Cooperative Individualism
Edward J. Dodson
[Posted to the website www.onlinethinker.org
(Daneshyaran of Humanities); 17 August, 2011]
Responding to the invitation by Reshad Hakim to suggest different
perspectives, I offer that of cooperative individualism as a set of
principles upon which societies ought to be formed in order to achieve
equality of opportunity.
The American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler wrote that a society can
be judged on the degree to which justice exists by whether its members
enjoy the goods of a decent human existence. Included in this
definition is not only adequate food, clothing and shelter but access
to education, to medical care, to participate in civic affairs, and to
practice one's faith or not practice any faith without intervention by
the state. Our world is, unfortunately, dominated by pressures of
moral and cultural relativism, artificially divided into nation-states
that are exclusive rather than inclusive. We are failing in our call
to be wise stewards of the earth and its resources, with the result
that our footprint on this planet is extremely heavy. Countless other
species are becoming extinct for are threatened with extinction
because of our behavior. And, still we continue to behave as our
ancestors did in eras when the struggle over the control of territory
was one of the primary reasons for collective action. Is it not sad
that with the capacity to improve the lives of all so much of our
energy is wasted on conflict, death and destruction. We are running
out of time to come to our senses by demanding from our leaders a new
commitment to universal human rights.
The measures being proposed to stabilize our financial system and the
global economy reflect the sad state of discourse on substantive
economic and societal challenges. Conventional wisdoms that conflict
with reality continue to exert great power over the decision-making of
our elected officials and those who serve as policy advisers. This
circumstance is not new. Back in 1955, an economics professor in the
United States named Harry Gunnison Brown expressed his frustration
with many of his professional colleagues:
"Economics is concerned with the problem of 'getting
a living'. It deals, therefore, with an important phase of the
'struggle for existence'. Unfortunately, this fact operates to
prevent unprejudiced investigation of its laws and of the effects of
various economic policies. An examination that would show the
effects of various policies from which a part of the public was
benefiting, to be injurious to the remainder, might not be an
examination which those who were profiting by the policies in
question would desire to have made. And if such an examination were
made, acceptance of its inevitable logical conclusions would
probably be vigorously opposed."
Over time, the search for solutions to the periodic tendencies of our
economic system to implode have given way to mitigation by modest
technical interventions using defined fiscal and monetary tools.
Our very understanding of the health of our economy is obscured by
the meaningless language of mainstream economics that is repeated
regularly by journalists and news reporters. Let me begin with one
prime example: the use of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a
commonly-accepted measurement of economic health and growth. I doubt
that any of the media commentators know that GDP includes (with minor
exceptions) every dollar spent by government for any purpose, whether
obtained by taxation or borrowed. GDP is calculated as follows:
consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports ?
imports). Thus, a rising GDP is hardly an indicator that the economy
is expanding. Goods production can be falling, unemployment rising,
crime rising, environmental disasters occurring with increasing
frequency, with government spending on the military and the servicing
of debt causing GDP to be reported as increasing.
Another fundamental problem with how economics has evolved as a
discipline is the extent to which theorists have embraced the notion
that markets for locations in our cities and towns, for agricultural
land, for natural resource laden lands, for the broadcast spectrum and
all of nature, generally, respond to changes in price and demand in
the same manner as goods we produce from nature. Generations of
political economists who preceded economists treated nature (i.e.,
what they termed land) as the first factor of production; that
is, as the source of wealth but not as wealth itself. Nature
was (and still is) the passive factor of production, acted on by labor
without and without the use of capital goods.
The first lesson confirmed in the real world is that the price
mechanism does not work for land. Price effectively clears
markets for for labor, for capital goods and (to a great extent) for
credit. However, as we have seen during this last land market cycle,
as prices are rising speculation intensifies. Land is acquired to be
held off the market for speculative gain rather than for development.
This occurs even when locations are improved by various types of
structures. Throughout much of the world where private property in
land is the norm, investors ignore vacancy rates and even negative
cash flows on the gamble that rising land prices will allow them to
flip the property to someone else within a few short years. The same
mentality spills over into the residential property markets,
exacerbated by low- and no-down payment mortgage financing that
allowed for interest-only payments or even negative amortization.
What caused the current land market crash to spread so deeply and
broadly around the world was bank-provided credit, allowing land
speculators to pass on most of the risk to those same financial
institutions (or investors in various types of collateralized mortgage
obligations). The absence of effective regulation and law enforcement
also deepened the crash by overloading the credit markets with poorly
underwritten subprime mortgage loans, hundreds of billions of dollars
in predatory loans made to low income, elderly and otherwise marginal
borrowers, and outright fraud (e.g., the sale of nonexistent or
extensively falsified loans by mortgage brokers).
One immediate measure that ought to be passed into law is to prohibit
any financial entity that accepts government insured deposits from
taking land as collateral. This would remove a good deal of the
accelerant from the next upsurge in land prices. Speculators would
have to commit their own funds or find other investors willing to
share the downside risk of speculation near or at the top of the land
market cycle. Consistently imprudent bankers would be protected from
their own inclination to book high-yielding assets without an
objective assessment of the risks involved.
There is nothing governments can really do at this point to bring us
out of the economic depression. Government spending on infrastructure
will stimulate a degree of private job creation and (combined with
extended unemployment benefits and other social welfare measures)
prevent widespread homelessness and social unrest.
The time is long past for continued reliance on fine-tuning of the
economy. When much of the world suffered thru stagflation in the
1970s, critics on the right called for business deregulation and supply-side
stimulation of investment based on dramatically lower marginal rates
of taxation on so-called capital gains and ordinary income.
These measures largely provided the atmosphere for an economy driven
by speculation rather than goods production or the development of new
technologies and services. I believe there are four main shifts in
public policy required to start the dominoes falling in the right
direction (i.e., in the direction of full employment without
inflation). These proposals are applicable in every society, as every
society suffers from the same inequities, differing on in the degree
to which they exist.
First, make the individual income tax system truly progressive and at
the same remove its complexity. Wages and salaries are, for most
people, the largest portion of their incomes, and are "earned"
producing goods and services. This level of income should be exempted
from taxation, or taxed at very low rates. We should begin by
exempting all individual incomes up to a far higher amount than is now
the case (eliminating all other exemptions and deductions). The
national median could be a good starting point. Above the national
median, increasing rates of taxation would be applied to higher ranges
of individual income (which, as incomes increase, are derived from
what economists describe as "rent-seeking" investment
activities).
Second, establish the mechanism for gradual repayment of the national
debt by issuing fully amortizing bonds to replace existing government
bonds as they mature. The amount required to service the debt (both
interest and principal being retired) would be incorporated as an
integral expense of the government budgeting process. The tax rates on
individual incomes at the highest ranges would be set to raise
sufficient revenue to achieve a balanced budget.
Third, we need to replace the business profits tax with a graduated
tax on gross revenue, exempting small businesses (which create the
overwhelming number of jobs in the economy). Some analysis is required
to determine what the exemption level should be, but the idea is to
benefit those companies most that have a stake in their communities
and where profits are circulated locally rather than routed to a
distant (or overseas) corporate headquarters and senior executives
rewarded by compliant boards of directors for cutting the number of
employees. This measure would also end the practice of companies being
able to expense the huge compensation packages to executives and
thereby reduce taxable income.
And, finally, national governments must urge every community across
the nation to restructure the long-destructive ways they have raised
revenue for public goods and services. What communities create by
investment in infrastructure and public amenities is land value. Thus,
this community-created value ought to be the primary source of public
revenue. Every parcel of land in a community has a potential annual
rental value. This rental value is the amount that ought to be paid to
the community in return for the services brought to a location. This
means exempting property improvements (i.e., buildings of all types)
from the property tax base. Moving to a land-only tax base will not
only stimulate new construction and rehabilitation of existing
structures, landowners will find it far more profitable to bring the
land they hold to "highest, best use" as dictated by market
forces (or sell to someone who will) than to hold onto land for
speculation. Sufficient revenue might be generated by the taxation of
location rental values to lower or eliminate taxes on wages and
commerce.
I hope the above ideas provide both food for thought and for
thoughtful discussion. The fate of the entire world is hanging in the
balance.
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