Welcome to REALITY ECONOMICS – A periodic posting of commentary about cooperation, human progress, natural resource economics, and the equitable distribution of wealth in the tradition of Henry George.

The U.S. Has No (And Never Could Have A) Debt Crisis

There is total confusion on both sides of the aisle (or perhaps willful obscuration) about the reality of public credit and public debt, and the absence of a need to borrow any money for a supposed budget shortfall, as evidenced by an article published earlier this year in the New York Times (Baker and Tankersley 2023). The compromise to extend the Congressional bipartisan budget and debt talks until 2025 has not changed anything.

High Gasoline Prices? Oligopoly as a Safe Harbor or Pearl Harbor (depending on your point of view)

In the late 1890s the problem was monopoly, so the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was enacted to counter manufacturing monopolies. Were Sherman alive today he’d say monopolies are still with us, except they don’t manufacture, they create services, but the real danger to society is from oligopoly, not monopoly, as the former sets the terms of their exploitation and obfuscation. You don’t need to go any further than today’s transparent oil industry price-gouging conundrum.

Zero-price Land and the Rent Moratorium

The rent moratorium has now been extended to December 31, 2020. The solution to the problem of tenants having too little income to pay their rent and landlords having no cash flow to pay their mortgages is to declare that affected properties rest upon zero-price land. The solution is explained below.

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