…. BECAUSE LAND PRICES CAN, AND DO, GO DOWN (EVERY 18 YEARS)

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

The media’s preoccupation with Rudd v. Gillard v. Abbott amounts to beer and circuses as Australia disappears down the gurgler.  The excesses of reality TV and the footy compound the craziness into a new normal.

And you can rely on radio’s shock jocks to keep the pot boiling because this sort of pap is popular, even if it does get Howard Sattler sacked. It keeps peoples’ minds off blaming themselves for the strife they’re in–the amount of debt they’ve been carrying–and of course it’s easy to blame the Labor government and the Prime Minister, because they certainly have let us down.

Looking the other way–away from what the almost invisible 0.5% has done to Australia–has replaced leadership.  Mainstream media knows from whence its pay emanates, so the only reform it’s going to call for is a change of government.

And so Australians beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past …. so to speak.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

THE NADIR?

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

Richard Cobden also documented this process in an 1845 parliamentary debate on the Corn Laws:

“I warn ministers, and I warn landlords and the aristocracy of this country, against forcing on the attention of the middle and industrial classes, the subject of taxation ….. If you were to bring forward the history of taxation in this country for the last 150 years, you will find as black a record against the landowners as even in the Corn Law itself.

I warn them against ripping up the subject of taxation. If they want another league at the death of this one – if they want another organisation and a motive – then let them force the middle and industrial classes to understand how they have been cheated, robbed and bamboozled …..

For a period of 150 years after the conquest, the whole of the revenue of the country was derived from the land. During the next 150 years it yielded nineteen-twentieths of the revenue. For the next century down to the reign of Richard III it was nine-tenths. During the next 70 years to the time of Mary it fell to about three-fourths. From this time to the end of the Commonwealth, land appeared to have yielded one-half the revenue. Down to the reign of Anne it was one-fourth. In the reign of George III it was one-sixth. For the first thirty years of his reign the land yielded one-seventh of the revenue. From 1793 to 1816 (during the period of the land tax), land contributed one ninth. From which time to the present one twenty-fifth only of the revenue of the revenue had been derived directly from land.

Thus, the land, which anciently paid the whole of taxation, paid now only a fraction, or one twenty-fifth, notwithstanding the immense increase that had taken place in the value of the rentals. The people had fared better under despotic monarchs than when the powers of the state had fallen into the hands of a landed oligarchy who had first exempted themselves from taxation, and next claimed compensation for themselves by a corn law for their heavy and peculiar burdens.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Conclusion?  We’ve been dudded into penury and debt. We don’t even have the disposable incomes of the 15th century English labourer with a family of five after allowance for the cost of our food, clothing and shelter, much less the better-paid artisan English carpenter!

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

Jews and Christians have managed to skirt around this command and yet maintain they are still observing Jews and Christians.

Passing strange?

And if ever they rediscover this most fundamental covenant, the “separation of Church and State” will see to it that it’s never put into practice – because you must understand the State also works for the 0.5%.

So much for reconciling Jews, Muslims and Christians – so let’s get on with bombing the shit out of each other.

________________

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

- From Fred Harrison's "The Traumatised Society"

Yes, indeed.  Unfortunately this is the bit the Greens just don’t get, Fred.  There’s an abundance for everyone except the rampant 0.5% if we capture land rent: that action alone will circumscribe their environmental plunder.

Zeepoppers are unwitting stooges for the 0.5%

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

There they were in London’s Hyde Park yesterday; some forty-five thousand of them.

The Big IF, a coalition including Unicef, Oxfam, Save the Children and Christian Aid had organised the rally “Enough Food for Everyone IF” …

People at the event in Hyde Park laid a striking feature of plastic flowers to symbolize the millions of young people who die each year from malnutrition.

Philanthropist Bill Gates and others addressed the crowd or sang to them. Apparently more money will help fix the problem – certainly NOT stopping the 0.1% from stealing the peoples’ land and rents. That’s not on.

Over at Westminster $4.15 billion was pledged to tackle malnutrition and poverty.

There’s another rally next weekend in Belfast.

It’s amazing how many people will turn out for extravaganzas pointing to the results of the 0.1% running amok, The Big If, Live Aid, etc., but I guess it does keep the big charities running …  If only they wanted to really stop the cause of poverty and dispossession.

Meanwhile, people pragmatically wanting to put an end to poverty–by ending taxation and making the 0.1% pay the rent for the natural resources they deny to the dispossessed–continue to hold their meetings in a telephone booth.

Paradoxically, it seems you can get the numbers up for anything except the remedy.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.