Elites play the role today that landlords played under feudalism. They levy interest and financial fees that are like a tax, to support what the classical economists called “unproductive activity.”
MICHAEL HUDSONElites play the role today that landlords played under feudalism. They levy interest and financial fees that are like a tax, to support what the classical economists called “unproductive activity.”
MICHAEL HUDSON“We’ll help you get a better job. We’ll arrange a loan so that you don’t have to pay a penny for this education.” Their pet bank gets them the government-guaranteed loan, and the student may get the junk degree, but doesn’t get a job, so they don’t pay the loan.
MICHAEL HUDSONWe’re still in the collapse that began after 2008. There’s not a new collapse, there hasn’t been a recovery.
MICHAEL HUDSONYou have to abolish pension plans. You have to abolish social spending. You have to raise taxes.
MICHAEL HUDSONThis is not really currency that circulates. It’s like the old joke about expensive vintage wine. Wine prices will go up and once in a while somebody will buy a 50-year-old bottle of wine and say, “Wait a minute. This has gone bad.” The answer is, “Well, that wine isn’t for drinking; that’s for trading.”
MICHAEL HUDSONSeventy-eight percent of millennials are worried about not having enough good paying job opportunity to pay off their student loans. Seventy-four percent can’t pay the health care if they get sick.
MICHAEL HUDSONI think the less fracking there is, the better it is for the economy and society.
MICHAEL HUDSONEconomists often define their discipline as “the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends.” But when resources or money really become scarce, economists call it a crisis and say that it’s a question for politicians, not their own department.
MICHAEL HUDSONThe United States Government has fought against creation of an international court to adjudicate the ability of national economies to pay debts.
MICHAEL HUDSONEducation is something that should not be organized on a for-profit basis, because in that case its purpose is not really to provide an education.
MICHAEL HUDSONThere are two definitions of deflation. Most people think of it simply as prices going down. But debt deflation is what happens when people have to spend more and more of their income to carry the debts that they’ve run up – to pay their mortgage debt, to pay the credit card debt, to pay student loans.
MICHAEL HUDSONPeople are putting their money into treasuries because they worry that the risk of putting their money into the bond market, the stock market or even the money markets is very high.
MICHAEL HUDSONPaying debt service to banks leaves less income to buy goods and services.
MICHAEL HUDSONOn the flat tax, the more you compress the tax rates, the more you untax where the income is really made, at the top of the pyramid.
MICHAEL HUDSONBritain is having a referendum as to whether to withdraw from the European Union, and it looks more and more like it may do so. So the world’s politics are in turmoil.
MICHAEL HUDSONIf you have to pay about forty to forty-three percent of your income for housing, you also have to pay fifteen percent of your paycheck for the FICA for Social Security wage withholding.
MICHAEL HUDSON