Yves here. This is another tour de force from Michael Hudson, derived from a paper he presented in early January at the UPRE session during the annual ASSA meeting. This time he turns from his recent focus on the economically destructive but oligarchy-advancing practice of sanctifying debt to another favorite topic, the evolution of capitalism. Hudson looks from the early Industrial Revolution onward and demonstrates that the dominance of financial capital over industrial capital was neither the likely course of events nor desirable. A major feature of this development is the increasing weight of rentier activities and how they drain income from workers and more productive sectors.
Posted on January 23rd, 2021
High-ended retailer Saks Fifth Avenue added private security, fencing and barbed wire ahead of a Black Lives Matter protest in New York, June 7. 2020. (Anthony Quintano, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Michael Hudson and Pepe Escobar last month took a hard look at rent and rent-seeking at the Henry George School of Social Science.
Michael Hudson: Well, I’m honored to be here on the same show with Pepe and discuss our mutual concern. And I think you have to frame the whole issue that China is thriving, and the West has reached the end of the whole 75-year expansion it had since 1945.
Henry George School of Social Science
Alanna: So, let’s formally start. Once we start to record Ibrahim is going to introduce the Henry George school and welcome everybody then I’m going to introduce from the bios; Michael and Pepe and then Michael will start with rent and rent seeking those who have comments or questions could put that in chat and then we’ll go to the chat at some point.
Ibrahima: Welcome, my name is Ibrahima Drame and I’m the director of education at the Henry George school of Social Science it’s a great honor to have you with us today for this joint webinar co-organized with the International Union for Land Value Taxation with two great thinkers, professor Michael Hudson and Pepe Escobar to discuss rent and rent seeking. I’d like to thank Michael and Pepe for kindly accepting to share their insights and of course our good friend Alanna Hartzok co-founder of Earth Right Institute, she will be moderating this session.
By Lynn Fries. Originally published at GPE Newdocs
LYNN FRIES: Hello and welcome. I’m Lynn Fries producer of Global Political Economy or GPEnewsdocs. I am delighted to have Michael Hudson joining us today. He will be discussing how under a neoliberal shift from industrial to finance capitalism, today’s most pressing economic conflict is not simply between labor and employers. It is a conflict in which rentier interests have the upper hand over labor, industry and government together. This is the political economy in which the COVID-19 economic shock is playing out with dire consequences.
Michael Hudson is a research professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. A prolific author, Michael Hudson’s latest book is …