People around me.

By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan

The same little people who "have lost the distinction between inefficient and efficient taxes" and react negatively to inheritance taxes, real estate taxes, and so on.

Yet I have heard no public discussion here of holding down real estate prices and mortgage debt by increasing the land tax. Politicians avoid this because taxpayers react negatively to any kind of a tax rise. The distinction between economically inefficient and inefficient taxes has been lost from public discussion. A revenue neutral tax shift - lowering sales taxes and income taxes on wages by the amount that property taxes are raised - would not take in any more tax revenue than now. But it would levy taxes in a way that holds down property prices. A positive financial effect would be to leave less revenue available for banks to capitalize into interest charges. Holding down housing and real estate prices - and debt - would lower the cost of living and doing business. This would make the economy lower cost. That should be the aim of every economy - to minimize the cost of living and doing business.

(The Counter-Enlightenment, its Economic Program - and the Classical Alternative By Michael Hudson on February 5, 2010)

By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan

My wife, who is usually reliably progressive, recoiled from my suggestion that we institute a temporary tax on wealth over a few million $US, as the wealthy had most of the discretionary wealth and were not using it in socially beneficial ways. Thirty plus years of successful application of RW propaganda. Thus are we recruited to be the instruments of our own oppression.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."