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  • Income Distribution in the US
    How is our income distributed? Well, it is pretty concentrated. How concentrated? Take a look.
  • Progress and Poverty, by Henry George
    Here are links to online editions of George's landmark book, Progress & Poverty, including audio and a number of abridgments -- the shortest is 30 words! I commend this book to your attention, if you are concerned about economic justice, poverty, sprawl, energy use, pollution, wages, housing affordability. Its observations will change how you approach all these problems. A mind-opening experience!
  • Wealth Concentration Tables from 2004 SCF: Bottom 90%, Next 9% and Top 1%
    Aggregated data by net worth quantile, for various kinds of wealth. With calculations you won't find anywhere else!
  • Wealth Concentration Tables from 2004 SCF: 50-40-5-4-1
    These tables show how concentrated the ownership of various kinds of assets are. With calculations you won't find anywhere else! This version is less aggregated: Bottom 50%, Next 40%, Next 5%, Next 4% and Top 1%.

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  • Henry George: Progress and Poverty: An inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with increase of wealth ... The Remedy
    This is perhaps the most important book ever written on the subjects of poverty, political economy, how we might live together in a society dedicated to the ideals Americans claim to believe are self-evident. It will provide you new lenses through which to view many of our most serious problems and how we might go about solving them: poverty, sprawl, long commutes, despoilation of the environment, housing affordability, wealth concentration, income concentration, concentration of power, low wages, etc. Read it online, or in hardcopy.
  • Bob Drake's abridgement of Henry George's original: Progress and Poverty: Why There Are Recessions and Poverty Amid Plenty -- And What To Do About It!
    This is a very readable thought-by-thought updating of Henry George's longer book, written in the language of a newsweekly. A fine way to get to know Henry George's ideas. Available online at progressandpoverty.org and http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm

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« Gary Schilling's idea ... | Main | What is the point of sending stimulus money to a state which chooses not to tax its land value?? »

May 14, 2009

Magazine Preview - My Personal Credit Crisis - NYTimes.com

Magazine Preview - My Personal Credit Crisis - NYTimes.com.

"I just thought I could beat the odds."

Worth a read!

The FIRE sector -- finance, insurance, real estate -- always seems to win.  Funny thing that many of us figure that in our role as "real estate," we might be the big winners and it will all work out all right.

Something like the lottery.  The seller got $460,000 for the house, back in 2004 ... and did okay.  We seem to forget that there are some winners in this mess.  And we treat them as if they earned their windfalls.

Who created that "capital" gain?   WE DID!  ALL OF US!  Were we to have been collecting what we created, and treating it as our common treasury, a lot of this stuff would not have gone awry.

Tax the land value.  Stop taxing the buildings.  Share what ought to be shared, and privatize that which is created by the individual.

Posted on May 14, 2009 at 10:03 PM in FIRE sector |

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