It’s interesting that policy makers in China and Singapore have taken a look at the wisdom of this website, but I have no evidence of this happening in Australia – yet.

It’s a pity about that.

Maybe we are?

Georgism is structurally unique, insofar as it challenges the core mechanics of both capitalism and communism.

It could be described as the “radical centre”, as it seeks to combine free-market productivity with socialist equity by separating human effort from natural resources.

Georgism’s rejection demonstrates that powerful interests are able to control either system by rent seeking methods.

Aren’t we better than this?

Whether society can improve on this depends on overcoming systemic inertia. Implementing Georgist ideas faces significant hurdles:

The Transition Problem: Millions of everyday citizens now have their retirement wealth tied up in the speculative value of their home’s land. Transitioning to an LVT without wiping out the middle class requires a complex phase-in strategy, such as the VIMMLBUTT package.

Political Will: Rent-seeking is highly concentrated and lucrative, giving beneficiaries a strong incentive to lobby against this change.

But it can be done.

It was pretty well a full house of more than 200 people at Cinema Nova’s presentation of Kane Guglielmi’s movie “Common Wealth” last night.

What an excellent excursion into how the Australian tax regime might be remedied to draw our increasingly nonsensical political bifurcation back together!

If you get an opportunity to see the movie, take it folks!

Xi Jinping tried to address it by proposing a national property tax in October 2021: “Housing is for living, not for speculation“, but was fiercely opposed by the Party.

Seems property speculators run the show in any system?

I talk common sense (badly!) with Asher Spira.

But the dark web has subsequently taken control of my Twitter (X) account, @bryankav123. …. 🙁

Hmmmm …. funny about that?

We do have alternatives: –

1.  We can continue with economies whereby the 0.01% rips off its citizenry by ‘financialising’ them into impossible levels of debt, using escalating land prices and the taxing of their sales and earnings.

2.  Or, we could adopt Georgism, which does none of these whilst also distributing a universal citizens’ dividend.

Perhaps we don’t know of the second option?

[Australians used to know. We had land ‘taxes’–actually rents–at all three levels of government during most of the Progressive Era (1897 to 1920) – before succumbing to having our earnings taxed.]

oooOooo

And you’re quite correct about the stupidity of government borrowing, Fred Harrison! Henry George had thoughts on that sort of nonsense, too: –

oooOooo

And, come the crunch, maybe addressing the need for a universal income can get Georgist ideas over the line? After all, it is an immediate and direct deduction from currently stolen rents!

As Henry George said in his The Crime of Poverty speech: –

That’s why the world needs to consider employing the VIMMLBUTT package at this incredibly threatening juncture.