I would note, however, that "honest hard work" does not, in the ordinary course of events, enable one to live off rents.
Then the problem is the organisation of the stock market.
Partly. There is no doubt that the stock market could serve its legitimate purpose with much less fuss and bother than today. But no matter what, it's hard to imagine that the stock market will ever be dominated by IPOs. That's what private equity does, and I don't see what the stock market can do there that existing structures don't do just as well.
I agree, and I could return your sentence and say that you cant even put one brick if you don't have the funds to buy it.
You do not need mortgages to build houses. Much of the value of the mortgage is backed not by the house, but by the land it stands on, which could be communally owned. In that case, it is certainly possible to build houses with equity alone, and no mortgage. That houses are leveraged five-to-one is a relatively recent phenomenon, as the history of political economy goes...
Providing the means is just as important as managing the work or actually putting the bricks.
Depends on your definition of "the means" - if you mean the bricks and the mortar and the railroad to transport them from where they're produced to where they're needed... then yes. If you mean the "money," then no. Money is dependent on the real economy, not the other way around.
I understand who needs to take a haircut, but you confirmed my thought - we can suspect who fatcats are, but not be certain, or generalize.
We can provide general rules about who need to take haircuts. That's not a perfect match for who are the fatcats, but it comes close enough for practical political purposes.
We can also provide pretty good rules of thumb to identify fatcats directly. Any billionaire is a fatcat, for example, by the very fact that he is a billionaire. But not every fatcat is a billionaire (some are "merely" multi-millionaires, while some have little in the way of tangible assets, but are on the inside of the network of Good Old Boys).
But of course there is a sliding scale, and some will fall in a grey area which requires case-by-case evaluation, and permits a modicrum of personal taste to enter into evaluations.
The poorest, then?
No, everybody who makes less than two times the median income. That - by definition - includes more than half of the population. It's been a long time since more than half of the population of any industrialised economy could justifiably be called "the poorest."
Why mind you the median incomes can't be Joes too - are they not most touched by this crisis, and are they not the most numerous, and those who pay most taxes?
Last time I checked, "median income" x 2 > "median income"
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
By means I also mean the funds needed. Money is not dependent as is a part of the real economy become fluid, you can't give more value to one or the other. Banks are necessary, but companies run by financial barons can be just as weird as those run by their own employees - without that meaning that either one cannot possibly succeed.
I doubt a billionnaire has all those money in bank accounts and on his very name. He'll tell you he only owns stock in successful companies. We can count the houses they own under their name though - and the size of those houses. Or the private jets and the Ferrraris. Mmm. Checking every citizen's fortune then, all the time, all through their life?... I dont say you're wrong, but thinking how to put it in practice - I don't see how any sensible person should own 20 million. Republicans would tell you those millions come back into the large pool of the economy anyway - and one way or another trickle down :) A NYT article was mentioning a certain belt-tightening starting to trickle up btw, very funny. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
5-1 leveraged houses or 40-1 leveraged banks are a category in itself, we should leave them out.
5-1 leveraged means a 20 % down payment. That's actually the norm for responsible real-estate finance in most parts of The West(TM).
Of course, that leverage ratio goes down over time (assuming that you're not on an interest-only loan...).
Money is not dependent as is a part of the real economy become fluid, you can't give more value to one or the other.
Economies existed long before anything we would recognise as "money." And money existed long before anything we'd recognise as "banks."
Money is a way to decide who can exercise command over other people's labour. There are other ways that societies can decide that. Now, you can make a case that those are not as efficient, or as politically desirable. But that does not change the fact that money is a command and control structure, not a resource.
I doubt a billionnaire has all those money in bank accounts and on his very name. He'll tell you he only owns stock in successful companies. We can count the houses they own under their name though - and the size of those houses. Or the private jets and the Ferrraris. Mmm. Checking every citizen's fortune then, all the time, all through their life?... I dont say you're wrong, but thinking how to put it in practice - I don't see how any sensible person should own 20 million.
Motor vehicles and maritime vehicles are already registered as part of the licensing process, so they can be taxed the same way as factories and real estate. But actually, I don't really care if you have four yachts in the harbour (as long as you pay your fuel taxes...). That's not a problem. Control of seats in parliaments and control of the means of production are a problem.
Of course you can stash a billion € in the Bank of Serta, and there'd be bugger all the tax authorities could do about it without breaking into your home. But that has a negative net return on investment (due to inflation), so that problem goes away on its own.
Keep an inventory of all real estate in the country (this has to be done anyway, in order to do city planning).
sensible planning? what's that? in the UK registration only has to take place at change of ownership, and consequently 40% is still unregistered, and that 40% is mainly owned by the Aristocracy, who are one of the main groups avoiding tax.
Land Registry : Press notice
Land Registry - the government department responsible for registering land ownership in England and Wales - is encouraging landowners to voluntarily register their land, securing their ownership with state-backed registration. In North Yorkshire 42 per cent of land remains unregistered. In England and Wales the amount of unregistered land is just under 40 per cent.
