A rising rent share of income reduces investment and stunts growth

Evidence

5 David Ricardo, an early-nineteenth-century London banker and famed free-marketeer economist, was clear on this: any rise of rent as a share of all income is bound to reduce investment, lower demand for goods and stunt growth. See his On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 941

Categorization

• XREF: Direct antecedent of the book’s whole thesis: rent extraction predates ‘digital feudalism’ and was already flagged by classical political economy. — connects to: Financialization channels income toward the wealthy and depresses productive investment and wages. — Ken-Hou Lin & Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Financialization and U.S. Income…, 24; Rentier income share rose broadly across OECD countries in recent decades. — Greta R. Krippner, The Financialization of the American…, 16; Rent has replaced profit as the driving force of the economy. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 504
• QUESTION: Would it be worth pulling Ricardo’s specific mechanism (rent pushing up food costs -> wages -> crowding out profit) when contrasting old land rent vs new data rent?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 941