Reply #63: Well spend a lot more on food [View All]

[dcfirefighter]

We'll spend a lot more on food, more people will work in agriculture, backyard gardens will be more popular, and industries that depend on oil will take a hit.

Land value in cities will become relatively more expensive, as transport costs are lowest there, benefitting those who own land in the cities.

Worst case, many huge industries collapse, leading many to the unemployment lines. There will be many who want work, and want food, and clean water and homes, education for their children, etc.

It would be relatively easy to align the unemployed with jobs providing the wants & needs to those with wants & needs.

All we'd need is access to land on which to produce these things, and currency to facilitate the exchanges required.

We can't produce more land (I guess we can take it from Canada and Mexico, but that wouldn't be my recommendation), but we can get more use out of ours. We do this by taxing the land value: if you're relatively productive on your land, you'll be able to pay the rent. If you aren't you'll sell it to someone who is. Housing costs go down, as housing units become denser and denser, making more efficient use of the land. Rural land becomes less valuable as potential sprawl development, and relatively more valuable as parkland or agricultural land. Investments in rapid transit raise the land values, and pay for the infrastructure. As land taxes go up, land prices slow, and then decline. Potential homeowners pay less on a mortgage, nothing on interest, and more on taxes. IOW, it become easier to acquire land, harder to keep it. It becomes much easier to acquire, and relatively easier to keep housing.

The currency problem is more entrenched, but easy to fix. We take the ability to create money away from the banks, and give to the Treasury, as was intended by the Constitution. We print greenbacks, and accept them as payment for taxes. If the CPI goes up, we stop printing. If teh CPI goes down, we print more. No more US debt.

Real wages rise, as the alternatives for employment increase, worst case being finding some cheap rural land and farming for yourself.