Who is your favorite political thinker?

J.S. Mill

 

There are many policies that democratically accountable governments have found prudent to relieve the oppression of the underprivileged: minimum wages, welfare, publicly funded education and health care, union monopolies, unemployment insurance, public old age and disability pensions, etc. The main New Deal policies that reduced the severity of downturns were deposit insurance and the Glass Steagal Act.

 

A nice combination of prudent respect for existing institutions and advocacy of justice and liberty.

 

The answer is the people. It is the same answer with any governmental system..

 

True. He was a philosopher.

 

Plato opposed democracy. He was a big admirer of the Spartan oligarchy, which had just beaten Athens in the Peloponnesian War. His idea of the "guardians" is based on Sparta's system.

 

Yes, all true. The idea is to train people to lead rather than elect them to lead. It isn't perfect but has its positive points in my view. The parliamentary system has people vote for ideology rather than people. Political parties handle HR. Political parties could develop guardians and probably should. I think Plato would approve.

 

Just because Henry George said something does not mean it is true. Look at what is actually happening in the economy.

 

Mill was an exceptional combination of high intelligence and profound wisdom.
Awesome genius.

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.” John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

 

https://obviousstate.com/blogs/journal/week-33-john-stuart-mill

 

I never said or implied that it did, and you know it. I have my differences with Henry George, but his economic analysis of taxation and land tenure institutions has never been refuted, and never will be.

Just because something shows you profit from the uncompensated abrogation of others' rights does not mean it is false, and I will thank you to remember it.

Oh, I have, believe me. Far more than you. Have you priced a building lot lately? Are you aware of how difficult high land prices have made it for young people to buy a home? Looks to me like Henry George was bang on.

 

And as the Romans pointed out, "There is nothing so ridiculous that some philosopher isn't saying it."

 

Yes. People who had been taken care of in slavery, now had to fend for themselves. For the 1st time in their lives.
Sure, the 1st time was a challenge.

 

Why have land prices risen? They have risen because of the increase in the U.S. population. Because American citizens born in the United State have achieved zero (or negative) population growth, the growth in the U.S. population has happened because of high immigration rates.

 

I've seen lots on conflicting evidence. We don't know the circumstances where a white child would be adopted by a black family and a white family would adopt a black child. There is a lot of sloppy social science research gobbled up by people with an agenda, left and right. We see their efforts everywhere in education.

 

They've risen because REITs (one example) have turned homes into a commodity.

 

Nonsense. They knew perfectly well how to look after themselves: they had been looking after both themselves and their owners for generations. The landless European peasants who had been fending for themselves all their lives fared no better. It was the forcible, uncompensated removal of workers' liberty rights to use land to sustain themselves unless they paid a landowner full market value just for permission to do so that made them exploitable.

 

There is only one reason land prices ever rise: the market's estimate of the future subsidy to the owner has increased relative to the expected discount rate.

Nope. They have risen primarily because property tax rates have fallen. In US jurisdictions with high property tax rates, land remains more affordable despite immigration. TX has had more net immigration than CA in recent years, but because its property tax rate is double CA's, land and housing are much more affordable.

Although it is true that cet. par., an increased workforce increases land rents (and thus the subsidy to the owner) and reduces wages, the price of land won't increase unless the expected subsidy -- the amount of publicly created land rent the private owner will be legally entitled to pocket in return for nothing -- also increases.

 

They're certainly an investment vehicle. Investors have simply realized that governments will not let house prices stop rising, as homeowners are too stupid to understand that high house prices are not actually in their interest.

 

The circumstances are roughly the same, as adoption agencies all use basically the same criteria.

Yes, and the anti-IQ, anti-genetics agenda is one of the most common and powerful.

 

What don't you understand about the law of supply and demand? There is a limited supply of land. As the population increases the demand for that land increases, so the price of the land increases too.

 

They have risen primarily because of supply and demand just like the prices of everything else. There may be other factors but the law of supply and demand is the basic one.

 

No. The supply of land is fixed, so its price is purely a function of demand. Demand for any given parcel of land is determined solely by the expected future subsidy to its owner -- i.e., how much more he will be legally entitled to take from the community by owning the land than he will ever repay in taxes on it -- relative to the expected future discount rate. The Law of Rent implies that increased working population -- whether through immigration or any other factor -- increases land rents, cet. par.; but the price of land will only increase if the landowner is legally entitled to keep the increased subsidy. It's purely a matter of the market pricing a future discounted income flow.

 

What don't you understand about the supply of land being fixed, and its price therefore being determined solely by demand?

No, there is a fixed supply of land. The supply of everything is limited -- except the stupidity and dishonesty of those who try to justify landowner privilege, of course.

No. Increased population only increases demand for land if the added people can afford to pay for it and the owner gets to keep the increased land rent. If a bunch of refugees with no money and no jobs arrives, or there is a sudden baby boom, demand for land will not increase until the new arrivals are able to pay for land, if ever, and the price of land will only increase to the extent that the owners get to keep the increased rent.