum of development promoted either pure
>self-interested behavior or cooperative competition, reinforcing
>development, even without taxing away Ricardian rent.

Wrong.  Until WW I, most government revenue in the USA was from land.

>So either the
>tax schemes used were adequate for development or there was o
>relationship between tax scheme and developmet. And if the tax schemes
>used were not ricardian, ten the argument to discuss is whether
>ricardian taxes would bring (much) more development.

They always have.

>In any case
>America`s development was independent of the applicatio of ricardian
>taxes.

That claim is false, as proved above.

>It is known that it had much more to do with basic moral
>aspects as exhibited by groups like the mormons and quakers or the
>protestant ethic of the particularly American brand of christianity.

Then how do you explain the prosperity of non-Christian societies like
Singapore, HK, Taiwan, and Japan?  How explain the poverty of
Christian Poland under socialism?

>As for Europe`s development it was a _steady_ affair since the
>breaking down of the Roman Empire,

False.

>Again development was rather independent
>from the tax schemes used and more dependent on the non predatory
>sharing of ideas and technologies.

Nope.  France taxed capital and trade in the 17-18th C and stayed
poor, England taxed land and grew prosperous.

>Japan and the Eastern (developed) countries also exhibit cooperative
>comptition and their develompent was more sudden and fast. [It must be
>taken into account that after WWII the USA helped ith huge financing
>both world zones.]

Wrong again.  Japan has experienced two eras of rapid growth: the
Meiji period and the post WW II period.  In both cases, that rapid
growth resulted from taxation of land rents; when the burden of
taxation was shifted off land rents and onto production, growth slowed
or stopped.

>Apparently whatever benefits people other than the rich is called
>socialism.

It is important to identify such lies, and the liars who tell them.

-- Roy L