🚀 go-pugleaf

royls@telus.net wrote in message news:<4165afff.17748290@news.telus.net>...
> On Thu, 07 Oct 2004 14:16:42 GMT, "sinister" <sinister@nospam.invalid>
> wrote:
> 
> >"Fabrizio J. Bonsignore" <fbonsignore@beethoven.com> wrote in message 
> >news:768f7623.0410070553.346b0d71@posting.google.com...
> >> Latinamerican countries follow all 'recipes' of academia and yet fail
> >> to achieve sustained development. Could it be that people actually
> >
> >Therein lies the problem.  As poster "royls" points out repeatedly on this 
> >list, economics (academic and otherwise) has become corrupted insofar as 
> >they have obscured the "Georgist" critique of taxation---to wit, in its 
> >broadest form, that Ricardian land rents should be mostly taxed away, and 
> >other taxes that are both more distortionary (less efficient) and less 
> >equitable should be reduced.
> >
(snip)
> 
> Yes, Professor Mason Gaffney's 'The Corruption of Economics' details
> how fundamental principles of economic science were deliberately
> subverted in the late 19th and early 20th C specifically to deny
> Single Tax advocates the logical tools they used to prove their case.
>
As I said in the main article of the thread, people wanting to uphold
the status quo will engage in predatory competition (`all they need is
money`) as a way to control the masses. They are bound to `interpret`
economic principles and policies in such a way that they keep the
statu quo, slowing development. It looks like America was from the
beginning a rich country (population against available land) 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. 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. In any case
America`s development was independent of the applicatio of ricardian
taxes. 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.

As for Europe`s development it was a _steady_ affair since the
breaking down of the Roman Empire, though it accelerated from the time
of the Renaissance through to the world wars. May be that under more
rational taxation schemes or the ricardian tax you advocate
development would have been faster, though in this case sane
competition was promoted within nations by the predatory competition
among nations... Paradoxic. Again development was rather independent
from the tax schemes used and more dependent on the non predatory
sharing of ideas and technologies.

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.]
 
> >Finally, note that there's nothing "socialist" about LVT schemes.  Nor 
> >anything remotely Marxist---the person who did the most to push LVT (Henry 
> >George) had substantial disagreements with Marx.
> 
> Indeed, George and Marx apparently detested each other.
> 
> -- Roy L

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