🚀 go-pugleaf

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. Singapore,
HK, etc are industrial economies. I am referring to a mostly rural
economy as the US was at the beginning. I don`t think countries like
Brazil or Sudan have much adequate land available; Brazil has to fight
the jungle and Sudan the desert.

> >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. Yet there were other
conditions that helped development, like the new rairoad
infrastructure, income derramas after slaves were liberated,
increasing industrialization, oil fever, etc. Too many factors to
distinguish the effect of the tax scheme, though maybe somebody can
gather the data and perform amore thorough analysis.

> >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?

> >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.

> >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. 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; plenty of constraints
already in place, and socialism is known to generate local and nt
global maxima.

> >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, only after the Renaissance things
started moving and there were no more back steps, only some
stagnations due to wars.
 
> >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... How many times has England been invaded?

> >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?

> >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? I guess it`s been proven it is not the
best option to achieve development.