Capital: Its Presence, Use and Control

[John Gelles <jjgelles@xxxxxxxx>]

	"RENTIERS" -- "Owners of Capital who derive most
	of their income from it, chosing to exercise no
	operational control over its use."

	PKT entertains ideas on the end of rentiers --
	implying not the end of capital or its use, but
	the end of persons who own it for income alone.

	Technically, in a socialist or democratic state,
	that would say good bye to everybody as soon as
	capital was represented by fully automatic
	factories and income was yours just for being
	alive. The destination of all of us here on
	earth.

	What is it about excusing oneself from control
	over the use of capital that makes one a parasite
	worse than all others connected to capital?

	It cannot be mere absence of control -- hardly
	anyone has any control.  It must be the income.
	Virtually all on this list favor augmentation
	of demand so as to keep as little slack in the
	labor market as possible -- so it must not be
	rentier income, per se, that some hate. It must
	be excessive income relative to labor's share.

	Yet rentiers income after taxes is a function
	of tax and minimum wage policy.  So it must
	not be the rentiers themselves that cause the
	problem, it must be the share they keep as
	a result of public policy.

	Many people who speak ill of rentiers, (their
	own relatives in most cases), are really
	imagining a world without private capital.
	Because if we have private capital, we will
	have saving. If we have saving we will have
	investment. If we have investment we will
	have rentiers.

	A world without private capital must invent
	public capital that works better than the
	private stuff.  The thing we have today that
	is virtually all public and not private, is
	law.  How well does it work?  Private capital
	is its child.

	Get real. Stop the baloney. Let us reform
	campaign financing, end taxation below the
	median wealth and earnings levels, the
	insufficiency of public financing, the
	careless absence of economic protection for
	whole segments of society, drug laws that
	account for nearly one million (out of more
	than one and a half million) people in
	prison, forced unemployment, and similar
	sores staring us in the face.  Rentiers?
	Don't worry. You'll be one soon enough.

	John Gelles
                   http://myturn.org
                   http://rain.org/~jjgelles/

                   Common Economic Sense

        1. Saving, not unemployment, to fight inflation.
        2. Inflation protection  for  savings and loans.
        3. Keynesian  financing  of  public  priorities.
        4. Strong unions, low taxes/interest for growth.
        5. Microloans for  the right to self-employment.
        6. Automation for a high minimum std. of living.