> From: "William S. Lear" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: [PEN-L:11509] Re: Home Mortgage Deduction > On Tue, July 29, 1997 at 13:50:38 (-0700) Max B. Sawicky writes: > >> this be held socially, how do you square that view with the historical > >> fact that productive property was originally stolen from workers > >> through enclosures and other means backed by state violence, and is > >> now maintained in the hands of the few by threat or outright violence? > > > >I ignore that view. I don't know what we're supposed to > >do about land expropriation that occurred x-hundred > >years ago. The remainder of your description is a > >fevered characterization of the routine enforcement of > >laws concerning private property. As I indicated above, > >I don't think socializing some property is as important as > >other goals, nor that it is well-founded in many cases. > > Thanks for the lecture, but we're not only talking about expropriation > of land that occurred "x-hundred years ago" or this year for that Well if we're talking about agrarian reform via land redistribution in the less-developed countries right now that's cool with me. You said enclosure and I thought you were talking about Merrye Olde England. > matter, since that still occurs around the world under the aegis of > the World Bank and its buddies. I suppose, following this logic, one > might as well pretend that slavery never existed when arguing about > current problems with racism. I suppose, further, that you have never > . . . All you are doing is asserting that private ownership of any substantial body of capital inexorably implies all the evil deeds to which you refer, then you're trying to cast moral implications on my expected (and accurately so) refusal to swallow this assertion. Did you have a real question? Cheers, MBS "People say I'm arrogant, but I know better." -- John Sununu =================================================== Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-8810 (voice) Ste. 1200 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 http://epn.org/sawicky Opinions above do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute other than this writer. ===================================================