Immediately after news reports that
the stock market was going to end the month of August by rising and recouping
losses, it plunged. As this is being
written, however, it may turn around again.
In real news affecting real life:
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| Arrested in crackdown |
• Hong Kong Crackdown. In
what could suddenly go in unexpected ways, “authorities” in Hong Kong appear to
have begun a new phase of repression, (re)arresting Joshua Wong, arresting Agnes
Chow and Andy Chan, and “detaining” — comspeak for arresting — an uncertain
number of others, possibly hundreds, many of whom are expected to disappear mysteriously
over the coming days and weeks. Of
course, it is difficult to see what choice Xi had. If the Chinese government respected human
rights and the will of the people, Party leadership would lose power. There may be a loss of international prestige
with a crackdown, but as Machiavelli said, it is better to be feared than
loved. Terror must be continued and the
aura of invincibility maintained in order to persuade more client states,
especially in Africa, to come under the strong Chinese umbrella instead of relying
on the weak capitalist countries for the economic benefits and job creation
that will presumably result.
Unfortunately, the rise of China to the second largest economy in the
world has been built on government debt and “ghost” investments that waste
precious resources. Like every other
pyramid scheme, the Chinese economy must either keep expanding or collapse . .
. and it is reaching the point of maximum feasible expansion. Vapid historians forget that the ancient
Roman Empire lasted as long as it did because Rome acquired territory in order
to develop it and make it profitable, not to loot it (that usually came later,
when politicians needed to make money).
• Democratic Wealth Taxes. A
number of the Democratic contenders for the U.S. presidency have suggested
several forms of a wealth tax intended to confiscate some of the trillions of
dollars held by the rich for the benefit of the non-rich . . . or, at least,
that is the theory. These range from
taxing unrealized gains on assets of all kinds to taxing the wealth itself over
a certain amount. At the heart of the
proposals is the fixed belief that the rich have the stuff in sackfulls just
lying around. People forget that most of
the wealth owned by the wealthy is in the form of productive assets. In order to pay a wealth tax, it usually involves
liquidating (“selling”) all or a portion of the wealth to have enough cash to
do so. Forced sales of that sort tend to
drive down the values of assets, and almost never generate the anticipated
revenue. Plus, liquidating capital
assets means finding a buyer, and today that usually means (you guessed it)
China, which is buying up foreign capital by overleveraging debt instead of
increasing domestic capacity. A wealth
tax would not generate enough revenue to justify it in the first place, and
would lead to further shifts of capital ownership overseas, with probable job
loss as the Chinese begin cutting costs to make the new capital recoup its
purchase price. It would be a much
better idea to stop using the tax system for anything except raising revenue,
and turn from trying to get more taxes out of fewer people, to getting fewer
taxes out of more people, as proposed in CESJ’s Capital Homesteading
reforms.
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| Not a socialist or a capitalist. |
• John Paul II and Socialism.
In pursuance of an upcoming book on economic personalism (below), we
have been uncovering little-known facts about the life and times of Pope John
Paul II, especially his work in the area of personalism and solidarity. It turns out that much of what people think
they know about these subjects simply isn’t so.
Personalism is not a philosophy of Christian anarchism, any more than
solidarity is socialism with a Christian or democratic whitewash.
• Power With Justice. CESJ’s upcoming book on economic personalism
with the working title of Power With Justice, is in the third round of
editing. Assuming final changes can be
made by the middle of September, the short book may be available by the
beginning of October.
• Shop online and support CESJ’s work! Did you know that by making
your purchases through the Amazon Smile
program, Amazon will make a contribution to CESJ? Here’s how: First, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your Amazon account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift through. Once you’ve typed (or copied and pasted) “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you will be taken to
the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• Blog Readership. We have had visitors from 26 different
countries and 36 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this
blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, India,
Philippines, Uganda, and Australia. The
most popular postings this past week in descending order were “Redefining
Natural Law,” “Another
Louis Kelso Video,” “Dorothy
Day, Catholicism, and Communism, Part I,” “News
from the Network, Vol. 12, No., 34,” and “The
Theory and Practice of Ownership.”
Those are the happenings for this
week, at least those that we know about.
If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a
note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into
the next “issue.” Due to imprudent
language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled
comments.
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