Today's discussion came from our archives and was recorded in June of 2023. Our talk is hosted by Ed Dodson, a long-time faculty member here at the Henry George School, who is joined by our returning guest Mr. Mark Mollineaux.
Mark is an artist, radio host, and researcher who focuses on metropolitan resilience, urbanization, and housing affordability. Mr. Mollineaux is a lifelong Georgist and hosts a popular radio show, The Henry George Program, on Stanford’s radio where he hosts discussions on Georgist ideas and concepts. He is also part of Common Ground USA’s California Chapter. Common Ground USA promotes land and economic justice through land-value taxation, land trusts, and fair taxation of pollution or extraction.
In the 19th century, Karl Marx published his seminal book, Das Kapital, where he critiques the political economy. In this work, Marx coined the term “vulgar economics” or “vulgar economy”, which was a dig at frameworks created by other economists. However, vulgar economics also criticizes assumptions made by pure observations. To Marx, economists had to conceptualize more than just what they saw. Today, this can be directly linked to the supply and demand analysis utilized by most major economists.
When analyzing factors such as labor or land, it helps to build a more complex understanding of how these factors of production synergize with the rest of the economy. Our guest today helps us do just that.
Together, we got into the weeds of the dynamics of housing markets, discussed why traditional policy tools won’t help current unaffordability problems and why some alternatives may be better, and why property and land taxes can help entrench unaffordability.
To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: https://www.hgsss.org/
