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I can't help but feel like this is the inevitable conclusion for a society that's obsessed with working and financial success. It could be an interesting premis

I can't help but feel like this is the inevitable conclusion for a society that's obsessed with working and financial success. It could be an interesting premise to explore. When a number of employers and the government don't value ensuring a healthy work/life balance, or even employee's health, how do you keep that same behavior out of the minds of people running school systems and classrooms? How do you ensure you create a school environment where children and adolescents don't experience burn out when the working world they are prepped for embraces and/or encourages it? It seems to me that the more we ask employees to work long hours or in crunch mode, the more we're asking our children to do the same... just indirectly.

branchless 11y ago
The reason the system wants you to work hard is because they get a share of your labour for every part you are successful above subsistence. They get this through debt issuance, primarily via land prices. Fiat money costs absolutely zero to produce, they give it out freely and in return you pledge to give part of your labour for 30 years. If land prices were far lower we'd all be working 3 or 4 days a week. Employers wouldn't have enough workers. They'd be paying you most of the value you produce as they bid for you against other firms. And you might not work for them because you no longer have to spend most of your labour on banker tribute for the right to exist. Land value tax is the answer. It would replace income tax, removing the regressive tax on labour and punishing economic rentiers. I hope for the sake of my kids we can win this one. http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm When people hear about LVT their immediate reaction is "another tax". Realise that it would replace income tax (or at least significantly reduce it at the lower end) and also it would reduce the massive tax via land price ramping. Right now the banks are getting our tax instead of it being ploughed back into the state, via debt issuance. And producing nothing of value for it.
- littletimmy 11y ago
  How do you suggest we modulate land price if not via the current system? How is land tax going to make things any easier? The US already has property tax - you want to raise it?
  - branchless 11y ago
    I've put that in my reply above. We need to have taxes to regress speculation which will see land prices fall and will replace much of income tax. Have a read of the link or many other sites on LVT. I think we also need to deal with money creation by private banks. This has been an absolute disaster since it became effectively unconstrained with the end of the gold standard. (not that I'm a gold bug). It's the issue facing our generation, and the next. Just look at SF where land prices have made it very expensive to live there as ultimately all productivity gains flow to land prices rather than to workers. And to the guy who replied below you need to put some effort in I'm afraid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax Basically you can't pass on LVT via rent.
    - douche 11y ago
      Every time this comes up, the answer I see trotted out is that increased land taxes will cause land prices to fall and rents will get cheaper. I don't understand how this makes any sense, at all. If the town raises the property taxes on my rental, guess what, the rent is going to go up at least as much as the tax increase.
      - TulliusCicero 11y ago
        > I don't understand how this makes any sense, at all. If the town raises the property taxes on my rental, guess what, the rent is going to go up at least as much as the tax increase. This is only true if the rent is based on the cost of the unit in terms of purchase price and upkeep. That's true in lower cost-of-living areas, but in expensive areas, the rent is high primarily because demand is outstripping supply, not because the cost of landlording has gone up. And if rent prices are not based on cost, then an increase in cost (which is what a property tax increase is) will mostly not be passed onto renters.
        zepto 11y ago
        This doesn't add up. If rent is so much higher than purchase plus upkeep, people will borrow money and buy, safe in the knowledge that they can just become a landlord and be cash-flow positive at any time. Or investors will simply buy the cheap properties and rent them. The demand for investment properties will drive up the purchase price and parity will be reached. This is why house prices are just as insane in Silicon Valley as rents.
- beccasanchez 11y ago
  Why should the people in power ever institute this? It would ruin all of them.
  - meric 11y ago
    The land value tax was a nail in the coffin to the decadent Roman empire. People just got up and left their property. ...the decay of trade and industry was not a cause of Rome’s fall. There was a decline in agriculture and land was withdrawn from cultivation, in some cases on a very large scale, sometimes as a direct result of barbarian invasions. However, the chief cause of the agricultural decline was high taxation on the marginal land, driving it out of cultivation. Jones is surely right in saying that taxation was spurred by the huge military budget and was thus ‘indirectly’ the result of the barbarian invasion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_fall_of_... History does not repeat, but it surely does rhyme.
  - branchless 11y ago
    The same reason they ever implement anything: because they are either worried about losing all their power / something even more "abrupt".
    - beccasanchez 11y ago
      In all of history, the elite have never been more secure. They've never had anything close to the level of surveillance and policing as today. The police today are literally thousands of times more effective at their job than the time of the French Revolution. No one with a clue is worried about anything "abrupt". Rebellion is literally impossible.
      - branchless 11y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots Did they put guns on Big Dog since 2011? What's changed? Good old UK had to stop the press reporting on it they were so flustered.
- narrator 11y ago
  The land thing is crazy. Buying at the right time means you get paid to live in your house. Then when you sell, they charge you capital gains so you can't buy the same house back with the money you just got. The other thing that's crazy is how ridiculously cheap the same stuff is in countries with lower land prices, like South East Asia. A nice apartment with a pool on the beach is 1/10 the price of San Francisco. The food is cheaper, services are cheaper, etc ,etc. Meanwhile, people living in South Eat Asia running online businesses can make the same amount of money in the American economy. The manufacturing thing is even more mind blowing. The cost to manufacture in a developed country vs China is on the order of 20x cheaper. When Big Box stores like Ikea open in China they struggle because they can't charge western premiums for the stuff they're selling because of domestic competition and they have to lower prices by 50%[1]. That would be totally impossible in a developed countries! Someone should go through the whole cost structure of a developing country manufacturing operation and figure out the reason they are so cheap. My hunch is it would come down to incredibly cheap food, provided by incredibly cheap land prices forming a foundation for incredibly cheap everything else. Garlic growers in the California central valley say that the price that the Garlic gets delivered packed and shipped at the grocery store from China is less than what it costs them to grow it before harvesting.[2] [1].http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1300942/ikea-last-cracks-china-market-success-has-meant-adapting-local-ways?page=all http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1300942/ikea-last-cra... [2].http://www.wbur.org/npr/11613477 http://www.wbur.org/npr/11613477
  - branchless 11y ago
    Prices are set by credit. When productivity rises in these countries significantly above subsistence level the bankers will come in to claim the productivity gains. You can't steal from people on the breadline. Once they are above this you can by selling their own futures back to them (and dismantling the future for their kids). Prices are set by credit. It's the banks.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - usaar333 11y ago
    I doubt that land has that much effect on pricing differences. Farms in china have similar implied value/acre as ones in the US (http://www.usda.gov/nass/PUBS/TODAYRPT/land0815.pdf http://www.usda.gov/nass/PUBS/TODAYRPT/land0815.pdf + http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/rural-chinas-nascent-land-market/ http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/rural-chinas-nascent-land...) The main drivers of developing countries costing more is going to come down to better infrastructure (which costs more money) and stricter regulation. Sure, being able to drink water from your tap, have a low risk of being injured at work, having high food safety and a strong social net leads to higher costs, but to most of us, it's completely worth it.
amelius 11y ago
> I can't help but feel like this is the inevitable conclusion for a society that's obsessed with working and financial success. It could be different if "success" was actually a well-defined concept, and determined by hard work and intellect. But right now, success seems to follow more from a mix of randomness, networking (which is also partly random), but also from more or less insincere practices, like using charms and underhand business practices, fake-it-until-you-make-it behavior, and so on. But this shouldn't surprise us, as, even in politics these days, not the person with the best argument wins the debate, but the person who puts the best spin on the topic.
ryandrake 11y ago
Funny, because an obsession with work is at odds with an obsession with financial success--they have nothing to do with one another. While hard work may help make one incrementally better off than the Joneses, when it comes to actual financial success, luck and family connections play a much bigger role. The whole "hard work makes you successful" narrative only furthers the interests of the already successful.
- atomicfiredoll 11y ago
  Sorry. I didn't mean to necessarily imply that the financial successful ones always going to the ones working the long hours. (Although, some do work hard in hopes of it.) My intent was to partially indict financial philosophies or entities so focused on success that they pressure and use workers in less than savory ways.

branchless 11y ago

The reason the system wants you to work hard is because they get a share of your labour for every part you are successful above subsistence. They get this through debt issuance, primarily via land prices. Fiat money costs absolutely zero to produce, they give it out freely and in return you pledge to give part of your labour for 30 years. If land prices were far lower we'd all be working 3 or 4 days a week. Employers wouldn't have enough workers. They'd be paying you most of the value you produce as they bid for you against other firms. And you might not work for them because you no longer have to spend most of your labour on banker tribute for the right to exist. Land value tax is the answer. It would replace income tax, removing the regressive tax on labour and punishing economic rentiers. I hope for the sake of my kids we can win this one. http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm When people hear about LVT their immediate reaction is "another tax". Realise that it would replace income tax (or at least significantly reduce it at the lower end) and also it would reduce the massive tax via land price ramping. Right now the banks are getting our tax instead of it being ploughed back into the state, via debt issuance. And producing nothing of value for it.

littletimmy 11y ago
How do you suggest we modulate land price if not via the current system? How is land tax going to make things any easier? The US already has property tax - you want to raise it?
- branchless 11y ago
  I've put that in my reply above. We need to have taxes to regress speculation which will see land prices fall and will replace much of income tax. Have a read of the link or many other sites on LVT. I think we also need to deal with money creation by private banks. This has been an absolute disaster since it became effectively unconstrained with the end of the gold standard. (not that I'm a gold bug). It's the issue facing our generation, and the next. Just look at SF where land prices have made it very expensive to live there as ultimately all productivity gains flow to land prices rather than to workers. And to the guy who replied below you need to put some effort in I'm afraid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax Basically you can't pass on LVT via rent.
  - douche 11y ago
    Every time this comes up, the answer I see trotted out is that increased land taxes will cause land prices to fall and rents will get cheaper. I don't understand how this makes any sense, at all. If the town raises the property taxes on my rental, guess what, the rent is going to go up at least as much as the tax increase.
    - TulliusCicero 11y ago
      > I don't understand how this makes any sense, at all. If the town raises the property taxes on my rental, guess what, the rent is going to go up at least as much as the tax increase. This is only true if the rent is based on the cost of the unit in terms of purchase price and upkeep. That's true in lower cost-of-living areas, but in expensive areas, the rent is high primarily because demand is outstripping supply, not because the cost of landlording has gone up. And if rent prices are not based on cost, then an increase in cost (which is what a property tax increase is) will mostly not be passed onto renters.
      - zepto 11y ago
        This doesn't add up. If rent is so much higher than purchase plus upkeep, people will borrow money and buy, safe in the knowledge that they can just become a landlord and be cash-flow positive at any time. Or investors will simply buy the cheap properties and rent them. The demand for investment properties will drive up the purchase price and parity will be reached. This is why house prices are just as insane in Silicon Valley as rents.
beccasanchez 11y ago
Why should the people in power ever institute this? It would ruin all of them.
- meric 11y ago
  The land value tax was a nail in the coffin to the decadent Roman empire. People just got up and left their property. ...the decay of trade and industry was not a cause of Rome’s fall. There was a decline in agriculture and land was withdrawn from cultivation, in some cases on a very large scale, sometimes as a direct result of barbarian invasions. However, the chief cause of the agricultural decline was high taxation on the marginal land, driving it out of cultivation. Jones is surely right in saying that taxation was spurred by the huge military budget and was thus ‘indirectly’ the result of the barbarian invasion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_fall_of_... History does not repeat, but it surely does rhyme.
- branchless 11y ago
  The same reason they ever implement anything: because they are either worried about losing all their power / something even more "abrupt".
  - beccasanchez 11y ago
    In all of history, the elite have never been more secure. They've never had anything close to the level of surveillance and policing as today. The police today are literally thousands of times more effective at their job than the time of the French Revolution. No one with a clue is worried about anything "abrupt". Rebellion is literally impossible.
    - branchless 11y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots Did they put guns on Big Dog since 2011? What's changed? Good old UK had to stop the press reporting on it they were so flustered.
narrator 11y ago
The land thing is crazy. Buying at the right time means you get paid to live in your house. Then when you sell, they charge you capital gains so you can't buy the same house back with the money you just got. The other thing that's crazy is how ridiculously cheap the same stuff is in countries with lower land prices, like South East Asia. A nice apartment with a pool on the beach is 1/10 the price of San Francisco. The food is cheaper, services are cheaper, etc ,etc. Meanwhile, people living in South Eat Asia running online businesses can make the same amount of money in the American economy. The manufacturing thing is even more mind blowing. The cost to manufacture in a developed country vs China is on the order of 20x cheaper. When Big Box stores like Ikea open in China they struggle because they can't charge western premiums for the stuff they're selling because of domestic competition and they have to lower prices by 50%[1]. That would be totally impossible in a developed countries! Someone should go through the whole cost structure of a developing country manufacturing operation and figure out the reason they are so cheap. My hunch is it would come down to incredibly cheap food, provided by incredibly cheap land prices forming a foundation for incredibly cheap everything else. Garlic growers in the California central valley say that the price that the Garlic gets delivered packed and shipped at the grocery store from China is less than what it costs them to grow it before harvesting.[2] [1].http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1300942/ikea-last-cracks-china-market-success-has-meant-adapting-local-ways?page=all http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1300942/ikea-last-cra... [2].http://www.wbur.org/npr/11613477 http://www.wbur.org/npr/11613477
- branchless 11y ago
  Prices are set by credit. When productivity rises in these countries significantly above subsistence level the bankers will come in to claim the productivity gains. You can't steal from people on the breadline. Once they are above this you can by selling their own futures back to them (and dismantling the future for their kids). Prices are set by credit. It's the banks.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- usaar333 11y ago
  I doubt that land has that much effect on pricing differences. Farms in china have similar implied value/acre as ones in the US (http://www.usda.gov/nass/PUBS/TODAYRPT/land0815.pdf http://www.usda.gov/nass/PUBS/TODAYRPT/land0815.pdf + http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/rural-chinas-nascent-land-market/ http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/rural-chinas-nascent-land...) The main drivers of developing countries costing more is going to come down to better infrastructure (which costs more money) and stricter regulation. Sure, being able to drink water from your tap, have a low risk of being injured at work, having high food safety and a strong social net leads to higher costs, but to most of us, it's completely worth it.

amelius 11y ago

> I can't help but feel like this is the inevitable conclusion for a society that's obsessed with working and financial success. It could be different if "success" was actually a well-defined concept, and determined by hard work and intellect. But right now, success seems to follow more from a mix of randomness, networking (which is also partly random), but also from more or less insincere practices, like using charms and underhand business practices, fake-it-until-you-make-it behavior, and so on. But this shouldn't surprise us, as, even in politics these days, not the person with the best argument wins the debate, but the person who puts the best spin on the topic.

ryandrake 11y ago

Funny, because an obsession with work is at odds with an obsession with financial success--they have nothing to do with one another. While hard work may help make one incrementally better off than the Joneses, when it comes to actual financial success, luck and family connections play a much bigger role. The whole "hard work makes you successful" narrative only furthers the interests of the already successful.

atomicfiredoll 11y ago
Sorry. I didn't mean to necessarily imply that the financial successful ones always going to the ones working the long hours. (Although, some do work hard in hopes of it.) My intent was to partially indict financial philosophies or entities so focused on success that they pressure and use workers in less than savory ways.