In 1873, Mark Twain published his satirical novel, The Gilded Age, an era magnificently recreated in all its greed, ruthlessness and ostentation in the new HBO series of the same name. Railroads were the hot investment of the day, fueling a frenzy of land speculation. In September of that year, a big New York City bank suddenly went bankrupt. Bank runs began across the country, railroads failed, businesses cut wages and laid off workers. The police beat up unemployed protesters. A young San Francisco journalist, Henry George, struggled to keep his newspaper going and his family fed. Appalled by the suffering he witnessed, he sat down to write a book that would change the world: Progress and Poverty (1879). . . . → Read More: Henry George: Prophet of the Gilded Age
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 Comments are closed  Essay  Bubble, Georgist economics, Henry George, History, Inequality, Real estate bubble Over the last five years, from my 5th floor apartment window, I’ve watched a blue spire rise in the distance. Fifteen blocks south of me, 225 West 57th Street has just joined Billionaires’ Row in Manhattan. At 1550 feet it’s now the tallest. Apartments in these buildings have been selling for over fifty million dollars per floor. The windows grant a falcon’s eye panorama of New York, but visitors on a windy day report feeling seasick from the swaying. No matter. These apartments aren’t for living;they’re for hoarding wealth. . . . → Read More: Fighting the Wealth Hoarders with Transparency and Taxes Comments are closed Book Review Anti-trust, Chuck Collins, History, Inequality, land taxes, Richard Vague, Tax policy The pundits love to denounce populists. They are the ignorant people who rally to the standards of foreign far-right fascists. In the US, they are Donald Trump’s loyal “deplorables” or Bernie Sanders’s “Bernie Bros.” They’re a major threat to democracy. In The People, No, Thomas Frank proposes that anti-populists are the real threat. . . . → Read More: Review of Thomas Frank’s “The People, No” Comments are closed Book Review American history, Georgist economics, Henry George, History, Inequality “The earth is the tomb of dead empires, no less than of dead men.” Thus wrote the American economist and journalist Henry George in his 1879 worldwide bestseller, Progress and Poverty. Adam Smith had identified cooperation and specialization—“the division of labor”—as the forces that generated economic growth and prosperity. George claimed that those same forces led eventually to collapse, as monopolization of land and other natural resources directed more and more wealth into ever fewer hands. Two astute observers have recently offered complementary predictions of the imminent demise of the American empire, and its replacement by China. . . . → Read More: Dead Empires: How China May Overtake the U.S. We are in the midst of a finance-led counterrevolution. The long standing effort to roll back New Deal reforms has moved from triumph to triumph. The foundation was laid via increasingly effective public relations efforts to sell the Ayn Randian world view that granting individuals unfettered freedom of action would produce only virtuous outcomes, since the talented would flourish and the rest would deservedly be left in the dust. In fact, societies that have moved strongly in that direction such as Pinochet’s Chile and Russia under Yeltsin, have seen plutocratic land grabs, declining standards of living (and even lifespans), and a rise in authoritarianism or (in the case of Colombia) organized crime. . . . → Read More: Yves Smith on The Finance-led Counterrevolution and the Rush to Destroy the Safety Net Starting in the Colonial Era, New York, Boston and Philadelphia required all fresh meat to be sold by licensed butchers in regulated public markets. New York abandoned public markets in the 1840’s, with disastrous effects on public health. A working paper[1] by economic historian Gergely Baics lays out the story: Travel back in time to . . . → Read More: From Public Meat Markets to Derivatives Markets: A Lesson from Old New York This is the scariest book I’ve read since The Day of the Triffids. Back in the ‘70’s, US business monopolization seemed bad, but not getting worse. Spinoffs and breakups balanced mergers. Since then, as documented in Cornered by financial journalist Barry Lynn, global monopolization has rapidly returned us to a new age of robber barons. . . . → Read More: Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, by Barry C. Lynn Economists conventionally attribute the Great Depression to blunders by the then-new Federal Reserve Bank. According to this story, promoted by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School, after the stock market crash of 1929, the Fed kept interest rates too high, strangling the economy. This story made most economists confident that it couldn’t happen again. But . . . → Read More: The Great Real Estate Bubble of the Roaring Twenties Mason Gaffney, Groundswell Nov-Dec 2008 (posted 1/29/09) During the Golden Age of Georgist Progressives, roughly 1890 to 1935, lower Michigan stands out as one of the great success stories. Detroit Mayor, then Governor, Hazen Pingree pushed single tax principles. He reformed assessments to emphasize land over improvements, and raised property taxes to provide services for . . . → Read More: What’s the Matter with Michigan? The Rise and Collapse of an Economic Wonder July 4, 1187. Two knights stood on the ridge watching the rising sun glint off Lake Tiberias. They were hopelessly trapped, the treacherous old rogue, Raynald de Chatillon and his foolish young protégé, Guy de Lusignan, King of Jerusalem. Below, between them and the water, lay the fortress of Tiberias and the army of Saladin. . . . → Read More: The Battle of the Horns of Hattin |
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