Rents and the Securities Markets

Abstract

Here the whole argument will be pulled together, developing a picture of a cyclical pattern of interaction between the real and financial sides of the economy, drawing on an unstable money supply system, most likely culminating in a crash. The cycle is sketched, showing the forces that generate an expansion, then the upturn of financial speculation, leading to excess, followed by the changes that bring about a downturn and a crash. The role of rent-based securities in the cycle is surprisingly important, and has not previously received the attention it deserves.

How speculative rent checks production may be seen not only in the valuable land withheld from use, but in the paroxysms of industrial depression which, originating in the speculative advance in land values, propagate themselves over the whole civilized world, everywhere paralyzing industry, and causing more waste and probably more suffering than would a general war. Taxation which would take rent for public uses would prevent all this.

—Henry George