In the modern economy, rentier skims<\/em> take a variety of forms.<\/strong> The government is adept at levying rentier skims<\/em>. Harsh penalty fees piled on top of minor traffic violations are one example; another is extra fees to “expedite” services government<\/a> is supposed to provide in a timely manner.<\/p>\n A California architect recently recounted the new fee structure in a Northern California municipality: the fee to have the city planning department review your building permit application leaped to $6,000. Since the department warned applicants it will take at least six months for the agency to process the application, they kindly offer an alternative: for a mere $4,000 more (an “expedited fee”), the applicant can get his application reviewed in a mere four months rather than six months.<\/p>\n Planned obsolescence provides many other examples of rentier skims<\/em>.<\/strong> Microsoft’s operating systems and hardware makers both operate a form of rentier skim<\/em>, in that each new OS and device offers marginal benefits (if any) in terms of productivity. The rare printer that doesn’t break down in a few years is obsoleted as software drivers are no longer available on the new OS.<\/p>\n Cartels and quasi-monopolies offer a wealth (ahem) of rentier skims<\/em>.<\/strong> Monopolies can raise prices and degrade services at will. Cartels maintain price controls while denying they do any such thing.<\/p>\n Finance offers the richest opportunities for rentier skim<\/em>.<\/strong> Load up college students with tens of thousands of dollars in high-interest student loans for marginal educations that could be provided at a fraction of the cost.<\/p>\n The net result of an economy of endless rentier skims<\/em> is stagnation and rising wealth inequality.<\/strong> Money that could be saved and invested in productive enterprises and infrastructure is skimmed off.<\/a><\/p>\n Simply put, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This is the teleology of every rentier economy<\/em>:<\/strong> the built-in consequence of rentier skims<\/em> is increasing wealth inequality and economic stagnation.<\/p>\n Rentier skims do not contribute to real wealth,\u00a0 Charles Hughes Smith suggests. The classic example is a fee collected to pass from one fiefdom’s border to the next: no value is provided to the person paying the border fee; it … Continue reading ![\"Rentier](\"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Rentier-Schemes.jpg\")
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