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There is theory of royalty from Montesquieu and more recent that decribes Rent Seekers, ( field of similar to Lawyers mentality). Its all about create wasteful, petty, and self serving laws that enrich those who make money from Rent Seeking. (Disclaimer, there are good Lawyers out there, but the bad ones really create problems for much of society).
If all the bad effects came from these 4-5 large US led initiatives where standout examples of Rent Seeking / Moral Hazard / Malinvestment occurred, we need to understand the mechanics that caused this. Because its starting to become clear that this is why the US economy has been in the slow mode, and why ZIRP is not working. FYI, the Lawyers/Politicians are likely asking the Fed to keep ZIRP until after the election, as if the arguments within the Fed board recently exposed are not enough proof of a disagreement on ZIRP.
Lawyers who are good at deception led us into this . Now we could belittle Dems/Repubs who have engaged in this (recall many Repub's were in favor of NAFTA). So rather than make this a partisan-fest of criticism, we should be principled enough to point out how the US has gotten itself into bad policies (sans partisan) over the last 20-30 years which have destroyed the economy.
There are a whole host of "Rent Seeker" like jobs, who will benefit from continual Rent Seeking like policies. Lets name a few: Lawyers, Workers of Government Jobs, Liberal Arts majors, Drug Dealers, etc.
Any type of job or effort that has minimal benefit to society but enriches themselves while it harms many others could be a form of Rent Seeking. But there are good lawyers, good government workers, and good liberal arts majors out there. How due we parse out the Self Serving jobs, and get us back to manufacturing/R&D and innovation?
Is the US loss of manufacturing getting the US into a huge point of no return Rent Seeking or wasteful investment, in which ZIRP and other schemes wont work?
Any type of job or effort that has minimal benefit to society but enriches themselves while it harms many others could be a form of Rent Seeking.
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A better term for such activities is Parasitical
Reserve Rent Seeking for the act of siphoning Economic Rents.
I'm not quite sure why you lumped Liberal Arts majors and Drug Dealers in there. Stay focused, you said yourself to transcend tge left/right fight. I'm not even sure the Liberal Arts majors are rent seeking. I'm almost certain that Drug Dealers are not.
Housing is the worst culprit. Pretty much our entire system as we now know it, is built on housing costs rising into perpetuity.
"Healthcare" is a close second.
There are plenty of people who benefit from this system, because it doubles as a jobs program for people that want to get paid well without adding any value. That's why there is a decent sized contingent vociferously supporting The Establishment
HydroCabron
2016 Sep 29, 1:00pm
There are a whole host of "Rent Seeker" like jobs, who will benefit from continual Rent Seeking like policies. Lets name a few: Lawyers, Workers of Government Jobs, Liberal Arts majors, Drug Dealers, etc.
Any type of job or effort that has minimal benefit to society but enriches themselves while it harms many others could be a form of Rent Seeking.
Nope. Words have meanings. You're trying to say that a flight attendant is the same thing as a railway engineer.
Classical economics uses the term "rent" to mean "income received in excess of what it requires to maintain a particular capital asset."
For example, when Donald Trump takes a $2000 lamp from a store, saying "I don't carry cash," then has his people send a $1000 check later on, that's not rent-seeking - it's theft. But I will not stoop to mentioning this example here.
Dems have been for some shady ideas, that I think have resulted in a great deal of malinvestment. I believe these Rent Seeking type of policies which were forced upon the majority of US citizens have a great deal of Moral Hazard associated with them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
NAFTA: Sold as a way to balance trade and allow some work to be done offshore, the regulator and tax environment in US forced many firms to offshore. Those that were behind NAFTA became lobbyists in some circumstances. I would say that Clinton Foundations has profited from outsourcing and foreign influence peddling.
Question: Is the Clinton Foundation like the royalty of old? That is they are the rent seekers, passing laws/work rules that effect our nation so much that we end up with a policy that ruins US jobs, manufacturing, but enriches the few - Effectively like Rent Seeking but at a much higher level?
CRA: Sold as a way to allow poorer minorities to get access to home ownership. CRA did ease requirements, and some believe that the relationship between HUD and private sector loans were so cosy as to have the private sector create NINJA and other loans a few years after CRA, not the CRA, but a mimic with similar goals. Housing prices soared year over year, Creditors, Credit agencies, banks, and appraisers turned a blind eye because they were making money while someone else was holding the risk. Is this not Rent Seeking with great Moral Hazard?
Obamacare: Someone please look at Obamacare not from a political partisan standpoint but from a mechanics standpoint.
Free Tuition: Sold as a way to allow families with middle income and under to have free college. Unless college professors and universities decide to lower the costs of education by 50%+ this is going to cost someone something. I would say that whenever you have a nation and you offer something so critical for free to 80% of the populace, you are going to create another type of Rent Seeking that will have a Moral Hazard.
Whats needed is Tort Reform: Those in the legal community make a lot of money by the Rent Seeking model. The Lawyers are in many ways like the royalty of the 1500-1700s. They are producing more laws and moral hazards, once they create moral hazards that break, the Lawyers then need to be hired to fix the rent seeking / moral hazards they created.
The US is departing from its ideals of separation of powers, allowing one of the parties to morph into a "free-dom". What the US may be doing with Socially Liberal politics is creating a "Kleptocrasy" run by Lawyers and every increasing regulation.
The US needs to get back to basics of Manufacturing, R&D, and Innovation. We need clean power, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, more investment in private sector, less build up of Lawyers work, more productive work.
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