Setting the Choice
Life sets choices before us. The world has set before our Oligarchs, Political leaders, Wealthy and Mafioso a choice:
Either Act for the Good of all the People, or for "Private Separate Advantage"
Moses says in Deuteronomy:
"30:19: I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live"
They can continue the path of conflict, aggregation of power and wealth and autocracy. Their wealth and their governing powers give them raw power and that power is the power to levy private taxes on property, which means:
"Since the power to tax is ultimately the power to destroy, tax collectors need great enforcement powers."
Indeed this is why the Right Wing was created. The purchase of think tanks, universities, professors and politicians, all was to enable millionaires to become billionaires and to protect their control over the forces of government necessary to enforce their private taxes (rent, interest on loans, money power to issue loans from thin air, etc...) on ordinary people (tuition loans, housing loans, rents, inflated insurance premiums, "financialization", in the first place. Crazy wealth is not possible without government grants of monopoly either through taking advantage of laws, corrupt law and corrupting legislators, judges and law enforcement. Allowing millionaires to become billionaires and oligarchs was a monstrous mistake,
but it took years of propaganda, conditioning and astroturfing to make it easier.
The Power to Destroy
Now we have oligarchs who exercise "the power to destroy" in secret and in background. Corrupting utilities, newspapers, television, radio and overtly through this new President.
"Right now, the world's leading nuclear powers (the U.S. and Russia) are supporting their respective oligarchies, and therefore are parasitic world dominators."
A Choice:
But there is always a Choice. Wealthy people could act for the general good, their own selfish interests alone, or for perverse purposes. To this date they are not. But they could act for the good of the people around them. As my friend Rick DiMare puts it:
"But they have power to change that role by viewing themselves as "nature's tax collectors" who should be supporting a property right for wage-earners, and collecting most taxes by demanding the unearned income and estates of their oligarch buddies."
Some wealthy individuals donate millions (still chump change to a billionaire) to worthwhile causes. At one time most of them at least pretended to have a duty to the public good, to pay their own fortunes forward and were involved in progressive causes and charity. Unfortunately the spread of Randian Privateering ideology has led to many of them deciding they don't need to do anything for anybody. But they could change all that and simply acknowledge that there is a reason that the government needs to collect a portion of the taxes they collect. As Rick says:
"Stated differently, Trump and Putin could become great leaders by re-inventing themselves as the world's leading tax collectors of Henry George's "single tax," where "single tax"
Where single tax is a progressive taxation of unearned income from property privileges
Private Separate Advantage
Sources and Further Reading
The quotes in this post come from my friend Rick DiMare's facebook page:
- Doc 133:
- https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-133-henry-georges-single-tax-a-tax-on-land-values-a-tax-on-economic-rent-a-t/918244508288693/
- Doc 159:
- https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-159-updating-henry-georges-meaning-of-single-tax/1470776836368788/?hc_location=ufi
