OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson <svj.orionwo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> El Salvador is one of the > smaller Central American countries situated north of Nicaragua. Back > then, during the mid 1960s, it was estimated that 90% of the country's > land was owned by 14 families. The illiteracy rate was hovering > somewhere between 60% and 80%. During the U.S. occupation of Japan, land reform was one of the most important and effective polices. It made a tremendous contribution to ensuring that democracy survived and that rural people could live decently, without starving or selling their daughters into prostitution they way they had to do before the war. Land reform, along with all of the other occupation initiatives, was designed in Washington during the last years of the war. The policy was set long before the occupation began. Under this policy, MacArthur's GHQ ordered the Japanese government buy land from large landowners and distribute it to the tenant farmers who were working the land. Because of the rampant inflation, the government paid essentially nothing for that land. That is to say, they set prices and paid months or years later, when the value of money had fallen by a huge factor. No modern society can survive without some measure of redistribution from wealthy people to middle class and poor people. This necessity is imposed by our technology, in manufacturing and farming. We will soon need much more redistribution, to nearly everyone: http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/ There is nothing morally wrong with this. It is how our machinery works. If you want to live in a high tech modern society, you must have an economy that fits it. - Jed
