Evonomics: Michael Lind on makers and takers

[Winehole23]

In American politics as in the American economy, power and wealth have shifted from the industrial capitalists of old to the “rent lords” of the early 21st century, based in the overgrown FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sector. The agenda of the new rentier oligarchy in the U.S. is quite different from that of traditional productive businesses. The Rentier Agenda consists of low taxes on rentiers, the privatization of infrastructure and social insurance, and a macroeconomic policy that favors creditors rather than debtors, including debtor businesses and debtor governments.http://evonomics.com/real-takers-america-unproductive-rent-extracting-rich/

[Winehole23]

macroeconomic policy that serves the interests of creditors, at the expense of slow growth and mass unemployment, rather than productive businesses and workers.

[Winehole23]

Wealthy individuals who get richer by investing in start-up companies or funding long-lived, creative blue-chip firms provide a valuable benefit to society, even as they risk losing their own money. Such risk-taking investors are the opposites of financial sector rentiers who seek to bribe policymakers into letting them privatize their gains while socializing their losses.

[Winehole23]

Banks should be low-profit, publicly-regulated utilities and laws against usurious interest rates, struck down in the U.S. in the late twentieth century, should be restored.

[Winehole23]

The Rentier Agenda has three broad components: low taxes on rentiers, privatization of natural monopolies, and a macroeconomic policy driven by fear of inflation.

[CosmicCowboy]

Banks as public utilities would inevitably become corrupt piggybanks for political patronage.

[Winehole23]

like Andrew Jackson's pet banks?

[Winehole23]

what were you thinking of?

[Winehole23]

I recently talked to Tom Peronis, a guy who has spent years trading OJ options. He walked me through every step of Winthorpe and Valentine's plan.http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/07/19/201430727/what-actually-happens-at-the-end-of-trading-places

[Winehole23]

Banks as public utilities would inevitably become corrupt piggybanks for political patronage.Consider North Dakota. Has that happened there?