AS WITH ANYTHING ELSE, THE ECONOMY REQUIRES GOOD DESIGN
Once we come to see collapsing economies as the result of pathological human interventions – certainly not “a natural part of the business cycle” – we’ll stand a chance of eliminating them altogether. Forever.
Whilst endowing recessions and depressions with such an inbuilt mystical quality may suit those financial interests who twist and contort economies to deliver the fruits of the labour of others unto themselves, it hardly represents a scientific explanation for completely unnatural events which occur every eighteen years or so.
That we fall so often for the “inexplicable event” explanation reflects poorly on our acumen. We are much better than this. Boom and bust is unnecessary.
This economic depression offers an excellent opportunity to apply the education and intelligence we display in every other area of our lives. It’s time to put an end to some 0.1% of the population leading us like a bull with a ring in its nose through the daily events of our lives that constitute the real economy.
We’ve permitted the study of economics to degenerate into unreal mathematical modelling that can’t forecast recession and depressions because they are simply “inexplicable events”. How then is it that a number of people, including myself, have been able to forecast them? Was it guesswork? Was it luck? No, it was not.
It’s all the more important that we immediately start to re-design our economics because, unlike recessions, the feature of economic depression is that it will be followed by a world war. Such has always been the response of the 0.1% to a lingering depression: “A good war will get us out of this!”
OK. So, now to the design:-
- Eliminate all taxation.
- Capture instead for necessary government only land and resource rents (as also advocated by Secretary of the Australian Treasury, Ken Henry).
It works.
There’s a more thoroughgoing explanation of how and why it works to be found in the following work by the great American economist/social philosopher, Henry George. If you’ve not read the book, why not take the time do so, because its timeless common sense will reward you like no other. Note especially its sub-title:-
It’s beyond time people stopped being led around by the nose by rent-seekers.