OLD CARTOONS

The modern versions might see a connection between privatised rent and ‘leaky gut’.

And again ….

It’s an old game!

…. well, maybe ‘rent’, rather than ‘capital’?

INDUSTRY SUPER FUNDS

What’s wrong with the statement below in this industry super fund TV advertisement?

“We’ve worked all our lives for this place. We’d hate to have to sell it to fund our retirement.”

What have we come to? How sad is it that Australians must now work all their lives to have a roof over their heads? What the hell’s wrong with the country? A home should be affordable and easily obtainable for all.

For example, when people first came to Canberra, all they had to do to was to pay five pound rental per year to obtain a residential home site.

Now, the starting price for a site in Melbourne or Sydney is about $1,000,000, although land has no cost of production! Something is awry.

And what sort of a country is Australia that we must fret about how we can possibly fund our retirement? Why do we require an army of advisers to tell us how we might be able to afford it?

Inadequate public capture of land rent explains a lot. As does superannuation funds and taxation taking more and more of our wages.

Could it be that taxes and land prices are the problem?

CHINA

The British Empire saw the rise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in much the same fashion as we’re now regarding the threat of an emergent China.

WWI was the inevitable outcome of years of the talk of war in which each side demonised the other about its sins.

So far, China’s aggression has related to securing what it sees as “its” borders. It doesn’t have the west’s recent history of expeditionary wars: but who knows? Taiwan?

Wouldn’t it be better on this occasion for the US and China to engage, and remain engaged, in steady diplomatic conversation, instead of each party engaging in trade and/or rhetorical reprisals in order to curry favour at home?

Can’t happen? Won’t happen? Well that’s not good because it’s otherwise obvious the 21st century is likely to outdo the obscenities of WWI (and of WWII for that matter, which was the logical outcome of Germany’s initially impossible WWI reparations, its 1920s property bubble and the ’30s Great Depression).

Chest-beating at the top is whipping up popular foment on both sides. It isn’t looking good.

Just thought I’d brighten your pandemic day, as we also head relentlessly into the financial depression.

Happy days!