🚀 go-pugleaf

royls@telus.net wrote in message news:<416b7826.4909901@news.telus.net>...
> On 11 Oct 2004 16:48:24 -0700, fbonsignore@beethoven.com (Fabrizio J.
> Bonsignore) wrote:
> 
> >royls@telus.net wrote in message news:<4169a3b7.20177640@news.telus.net>...
> >> 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.
> >> 
> >There was plenty of fertile land available and then gold.
> 
> The fact that you think the amount of gold was even relevant proves
> you understand nothing of the matter.
> 
The fact that you understood Imeant the amount of gold proves you
understand nothing of what I meant. The gold rush meant a *LOT* of
development, from settling down to the services and producrs that
generated.
> >Singapore,
> >HK, etc are industrial economies.
> 
> <sigh>  They weren't always.  That's kinda the point.
> 
They become, and not because of land taxes, but because they
assimilated a mode of production, the industrialization and commerce,
and had the necessary social support.

> >I am referring to a mostly rural
> >economy as the US was at the beginning.
> 
> Couldn't matter less.
>
Whatever. 
> >I don`t think countries like
> >Brazil or Sudan have much adequate land available;
> 
> I know you don't.  But you are wrong.
>
Why?
 
> >Brazil has to fight
> >the jungle and Sudan the desert.
> 
> But mostly, they have to fight their own corrupt and incompetent
> governments.
>
Besides the point.
 
> >> >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.
> >> 
> >Now that you say so it must have been so, there was not yet all the
> >infrastructure to control income tax revenues.
> 
> It was a matter of policy, not infrastructure.  Other countries --
> countries that stayed poor, like Mexico -- taxed production instead of
> land.
>
Mexico is an atavic country where people is predatory (jealous), from
the cacique to the gossiping comadres.

> >Yet there were other
> >conditions that helped development, like the new rairoad
> >infrastructure,
> 
> ???  Do you think it fell from the sky?
> 
If it did, Mexico was spared the rain. It was a result of the gold
rush...

> >income derramas after slaves were liberated,
> 
> The war that liberated them was one of the costliest in history up to
> that time.
> 
And sealed the future of America as a country based on industry rather
than agriculture with cheap labor.

> >increasing industrialization,
> 
> You confuse cause and effect.
> 
Effects turn into causes. It is a cycle.

> >oil fever, etc. Too many factors to
> >distinguish the effect of the tax scheme,
> 
> Not if you understand some economics.
>
Do we have comprehensive models and data? Can you point to them?
 
> >though maybe somebody can
> >gather the data and perform amore thorough analysis.
> 
> <sigh>  Whenever you're proved wrong, it's always more data and more
> analysis that are needed.
> 
Whenever I am not sure, indeed, more research is needed. 

> Maybe what's needed is for you to realize that you are just _wrong_
> and I am just _right_.
>
Phallacy. The world is flat I am _right_, you are _wrong_. 8)
 
> >> >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.
> >> 
> >A model?
> 
> When the unamimous verdict of historical fact won't convince you, what
> use would a model be?
> 
History is pliable.

> >> >In any case
> >> >America`s development was independent of the applicatio of ricardian
> >> >taxes.
> >> 
> >> That claim is false, as proved above.
> >> 
> >Was not proved, was stated, though the tax scheme might have helped.
> 
> No, actually I proved that you were wrong.  You will never learn
> anything as long as you insist that you are never wrong, because then
> the facts that prove you wrong cannot get into your brain.
> 
If A then B? What where your arguments? You proved nothing. I gave
evodence to the contrary.

> >> >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?
> >> 
> >The tigers have different ideologies that seem to favor cooperation
> >and joint effort.
> 
> <sigh>  So did the PRC, and it stayed poor until it began allowing
> markets to function, and private interests to own capital.
>
PRC? No idea.But without markets any solution is non optimum.

> <heavier sigh>  Japan was poor and backward in 1870, despite its
> long-standing ideology of cooperation and joint effort.  Then its
> _tax_ system was changed to obtain almost all government revenue from
> _land_rents_, and in _one_generation_ it caught up to Europe
> economically and militarily.
> 
> _One_generation_.
> 
If it were that easy, most countries would have had noticed and
developed explosively. The fact there are inefficient policies IS
another aspect of jealous behaviour, as I commented in the original
post.

> Taiwan had its "ideology of cooperation and joint effort" for
> centuries, but it only became rich when it started taxing land after
> WW II.
> 
> Why do you refuse to know the facts?
> 
State them. All.

> >Wasn`t that the Z theory or something similar? And
> >of course ideology is not production, but Poland was already a
> >populated state when the US was being born;
> 
> So was Japan.  But once it started taxing land, it became rich.
> 
Which it Japan or Poland? Poland just recently left socialism and is
trying to enter a full modern market economy.

> >plenty of constraints
> >already in place,
> 
> ???  ROTFL!!  You think the "constraints" in Poland could even _begin_
> to compare to the constraints in Singapore and HK??
> 
Who cares about the comparison? Poland has always been in the middle.

> >and socialism is known to generate local and nt
> >global maxima.
> 
> More garbage.  Socialism is not "known" to "generate" any "maxima" at
> all.
> 
Really? No welfare teory here?

> >> >As for Europe`s development it was a _steady_ affair since the
> >> >breaking down of the Roman Empire,
> >> 
> >> False.
> >>
> >Nothing changed much for 1000 years,
> 
> Wrong.  The end of Roman power in the West created the anarchist
> utopia otherwise known as feudalism.  This system gradually evolved
> over the centuries into the monarchical nation-states of the early
> modern era.
>
Gradually. What I said.

> >only after the Renaissance things
> >started moving and there were no more back steps, only some
> >stagnations due to wars.
> 
> Also wrong.  The stagnations were often due to destructive tax and
> regulatory policies.
>  
> >> >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.
> >> 
> >During that period England was preparing/experimenting the Industrial
> >Revolution...
> 
> Right.  France could have, too, but its tax system was too destructive
> of production, trade and capital.
> 
> >How many times has England been invaded?
> 
> <sigh>  There's always some sort of reason for you to ignore the
> facts, isn't there?
> 
> >> >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.
> >> 
> >Was that the only factor?
> 
> It was the _decisive_ factor, the one that _changed_.
> 
> >> >Apparently whatever benefits people other than the rich is called
> >> >socialism.
> >> 
> >> It is important to identify such lies, and the liars who tell them.
> >> 
> >You mean socialism as a lie?
> 
> The claim that whatever benefits people other than the rich is
> socialism is a lie, in two ways.  Socialism doesn't benefit anyone but
> a handful of the politically powerful, and arrangements other than
> socialism can benefit people other than the rich.
> 
> -- Roy L

Jealousy is a basic human attitude that pervades everything and
manifests in many destructive ways. You want to explain lots of things
with a tax scheme! That`s what I call tunneled fanaticism.