Greece To Return Classical Masterpiece

[Raúl Ilargi Meijer]

William Henry Jackson Silverton, Colorado 1901 An Automatic Earth afficionado who goes by the moniker GeoLib posted something in the comments section
[See the full post at: Greece To Return Classical Masterpiece]

[Raleigh]

Great post! I was once shocked at how cheaply apartment buildings are taxed, often paying the same property taxes as someone with a single house. I was told that this was done to keep apartment rents down, but I didn’t believe this for a second. The saving somehow didn’t get passed on to the renters, who ended up paying what the market would bear. The cheaper taxes solely benefited the owner. I know of someone who owns 20 such apartment buildings, outright, and yet they pay little tax on the land and, if you look at their taxes, after depreciation and maintenance costs are deducted (even though maintenance costs are usually passed on to the tenants), pay little income tax.

I don’t have time to think about it more right now, but I like it. It’s really just common sense. No wonder the truly wealthy have fought it so hard and made sure they owned the mouthpieces, the media.

[imaginer]

Here is a simple model to understand this concept.
https://www.henrygeorge.org/isms.htm

HENRY GEORGE AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF CAPITALISM
https://www.wealthandwant.com/docs/Andelson_HGRC.html

The Mason Gaffney Reader: Essays on Solving the “Unsolvable”
https://masongaffney.org/

Banking and Monetary reform along with Henry Georges “single tax” is the answer to our looming problems. It would also greatly help to unite our divided country.

Thank you for publishing this.

[GeoLib]

Thanks for featuring this Ilargi – especially for re-printing the whole Gaffney piece – he’s a good writer isn’t he.
One thing I should have tried to get across more is George’s contention -it gets more relevant by the day- that failure to reform in this way must lead to a crisis. Fred Harrison is very concerned about this:
Fred Harrison: Optimal Policies for Avoiding World War III

[Raúl Ilargi Meijer]

GeoLib, by all means return to the topic and write more. You’re not bad yourself.

[John Day]

It seems that the land valuation being separate from “improvements” is problematic to the socializing intent, and the intent to eliminate parasitic renting of owned assets.
The apartment building is an improvement, which dramatically increases the rent extraction from the underlying land. A single family dwelling may have been next door, built 50 years ago, and owned by an elderly retired couple.
There is devil in such details.
Taxing “unearned income” very highly might be a modern equivalent, and capital controls on absentee-owners would be a battleground.
The intent needs to be revamped periodically, because rentiers will figure out ways around any set of fixed defenses. Each advantage will be leveraged to further advantages, as this story tells.

[skintnick]

@geolib Please amend Fred Harrison video to show the whole screen (some is cut off) or post a link instead. Thanks.

[GeoLib]

You’ll find it on his Geophilos channel. There’s not much to see – it’s a listener.
Every video on Geophilos is worth watching – Harrison has travelled widely to demonstrate that the whole world – and history can be viewed through a Georgist lens.
His accusation that our governments, aware that there is a better tax system yet unwilling to implement it have committed treason, is devastating cf The Treason Trilogy:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPH9HmStti0TUGokTQGJD4_cQ3uEgO3Ss

[Scott Baker]

Tell me how this makes sense:
There are millions of jobs to be done. There are millions of people who want to do them. The Land has value, but money does not; money is not wealth, as Henry George proved long ago.
Fiat money like we have is not even “scarce.” It is not something we can “run out of.”
So, what the heck is this fear of debt? Forget the banks. We don’t need them to provide money. We actually have a Coinage Clause in the Constitution to allow Congress to “coin Money” (Art. 1, Sec. 8. Clause 5).
Henry George was also Greenbacker, like his part-contemporary, President Lincoln, issuer of the original “Greenbacks” (U.S. Notes). Congress can do this again, at any time, for any reason, for any amount. We have nearly a Trillion dollar Output Gap now, says the CBO, so forget about inflation for now. Let’s just get people working again and lower real unemployment.
OK, enough. I cover all this and more in my new book: America is Not Broke!
See here: https://tayen-lane.squarespace.com/america-is-not-broke
Chapter 1 is about Greenbacking
Chapter 2 is about Georgism
Chapter 3 is about Public Banking
Chapter 4 is about Government Financial Asset Hoarding (10s of trillions of dollars…yes, it is)
Chapter 5 is about hundreds of billions more in potential assets and revenues.
Stop the scaremongering. It’s all a political scam. America is Not Broke!

[SteveB]

Ilargi, I don’t think it’s that “George’s words show us that we could do much better than we do, but we don’t want to.” The incentives of money use are simply too strong to be held at bay for long. This is like so many other local approaches (e.g., local currencies) that have a short half-life. Someone, somewhere, somehow will be motivated to stamp it out in order to increase their own profit. The proof is today’s system. Or even the system as it stood 30, 40, or even 70 years ago. To whatever extent this can be reenacted, I certainly wouldn’t oppose it. Whether it would be as viable in a world of declining energy is an interesting question. Ultimately, though, it’s still a strategy for how to play the game rather than how to end the game.

[Nassim]

Raleigh,

A land tax is just that – it is not a tax of the liveable square footage. If the apartment building occupies that same area of land as a single residence, and they are both in the same locality, they should both pay the same tax.

[Formerly T-Bear]

My-oh-my, another bright glittery thing. A thing that solves ALL problems. Except having an educated, well-informed knowledge of economics. Have at it …

Might it be nothing but an opinion that the Greek finance minister’s position is anything like Geo-whatever says it is? That is information I certainly don’t have about the Greek finance minister’s state of mind. George attempted to address conditions of his age but that does not make them relevant now.

[GeoLib]

T-Bear you said: “Might it be nothing but an opinion that the Greek finance minister’s position is anything like Geo-whatever says it is?”
I was waiting for that question. Varoufakis, from what I’ve seen, has never declared himself to be a Georgist (there are good reasons for not dropping the G word) yet he’s been interviewed online by the Henry George School of Social Science on several occasions, and his language – as I’ve demonstrated – is rentier focussed – he doesn’t attack the capitalist as you might expect of a “marxist”.

“My-oh-my, another bright glittery thing. A thing that solves ALL problems.”
This is simply one of the things anyone studying land reform/LVT has to get over. Dive in and read Fred Harrison’s “The Silver Bullet” (haha) – or watch his 2 videos that accompany the book:

[Raúl Ilargi Meijer]

Any video embedded in the comments section here should ideally be 560px wide. You can get the code through the Share->Embed->options of the video in question on YouTube.

[TheTrivium4TW]

“Now, my friends, let me come to the great paramount issue. If they ask us here why it is we say more on the money question than we say upon the tariff question, I reply that if protection has slain its thousands the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands. If they ask us why we did not embody all these things in our platform which we believe, we reply to them that when we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and that until that is done there is no reform that can be accomplished.?
~William Jennings Bryan (the cowardly lion in one political interpretation of the Wizard of Oz)
No, Georgist ideas, at least as elucidated in these threads DO NOT ADDRESS THE ROOT CAUSE. William Jennings Bryan did, though. If we don’t solve the “money issue,” NOTHING CAN BE SOLVED!
Henry Ford, Sr. nailed it, too. “The youth who can solve the money question will do more for the world than all the professional soldiers of history.” ~Henry Ford, Sr.
But, alas, the common folk can’t solve what they don’t comprehend and they don’t comprehend it because the media, including the vast majority of the alternate media, simply doesn’t tell them the truth – for whatever reason.
Debt based money is fraud. It is an artificially enforced ZERO SUM GAME that uses interest (usury) to systematically convey the money assets to the debt money creators and the inextinguishable debts to everyone else.
THAT IS THE ISSUE. Until THAT ISSUE, AND THAT ISSUE ALONE, IS SOLVED, nothing of long term substance can be accomplished because the MONEY POWER, that Eisenhower claimed was “ever present” and “gravely to be regarded” (read Eisenhower’s farewell speech in full) will use their MONEY POWER to corrupt the system TO SERVE THEIR SOCIOPATHICLY PERCEIVED SELF-INTERESTS.
It is so simple, even a cave man could “get it.” Unfortunately, not many people are willing to let the 5th grade math “sink in.” George Orwell created the neologism “crimestop” to address this specific, and very real, quirk of common person human nature…

Main
1984 – Newspeak
Modern Newspeak
George Orwell
Chestnut Tree Cafe
Prolefeed

to download a free Java plugin from Sun Microsystems.

Newspeak Dictionary

Newspeak and other terminology found in Orwell’s novel “1984”, with some additional words which only appear in the movie.

Airstrip One – Formally called England. This term demonstrates Orwell’s distain for American influence Europe. It seems that Oceania (America, England, South America, Australia) looks upon Britain as little more than an ‘airstrip’ … a launching ground into the European theater of war. It appears that Orwell was predicting the minor role that England would play in the global politics of the future.

artsem – Artificial Insemination – The government is pushing this method of childbirth as the ONLY method, to aid in the destruction of the family unit. To hear a speech on Artsem from the movie, click here

Golden Country Atomic Wars – The Atomic Wars took place during the 1950’s. Colchester, England is the only city that was specifically mentioned as being nuked, but the book does say that many cities were destroyed in North America, Europe, and Russia.

It was out of the chaos of these wars that Party emerged and seized control.

Big Brother is Watching You Big Brother – Also refered to as simply “B.B.”. Similar to America’s “Uncle Sam”, except this individual is the leader of the nation. In Oceania, Big Brother is worshiped almost as if he were a god.

And just like the gods of most religions, Big Brother is most likely fictional. Orwell never refers to Big Brother by his ‘real’ name, and it would appear that nobody in Oceania possesses this information either. Winston’s memory is a little foggy, but he does share some of the history of BB’s rise to power with us:

“The story really began in the middle sixties, the period of the great purges in which the original leaders of the Revolution were wiped out once and for all. By 1970 none of them was left, except Big Brother himself. All the rest had by that time been exposed as traitors and counter- revolutionaries.”

But this really doesn’t answer the question of whether Big Brother is a ‘real’ individual or not. But elsewhere in the book there are hints that Big Brother is a fictional leader:

“Nobody has ever seen Big Brother. He is a face on the hoardings, a voice on the telescreen. We may be reasonably sure that he will never die, and there is already considerable uncertainty as to when he was born. Big Brother is the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world. His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt towards an individual than towards an organization.”

It also fits the ideology of Ingsoc to have a fictional leader. It would go a long way to help the stability of the nation, since it would be difficult for any power-hungry inner party members to stage a coup d’etat against an imaginary phantom.

This phrase Big Brother has found its way into everyday speech, and can be found in the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

big brother, noun, Date: 1863
1 : an older brother
2 : a man who befriends a delinquent or friendless boy
3 : capitalized both Bs [Big Brother, personification of the power of the state in 1984 (1949) by George Orwell] a : the leader of an authoritarian state or movement b : an all-powerful government or organization monitoring and directing people’s actions [data banks that tell Big Brother all about us — Herbert Brucker]

bellyfeel – Full emotional understanding. Blind, enthusiastic acceptance of a concept.

blackwhite- The ability to accept whatever “truth” the party puts out, no matter how absurd it may be. Orwell described it as “…loyal willingness to say black is white when party discipline demands this. It also means the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know black is white, and forget that one has ever believed the contrary.”

The Brotherhood – see the resistance

Chestnut Tree Cafe Chestnut Tree Cafe – The “haunt of painters and musicians. There was no law, not even an unwritten law, against frequenting the Chestnut Tree Cafe, yet the place was somehow ill-omened. The old, discredited leaders of the Party had been used to gather there before they were finally purged. Goldstein himself, it was said, had sometimes been seen there, decades ago.”

There is a rhyme about the cafe that re-occurs throughout the book:

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree

This is most likely a “Newspeak Translation” of Longfellow’s original poem, The Village Blacksmith

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

crimestop – Orwell’s definition: “The faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. In short….protective stupidity.”

[TheTrivium4TW]

Hi Scott,
>>Tell me how this makes sense:
There are millions of jobs to be done. There are millions of people who want to do them. The Land has value, but money does not; money is not wealth, as Henry George proved long ago.<<
The debt money system has value because the government uses guns and jails cells to enforce that value. This is fiat value, not intrinsic value, but ask all the people who’ve been killed over “fiat value” if it is perceived as having “no value.”

>>Fiat money like we have is not even “scarce.” It is not something we can “run out of.”<<
You really need to define terms. First off, what do you mean by “we?” Do you mean society? Do you know that a society that has one person owning all the money and everyone else impoverished with inextinguishable debt hasn’t “run out of money?” However, I don’t think that is the society you had in mind, but it is consistent with you statement given the lack of definition inherent in the terms.

>>So, what the heck is this fear of debt?<<
Because it is inextinguishable from the standpoint of society outside the Debt Money Monopoly. Their net trillions in monetary assets (that they possess personally and also that they control through their economic army of multi-national corporations) IS EVERYONE ELSE’S NET MONETARY LIABILITY AND INEXTINGUISHABLE DEBT, BY ARBITRARY DEFINITION! For those people who are a wee slow on the uptake, YOU WILL NEVER BE ALLOWED TO DIRECTLY VOTE ON WHO DEFINES AND CONTROLS MONEY BECAUSE MONEY IS THE SURREPTITIOUS MEANS THROUGH WHICH YOU AND YOURS ARE CONTROLLED.

>>Forget the banks. We don’t need them to provide money.<<
The government they financed uses guns and jail cells to make sure they are the only ones who can offer money within a society and the government makes sure there is no real competition to the Debt Money Monopoly. Yes, there ways to reduce their influence (buy local, pay cash, grow your own, live little, buy used, use credit unions, etc…), but we are not allowed to just forget the banks. This is the lesson to the “socialists” that lobby for big government who are trodden under the delusion that they somehow control the Frankenstein they create when the special interests that really control government use it as a club on which to beat the general populace while lying to them about caring for the general public. The Potemkin BanksterCare is a perfect example – the deductibles and copays ACT AS A WALL TO PREVENT THE POOR FROM GETTING THE CARE!

>>We actually have a Coinage Clause in the Constitution to allow Congress to “coin Money” (Art. 1, Sec. 8. Clause 5).<<
No, YOU have nothing. The Debt Money Monopoly finances the government, so the government does their bidding. If that wasn’t enough, the Debt Money Monopoly finances and promotes the politicians they want in power on the major media outlets that they also finance. Do you see how that works? The media carries the narratives that please the Debt Money Monopoly. Increasing the size and scope of the Debt Money Monopoly’s #1 weapon to force the common person to bow before their self-interests is simply insane from a perspective of knowledge.
>>Henry George was also Greenbacker, like his part-contemporary, President Lincoln, issuer of the original “Greenbacks” (U.S. Notes). Congress can do this again, at any time, for any reason, for any amount. We have nearly a Trillion dollar Output Gap now, says the CBO, so forget about inflation for now. Let’s just get people working again and lower real unemployment.<<
Ah, BUT THAT’S NOT THE AGENDA OF THE DEBT MONEY MONOPOLY! The real dangerous rentiers of our day are not land owners, THEY ARE THE DEBT MONEY MONOPOLIST RENTIERS THAT LITERALLY RENT PRIVATE MONEY TO THE NATIONS AND SIT BACK AS THEY COLLECT INTEREST ON THE WORLD’S MONEY SUPPLY!
Can you IMAGINE collecting interest on the world’s money supply annually? Can you imagine what how easy it would be to put that money to work for Machiavellian purposes when the society is so ignorant or nescient THAT THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW YOU EXIST AS AN ENTITY?
>>OK, enough. I cover all this and more in my new book: America is Not Broke!<<
That simply is not true. The government ENFORCES the debt money mechanism by which America is broke! The government is financed by the Debt Money Monopoly that is systematically impoverishing everyone. It is literally a delusion to pretend the most powerful entity on the planet simply doesn’t exist… like a small lamb pretending that hungry wolf who has been chomping on its leg for 30 seconds doesn’t actually exist and their leg isn’t damaged.
>>See here: https://tayen-lane.squarespace.com/america-is-not-broke
Chapter 1 is about Greenbacking
Chapter 2 is about Georgism
Chapter 3 is about Public Banking
Chapter 4 is about Government Financial Asset Hoarding (10s of trillions of dollars…yes, it is)
Chapter 5 is about hundreds of billions more in potential assets and revenues.
Stop the scaremongering. It’s all a political scam. America is Not Broke!<<
America is broke and the government is there to make sure that it stays broke. Do you know why the Feds control so much land? Because the Debt Money Monopoly will seize that land when the Feds can’t pay the debt and it will be easy to seize as long as the Feds (financed by the Debt Money Monopoly) control the land. That’s why they are using government to kick ranchers off the land – the Banksters want the land unencumbered and they don’t want the bad press associated with kicking people off after they’ve seized the land.
The ONLY solution is a mass education movement to educate the masses about the existence of the Debt Money Monopoly and their mechanisms of surreptitious debt money based tyranny. The masses will then demand a real monetary system instead of fight amongst themselves like good little serfs dying to become slaves.
However, given that this is an issue that even the likes of Ilargi WILL NOT TOUCH, well, I have little hope that this message will get to the masses – the only message that can make a permanent change for the better.
Please educate people on the Debt Money Monopoly and how they use government’s infrastructure to oppress the masses. Please DO NOT play pretend like a small child who pulls the covers over their eyes believing that hiding under the blanket will mean the person who just bashed through the front door can’t exist because he chooses not to look at him.

[GeoLib]

TheTrivium4TW: “Georgist ideas, at least as elucidated in these threads DO NOT ADDRESS THE ROOT CAUSE”
George put labour at the top of his system, arguing that only work creates wealth. This is clearly true. But we are obsessed with money, not work, and think money is the root cause.

[GeoLib]

“George’s words show us that we could do much better than we do, but we don’t want to.”

I must return to being a troll – sorry 🙂
What does this sentence mean? It’s the kind of thing you might say about the New Testament – “why can’t we all learn to get along and share?” – not a work of political economy.
This is a policy thing. Why shouldn’t it be?
Look how near we came last time:
The Bullet – Geophilos

Sorry, I can’t get the embed code to work so it’s still off screen

[Formerly T-Bear]

@ Geo-whatever, reply # 19036

Return to whatever you do best, godspeed. Since you cannot respond without Youtube crutches to speak for yourself maybe trolling is the better answer after-all. It is a shame that you appear incapable of a rational discussion, but that has become the mark of the times. Don’t let the Youtube hit you on the backside as you leave.

[GeoLib]

@T-Bear – sorry I stole your lollipop. Here, have it back … but I licked it ALL OVER.

[Formerly T-Bear]

@ Geo-whatever, reply # 19088

Go on and finish the lollipop, I left it there because I did not want it after it fell into the yellow snow.

[Author]

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