Yes, rent is an aspect of “the gap”, and currently an increasing aspect. I’m all for both monetary compensation for rent with the dividend and discount, and for its rational regulation with a combination of normal taxation and/or something like a philanthropic option being available where taxation can be lessened if rent extracted were to be earmarked for research on resource efficiency, public infrastructure etc. of a community benefiting nature. Vices are vices. They should be discouraged in both concrete and philosophical ways. And the most encompassing way to combat the tendency to collect rent would be the creation and affirmation of an ethic of Grace as in giving/giving back…instead of extraction/taking away/hoarding. Ideas and ethics are always the most powerful things in life and in living.

The gap consists of both extractions/diminutions of money from the circular flow of the economy like rent, and also excess creations and carrying over of costs into current and proceeding cycles of production without an additional creation of individual incomes to balance those costs like the costs of replacing capital equipment which the business will have to pay for and will pass on to the consumer in prices it must recoup, but again, no additional individual income is created with which to liquidate those costs in consumer prices.

Both diminutions of money and excess creation of costs occur in the normal and unfettered operation of commerce/the economy, that is, they are inherent to the system ITSELF. What this inherent excess cost aspect of the gap as a result means is…..that the more production, i.e. excess production that is not consumed…the wider and larger the gap is…because again, in the normal operation of the economy the rate of flow of total costs/prices exceeds the rate of flow of individual incomes. Waste as in excess, both obvious and subtle,…is probably the largest and most unperceived contributor to the gap. Profit making systems do tend to be inherently wasteful because of the all too human and flawed tendency to greed, but the correct response to this fact is not to overreact to it as did Marx, but rather to implement both gracious policies that encourage and enable the efficiencies of competition, and when and where necessary, proper and effective regulation/taxation that also serves to transform and/or direct flaws toward an aspect of grace. Another of the natural psychological aspects of Grace is that it is redemptive.