The problem we're having is with rent seeking. Why is rent seeking the problem? There are no really no good forms of rent seeking, you can't for instance refer to the claims made by the young and old on society as rent seeking. Rent seeking involves the use of property to extract value from society where in general there is no contribution or there is a net negative contribution with cumulative ill effects. Aside from these conditions rent seeking behavior would be temporary in a healthy stable situation, its completely toxic over duration. In aggregate rent seeking culture is net negative. And it has been increasingly problematic for something like 5 decades, there were a few decades of lull but it was really problematic and destabilizing before that lull period but there is a crucial difference now days that makes it even more intolerable, it never was tolerable. In Thomas Piketty's famous r>g formula there is so-called growth (arbitrary as that is) but all the gain or supposed gain is going to rent seekers for net negative contribution. What it means is the people who actually contributed who built out the world who built out its automation, who contributed something besides the rent seeker's threatening of some manager to "get me x return or I'll replace you," these people are being completely disenfranchised. They face a world where the sun is the energy input and the machines do all the work and there is no place for them and no way for them support themselves or get their rightful inheritance which amounts to the fruits of all of it- except for waking up and rightfully taking matters into their own hands and reminding the non-contributing rent seekers of their precise non contribution and literal actual debt- presumably the rent seekers know this which is part of why they have cut wages to drive up worker debt so they can claim to pay their way back to parity to paying off this fake austerity driven debt- but that doesn't even begin to cover it. The delinking of wages from inflation 5 decades ago wasn't an accident, it was the result of this change being realized by bitter elites, realized or recognized because Keynes predicted it, when they realized that the scarcity or economic problem was solved and that labor was over and by extension capital was over as Keynes predicted... the neo liberals wanted to go back to a plantation (which in the US had only really ended 20 years prior) they basically wanted to enslave everybody with rent seeking. This is not really Thomas Jefferson's homestead model- this is not an independence model but an enslavement model. This is why you hear Trump talking about not wanting a one world government, that he wants to go back to nationalism. Yes globalism is a problem when it pits ordinary people against one another but that isn't what he is after, feudal nationalism is worse, they want to go back to the plantation. There is one solution to this which is cradle to grave unconditional guaranteed full annual replacement incomes that are indexed to match or exceed inflation and are given to every citizen- the immigration draw is easy enough to solve on this one. This makes it so people are never doing anything for money they otherwise wouldn't do. This is the path to peace and societies based on trust and friendship instead of fear and coercion. It is also the path to ecology-as ecologist Buckminster Fuller was advocating when he was pushing resource based economies where you could have the full population of the globe much better off living in perfect ecology. But you have one really terrible rent seeker when you can see half the democratic party and all of the GOP and a hand full of governments around the globe seriously caught up in this and that is fossil fuels and that is because fossil fuel's ultralow thermal dynamic efficiency and their supply chain and logistics and processing are even worse on this and that translates in to sub threshold scarcity inducing economics or ultralow economic efficiency that wears societies out by hollowing them out (with all the subsidies especially in the bailout wars and he insurance pools set up to socialize their endless losses) and treadmilling the society out and the criminal destabilizing concentration of wealth and power that goes along especially with the fossil fuel rent seeking extraction. All of this leads to scarcity inducement or artificial scarcity to hedge deflation to protect rent seekers and austerity which is just driving up scarcity to get political control. Also in this model is the notion that the drug pushing mode of fossil fuels is good because it creates security or stability through vesting bondage internationally. They also claim that instead of letting capital rot (billionaires except for the constructive ones like Musk are rotting capital) all the unnecessary inflated risk pools are caught up in rent seeking especially around socializing fossil fuel loses and diverting money to fossil fuel rent seekers- and as it affects pensions and mortgages in a kind of human shield hostage taking- those are all held under duress fill with fossil fuel rent seeking junk. So breaking this is the most important thing. The capture of media with sponsorship was not an accident laws were changed to allow it so that sponsors could get at legislative capture and the money based capture of law which again is about turning people into property or slaves and getting at extractive rent seeking rights to exploit, what is needed to keep fossil fuel idiocy alive- after all toxic fuels which damage health and destroy the future for profit? Again all designed to take us back to the plantation. What was neoliberalism about. What was going to a supply side system about? It was about going to the rent seeker plantation system. It is about reversing the civil war and apparently also the revolutionary war as it seems that Brit banks own or control the US banks and of course we know the UK retains an odious outrageous monarchy- no way the so called developed world should be harboring that some people are better than other people horrid elitest bs. We went from the Keynesianism to stupid neolibralism it was a really, really wrong, wrong hard right turn, that should have never have happed. It was back in 1970 when we were told to make the transition to these replacement incomes and we should have gone left. Of course the rent seekers are now terrified that when the truth comes out about what they've done that there will be retribution for the lost opportunity costs and the bill will become immediately due with interest. But we can't let that fear lead to global civil wars which become nuclear wars which is what the economists 50 year ago were warning about saying the shift to full replacement incomes cradle to grave guaranteed unconditional annual indexed full replacement incomes was necessary immediately to avoid that result back then. But instead the idiocy of fossil fuel rent seeking was ramped up with the embargos and all the useless unnecessary bailout wars. We should have been done with fossil fuels in 1950. It was also around late 70s when the bs about profit for non-contributing rent seekers being the bottom line or most important thing started to come in. But right now tough guys in the UK, US, Israel and SA are all facing the boot and the guy atop Russia is worried out loud about exposure. Their system where they created exposure for everyone else but secrecy for themselves is reversing on the rent seekers. Borris Johnson went off about Corbyn wanting to reduce the work week to 4 days- reversing their priority of rent seeking oppression. Imagine if 97% of workers around the globe, the ones in cold sweat busy work jobs, jobs that do more harm than good, many producing 14 trucks of waste per truck of product or amount to resource wasting soap opera time wasters (even as they cause vestment by forcing people to know know each other's names) just called off work for the rest of their lives. We'd get the needed change for peace and abundance overnight. New take from rent seeker would probably be something like paying people a luxury margin which would increase if they stayed home and didn't come out. That relieves their elite fears- stay home and play video games and watch TV and maybe more for home gym use- stay home in free luxury condos with amazon drone delivered organic food just don't come out. Bernie Sanders has come out in favor of a wealth tax on the underlying assets of the wealthy. This was the prescription that Thomas Piketty gave to deal with the problem of the unending concentration of wealth to destabilizing levels under run away rent seeking, but he indicated it would require an orchestration of governments. Now we see with Trump a reaction against globalism and one world government apparently to protect rent seeking and the tariffs in particular to protect the fossil fuel rent seeking which is at the heart of rent seeking in the world. At the same time he seems when in trouble to be reaching for world governance by asking for foreign intervention in US politics after already being in trouble for that type of conflict of loyalty behavior over rigging elections. Presumably he is so used to the sponsor conflicts at the media level that have been used to preserve and promote rent seeking in the face of its natural dissolution that he struggles more than normal to see the lines.
