Modern Economists re-learning the secret of a better society & environment
Pulling together the threads of 'Georgist Economics' and 'Green Economics' I had a recent online discussion on 'economic rent' and it s role in 'Green economics'. Sparked by an interest in Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher, he was a ‘devote’ of Henry George and the same economic thought adopted by Joseph Stiglitz and many modern ‘green economists’. This has come into the news this week with a dream team of modern economists (Stiglitz, Krugman & Durlauf) debating the launch of ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, by Thomas Piketty, who has captured the zeitgeist with his modern interpretation of the classical ideas of what constitutes capital and the role of inherited wealth suppressing economic freedom and equality and highlighting the role of 'economic rent' which has been so fastidiously 'airbrushed' from modern economic texts and political debate. T he economic thought...