Have you noticed how we talk about the cost-of-living crisis?
We lament soaring grocery bills, skyrocketing gas and electricity prices and expensive “housing”. But we’re missing the elephant in the room; the skyrocketing cost of the land itself.
In Australia, land makes up about 80% of a home’s total price, yet policymakers, economists and the media completely ignore this. Instead they push the comforting narrative of a “housing supply shortage”, protecting the vested interests of banks and real estate agents who profit from rising land prices.
This willful blindness isn’t new, but it’s incredibly dangerous.
On this website, I argue that skyrocketing land prices measure a country’s socioeconomic illness. Paradoxically, as owners, we celebrate this growing pathology because we believe it increases our personal wealth.
Right before the Great Depression, a young (brash?) Robert Gordon Menzies warned that inflated post-WWI land prices might trigger an economic collapse — and he was right.
History proves that ignoring land speculation invites socioeconomic disaster. It seems we’re too afraid to face this truth again?
__ooOoo__
Want to see excellent research on the need for public capture of publicly-generated land rent? Take a visit to the Prosper Australia website. Click below.
The ABC-TV program “Insiders” manages each week to discuss the level of federal government debt. This week was no exception. “What’s the government going to do about the one trillion dollars of government debt?” Seems Phil Coorey would like to see more surplus budgets.
It’s not debt, folks, it’s federal government bonds, issued on the pretext that we’re running out of our own currency. Deficit budgets are not at all like household deficits. On the other hand, as William Vickery said, surplus and ‘balanced’ budgets represent major issues for economies. Don’t believe misguided libertarians on this score. They fail to see that land prices are the main contributors to inflation!
We do need to see the government spending wisely, of course, and not giving into things like Western Australia’s pork barrelling of the Goods and ServicesTax.
When oh when, however, is David Speers going to introduce a discussion of the real debt on “Insiders” – the impossible level of private debt that has brought Australia to its knees?
Banking, real estate and media interests may not want such a topic to be aired, but the ABC is up for it, surely?
THE so-called national debt is 100% bonds and Treasury notes, folks – so why not stop their issue, Federal Treasury? They’re a rort!
Australia has its own currency, so we don’t need to ‘borrow’ our dollars. (Won’t that statement create conniptions in our financial experts!)
No, guys, federal government spending money doesn’t create inflation: It’s almost entirely the private debt we’ve expended on land prices! (Yes, international wars do affect cost-of-living at the margin.)
