February 14, 2022

Henry George: Prophet of the Gilded Age

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,

Bubble, Georgist economics, Henry George, History, Inequality, Real estate bubble

July 10, 2021

Fighting the Wealth Hoarders with Transparency and Taxes

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

Anti-trust, Chuck Collins, History, Inequality, land taxes, Richard Vague, Tax policy

September 5, 2020

Review of Thomas Frank’s “The People, No”

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

American history, Georgist economics, Henry George, History, Inequality

December 1, 2015

Dead Empires: How China May Overtake the U.S.

“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

Adam Smith, Barry Lynn, China, Empire, Henry George, History, Monopoly

October 28, 2012

Yves Smith on The Finance-led Counterrevolution and the Rush to Destroy the Safety Net

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

Corruption, History, Inequality, Poverty, Tax policy

May 12, 2011

From Public Meat Markets to Derivatives Markets: A Lesson from Old New York

Health policy, History, Markets

July 22, 2010

Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, by Barry C. Lynn

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