I understand that more value can be added to an economy by working smarter rather than harder. I was just addressing Rika getting all defensive about all the hard work he does. He is not adding more value to the economy than even the trash collector though, if all his income is derived from collecting rents. You can't neglect all the investment that could be added to the economy if Joe Sixpack didn't have to spend half his paycheck on rent every month. This is all just a long way of me saying "the rent is too damn high!"

quite the contrary... It is clear that exponential and irresponsible expansion of debt-servicing is a desperate bid to maintain growth in a time when the cost of producing usable energy (needed for our mechanized economy) continues its relentless climb.

As was said earlier, it's all our financial masters know how to do any more.

So you think increasing the tax landlords pay will lower rents?

Joe Sixpack is going to have a hard time earning a paycheck w/o a place to live. A landlord does considerably more than just collect rent. Did you even read Rika's post?

Mergers, acquisitions, market making, business supply/pricing insurance, IPOs, wealth transfer, asset conversion, deal facilitating...

The finance industry is more sophisticated and useful than ever. Where on Earth do you get the idea that "debt servicing is all they know how to do any more"? The trend has gone the other way for 100 years, especially now with low interest rates.

Just so we're clear, Henry George was essentially a physiocrat ... someone who recognizes that it's absolutely labor that drives growth, not finance. One could distill that down to the energy that provides said labor.

In other words: It's energy that drives growth.

It's satisfying to see one of my more dedicated detractors essentially agreeing with my main presmise.

In other words, a bunch of tricks with finance, entirely enabled by debt and asset price inflation. "Wealth transfer," indeed.

Central banks were once supposed to free government from having to borrow from private bondholders. Instead, what they've become is merely a mechanism to create money FOR banks to lend for the purpose of increasing the economy's debt overhead.

"It's the exploding gasoline that drives the wheels, not the lubrication on the joints, therefore why do we have the lubrication?" That's about the level of your analysis.
The things I listed aren't "a bunch of trick with finance". They're major standalone services of great worth. They really should give basic finance education in school, I'm embarrassed for you. You haven't the faintest clue how things work, so you think that the lubrication and piping in the system is dead weight/a drag because it doesn't directly drive the wheels and is not an energy input.

LOL... that's not at all what I said. Though I do find it amusing that a cultist of finance like you would suggest the financialization of the economy is the "lubing and piping" of the system. That speaks volumes.

Marx's other points aside (which I don't particularly agree with or have mixed feelings about), it is important to note what I have bolded.

Capital is real TS is mostly right. But, much of modern capital (that lent out by banks) is not earned. It is given to them by the government. This actually is a problem.

As I have said many times, we don't have true capitalism. Basically, unadulterated libertarianism and capitalism is optimal.

That's exactly what you said. Your friend is quoting the moron, Marx (which is like quoting Hitler), with the claim that labor is what drives the economic system and the rest is rent seeking of various kinds. This economic philosophy was used to justify the forceful creation of every major failing economy of the second half of the 20th century.

You're pushing views that no one takes seriously and that is completely at odds with how economies work. In short, you're a ****wit who lacks basic economic literacy or the tiny bit of intellectual curiosity required to understand how the world works.
That's precisely what it is. The financial system brings together disparate assets and capital holders and capital seekers, makes illiquid capital liquid with minimum friction, mixes capital to improve combustion, heats and cools the system as needed, creates piping to transport capital with minimal fuss and cost, lubricates the moving parts by making markets, provides localized shock absorption as needed, and stores fuel to pump to underfed systems or new areas that open up. Finance is vast lubrication and lowest-cost transport system that drives modern economies.

This is in no way controversial. You just have the understanding of the world of a chimpanzee.

LOL... no, it isn't. ... Anyhow, here is the point where your latest angry screed officially disqualified itself.

You can kick and scream at how "dumb" you insist anyone is who fundamentally disagrees with your awful world view, but all your gyrating and trolling on a personal level it's not doing much for your painfully flawed argument. Finance doesn't drive growth. Sorry that fact irks you so. ... Perhaps you should stick with topics you're super well-respected for here, like the inadequacies of "non-homogeneous" cultures and the virtues of the WASPy northern Europeans.

If anyone doubted you were a total idiot after your peak oil thread, this statement seals the deal.

Of course finance drives growth. You opinion here seems to be that lending, market creation, market making, deal facilitation, cost hedging, price or supply insurance, capital raising, facilitating low friction liquidity, are economically worthless activities.

That makes you an intellectually worthless person. No one here takes you seriously

There's a lot to talk about on this topic, including discussing localized aspects of rent seeking in finance, but your categorical claim above that finance is worthless ("it doesn't drive growth") makes you a nutcase on par with a flat earther.
My argument here has been perfectly clear. Yours has been an exercise in intellectual cowardice - you refuse to provide examples of the many things you claim in abstract, you refuse to say how to take advantage of these huge market distortions you claim to see, you refuse to engage substantively on anything, you refuse to answer questions.

If there's no trade or positioning you're suggesting we make on this, then this is a politics thread, sorry. I guess you learned your lesson from the peak oil thread, predicting imminent economic collapse back in 2014 and a sky high oil price, right before it plunged from $100 to $30, based on similar abstract thinking and a refusal to engage on concrete details. LOL dude. Some people have the sense to learn from their errors.

Wipe your monitor, you're frothing all over it again. When you get particularly nasty, I can tell it's a topic that you're desperate about.

I didn't say your industry was entirely worthless, merely that it ultimately isn't the driver of real economic growth. Your industry of choice, the way it exists today, is largely a parasite; a tangible drag on the real economy. And, still, people like you prefer to obliterate all oversight of your industry of choice. How convenient.

The "invisible hand" has a long history of giving your heroes (who have gamed the system) a perpetual reacharound, while offering a stiff middle finger for everyone else. We have a nation of debt servitude, and trolls like you call it a boon.

You admire a financializing industry that aims to turn profits into interest and stock buybacks. Using fluffy language re: securities manipulation and "mergers and acquisitions" doesn't change the fact that in an era of continued sluggish growth, real growth, we're increasingly enduring the approach toward a zero-sum world. For all the money tricks big banks play, and all the profits earned, huge swaths of people (indeed, most people) are being f***ed over, deep and hard. You're the kind of individual who sees that as a big plus, and something that should be expanded.

It's one thing to say debt should be facilitated directly by the government (it is indirectly backed by SBA for businesses and Fannie Mae for housing currently)... it's quiete another to say debt services and rent is a useless service. You can't sustain optimal growth without access to borrowed assets such as capital and land/offices. You don't really understand what is required to rent out assets but it is not completely laborless.... it is a service that people obscure so much that they think it is not labor but actually is. I don't think you even have a thesis besides our system is horrible and it should be different and are going on a rant about how everyone who doesn't work with their hands is destroying the world.

Oh, it's clear. Just flawed, and void of any real moral compass. You're also offensively dishonest about my position, creating an endless stream of straw men.

Different when you do it, though, huh? When you start addressing my points and answering my questions, and stop trying to steer the discussion only in the irrelevant tangents you prefer, I'll consider answering yours.

I notice you sidestepped the assertion that the rentier class engages in willful asset price inflation and creates debt deflation. But you damn sure insist I respond to all your distraction. LOL...shut up.

Gosh, which is it? Did I "learn" or not "learn?" You seem to still be contradicting yourself from one passage to the next.

Still awarding yourself a trophy vs. that PO straw man, though, huh? Newsflash: That's not what my argument ultimately said. You still confuse the trading price of oil vs. the real cost of extraction, minus federal subsidy. You can keep lying about (or misunderstanding) what we argued about back then, and I'll be happy to correct the record.

You have a vast history of being a dishonest clown here, and it's funny that you suggest anyone else here has a "credibility problem." We all see how you're received throughout this forum. It's not pretty.

fail.

I love the scared hedging you're now doing after stepping in it so badly and completely discrediting yourself.

Ultimately if an economic activity costs labor and doesn't drive economic growth, it's worthless.

I'm glad you used the word tangible. Second chance: give me concrete examples of how finance is a net drag on the "real economy" today.

What kind of weirdo are you? I have never suggested "obliterating all oversight" or even toning it down. I like regulation on the finance industry. It's an industry of scumbags and thieves who need regulating. That has nothing to do with the immense value their industry provides.
Intelligence and organizing ability is the reacharound. What the worthless people like you fail to understand is that all systems have a perpetual reacharound. People like you who overvalue abstracts (because you are too slow to grasp the shape and outcomes of complex ecologies) think you can eliminate or diminish the reacharound. It is not possible and what we have now is by far the best system ever created for making the system work for all. No one has created a better system for the poor than Western capitalism and Western financing and Western financial and stock markets.

I do. You know why? Because anyone can buy into that system and join in the profits of the rich. If I have $7 to my name I can buy PDEX stock and get the same return as millionaire and have the managers work for me just the same as for the millionaire. That is an amazing thing, and in fact it's the engine of much of the growth of the middle class. Name a similar wealth engine in any Marxist country?

How are they being "****ed deep and hard"? Poverty has been declining for decades, people are more comfortable than ever, healthier than ever, live longer than ever, better educated than ever, more leisure time relative to income than ever.

I'm sorry that the guy who uses his amazing brain to make chips at Intel doesn't get paid the same as the guy parking cars. I really am. That sucks. It's also life and there's no way to fix it without making everyone poorer. It's been tried, many times, always to failure.

I am? For what it's worth, I'm left of the left in terms of social safety nets. I love free education, health care, high minimum wage, having grown up in a country where those were in play and seem to work well.

How many things do you want to be wrong about? Whether the finance industry is a huge positive or purely rent seeking has nothing to do with my social political preferences, which are as stated above.

You're just a total ****wit man. You need to understand this at some point if you're ever going to have a chance of not being one. I say this sincerely, you spend so much energy on stuff that is either worthless or wrong. It's a waste, dude.

In a normal, non-insane person, your giant ****up in the peak oil debate would have given you a wake up call. Instead you double down.

It is worth distinguishing between working hard and working smart.

I actually do not think that capital should be taxed at all. Certainly so long as we have separate countries, (and all else being equal) the countries that do not tax capital will pull ahed of those that do.

Well, you kind of DID question whether there was any value to the industry when you asked whether the financial industry actually produced products.

That was the second line of the thread.

The answer is that they do.

Even if you think the industry i rife with fraud it doesn't change that. The proportionality of fraud (or deceptive, predatory behavior) to legitimate commerce is i guess a matter of some dispute but there's clearly a lot of good being done.

I'm a landlord, and yes I do. (in fact I work WAY harder!)

What about landlords that contract out all maintenance to a company? And have you ever even worked a blue collar factory job? Aren't you a poker pro turned Cardrunners coach, turned landlord? You wouldn't last a single shift at the steel mill.


"Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title." -- John Stuart Mill

You can't possibly be serious.

NooseKnot is that you?

It's completely missing the point to say that some landlords work hard - a hard working landlord is more aptly defined as a property manager. There're plenty of people who own land or other types of real estate who use it to generate rents with very little if any input.

Who cares though? You don't have to work to collect dividends from stocks you own either. If you stop people from being able to accumulate wealth they'll either stop doing the work that society values or move to a country that will let them.

This would be true even if we moved more towards a consumption based tax model.