4 ms·
I thought of a term a while back for this kind of investment: "fiscal pollution." It's when surplus savings is invested in ways that cause active harm to real
by api 5y ago
I thought of a term a while back for this kind of investment: "fiscal pollution."
It's when surplus savings is invested in ways that cause active harm to real people, communities, and productive businesses.
The pollution term comes in because this investment often flows from somewhere else. In the case of RE a lot of it is flight capital and money laundering. Money is being haphazardly parked somewhere that is not only non-productive but actively anti-productive. The people doing it don't care because they don't live there or are too rich to be affected, just like with many other kinds of pollution.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thatcat 5y agoI like the reference to the negative externalities from environmental pollution in that term. It would be fun to try to model these things to estimate the magnitude of economic damage resulting from fiscal pollution.
- convolvatron 5y agothat seems impossible by definition? we're talking about factors that the market doesn't account for (externalities), which can't have a value because they aren't traded. what units are you going to use for magnitude?