Well, there it is!

I think we now have our own local script accounting for the upcoming Australian property crash: “It was the 2026 federal budget that caused it!”

[Never mind what’s also happening in the USA and the UK.]

It wasn’t the budget, of course. The collapse in real estate prices had been set in concrete many years ago by tax regimes favouring speculative interests above those of working people.

The one thing that collapsing real estate markets will prove is that it’s beyond time for a tax shift from earned incomes onto land and natural resource rents.

~~~~ooOoo~~~~

The budget will be delivered by Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, tonight.

Too much blame for inflation on Trump’s Iran incursion?

Too little, too late, on real estate speculation’s deleterious effect on the Australian economy?

_________________________________________

Let’s see, shall we?

Fred Harrison and Peter Smith: How do we open minds to respond to the generic problem?

Worth understanding ….

So, why does labour seem always to lose out to capital?

The reason is that monopoly capital usually receives ‘super profits‘ from the land and resource rents which are owed equally to all labour, including household labour. We choose instead to tax the earned incomes of labour and capital, not land and resource rents.

Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, was an alumnus of the Raffles Institution and sought to retain a good relationship with Great Britain.

[An acronym from LVT, MMT and UBI]

1. LVT (The Revenue/Efficiency Engine): You capture the unearned “rents” of nature and location, ending land speculation and making the “natural price of land” zero.
2. MMT (The Operational Reality): You acknowledge the government doesn’t need “tax money” to spend, but uses LVT to drain liquidity, anchor the currency’s value, and prevent the inflationary “financialisation” of people and the economy.
3. UBI (The Social Dividend): You distribute the public’s share of economic rent and the benefits of a sovereign currency directly to every citizen, ensuring no one is “excluded” from their right to exist in their own country.

Why “VIMMLBUTT” works as a conceptual framework:

In a “VIMMLBUTT” economy, you effectively stop rewarding passive ownership of land and bonds and start rewarding active contribution.

• The Rich: Can no longer sit on land and watch its value rise while they sleep.
• The Government: Stop pretending it’s a household and starts acting as the provider of a public utility (money).
• The Citizenry: Gets a floor to stand on (UBI) without the bureaucratic “humiliation” of welfare tests.

The current system is a “VIMMLBUTT-in-reverse”: it uses MMT-style spending to bail out banks, uses “handouts” for business (as given during COVID for some businesses already making super-profits), and protects land rents through tax concessions.

…. CHOOSING NOT TO DO SO, GENERATES REPETITIVE FINANCIAL COLLAPSE.

AUSTRALIA’S LAND PRICES ARE CRAZY

1. Well, it’s not really a tax, it’s a rent.
2. And how silly to believe we could have only one tax?

1. Yes, but we need to speak in terms that most people understand. They fail to see any difference between a tax and a rent, so using the word ‘tax’ serves the purpose of introducing them to a levy on land and natural resources–on economic rents–which unlike all taxes, cannot be passed on in prices!
2. Is it really silly? Now that we have electric cars and vehicles, governments are all about “How can we levy taxes on these?” “What’s the best way?” Why is this? Isn’t it about time to reverse the process and to start removing taxes on everything?

i.e. Towards ‘the single tax’, a rental levy on the value of the land over which we hold title, the resources that we extract from the earth, and the value of the electro-magnetic spectra which big-Tech and AI employ? Why not?

Let’s start to un-tax everything and paradoxically employ “the single tax“!