It’s like this:
CURRENT SCENARIO (How we became ‘post industrial’)
Heavy taxes on labour, capital and productivity harm manufacturing and the real economy, and less wealth is generated. And low taxes on land and mineral rents generate inflated asset (land) prices, impossible mortgages, greater household debt and inflated finance and real estate sectors.
REFORMED SCENARIO (How we might return to greater capture of our natural resource rents.)
Slash/abolish taxes on workers and business to generate greater wealth, genuine prosperity and a vast reduction in private debt. At the same time, capturing the publicly-generated rents from land and natural resource for revenue will lower land prices (and mortgages) and create greater real wages.
These are the alternatives. The decision is obvious. Neither the GST nor transactions taxes feature in the solution, because taxes are the problem.
This inflated Real Estate sector have certainly been in overdrive lately. No shortage of media coverage on houses fetching huge figures above reserve price at auction or speculators paying record high prices for properties in Collingwood due for compulsory acquisition to make way for new freeways.
It’s amazing how the media just happen to be present at an auction that fetches record bids above reserve. Surely such auctions are not staged by real estate agents posing as buyers in front of a gullible media with the final bid being the encore for this stage act to be beamed into our living rooms at prime time.