…. 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“!

At least there’s one Australian political party prepared to say what needs to be said about the impossible level of our land prices.

It hurt China & the Chinese, sending residential values back to those at the turn of the century. However, the west’s bubble-burst is likely to be even worse, because our banks are owned privately.

“Do you realise the implications of what you’re suggesting? If the property market were to shift as you suggest, banking, media, and the net worth of millions of Australians go with it. Is that a risk you’re willing to take?“

“Yes, if we manage the transition gradually. Australia needs to shift back to genuine productivity and wealth creation for future generations. We’ve prioritised the interests of passive rent-seekers for far too long – and the rest of the country has paid an extremely heavy price.”

Why the Rentier Class is Our Greatest Liability

Eric Clyne is quite correct in the previous video: We must “keep the working class happy“—not out of charity, but for survival. Today’s ascendancy of the rent-seeking billionaire class, built on the backs of a debt-burdened workforce, has signalled systemic rot.

From a Georgist perspective, household debt isn’t just “bad luck“; it’s the direct result of taxing workers’ wages while allowing publicly generated land and resource rents to be privatised. This has forced land prices into the stratosphere, turning homes into debt traps. We’re repeating the fatal error of Ancient Rome. Pliny the Elder’s warning—latifundia perdidere Italiam (the great estates ruined Italy)—is a mirror to our own era, where land speculation has been dispossessing those people who keep us going as a society.

A financial collapse looms. To meet it with Eric Clyne’s “anti-fragile transformation“, we need to stop taxing productivity and start taxing economic rents. By capturing the value of land and resources for the public good, we can abolish sales and income taxes and deliver a decent universal income. In part, that will be essential to meet mortgages in the financial collapse.

Georgists meet the conundrum simply: Do we continue to subsidise the few, or do we tax economic rents to liberate the many? The answer will determine whether we prosper, or follow the latifundia into terminal collapse.

It’s time to implement the recommendations of Australia’s Future Tax System – ‘The Henry Tax Review‘.