Half-baked Marxism, Full-blown Solutions

The earth has supported a tremendous and flourishing amount and variety of life for a great long while, so why does the human species starve, battle and go homeless? Isn't Mother Earth voluptuous and fecund enough to suit the needs of all people? Beginning with those questions, author, teacher, and economist, David Giesen, will offer an economic analysis at San Francisco's 777 Valencia New College campus on Thursday, May 29, 7pm that resolves most socio-economic mysteries.

Why are wages so low that housing appears expensive? Despite unprecedented wealth, why does privation and a psychology of poverty persist? Chiefly, Giesen asserts, because the economic potential of land has been profoundly privatized, thus stripping those who use urban land of much of their earned income while the mere landholder reaps the users' harvest.

In this free program, open to the public, Giesen fleetingly pays Marx his due, then defends genuine capitalism. Land is not capital, Giesen protests, and therein lies all the stuff of a lively discussion. Where the full annual value of land --urban, rural and mineral-- is retained by community via the ad valorem property tax, land speculation ends, land sales price goes towards zero, and land with economic value gets optimally used.