PAUL MEES

Inveterate advocate for Victoria’s public transport system Dr Paul Mees died in Melbourne yesterday after a fifteen month battle with cancer. He was 52.

Current Public Transport Users Association president Tony Morton said last night that Professor Mees “personified the transport debate in Victoria, and called successive governments to account for their neglect of public transport”.

He certainly did.

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PUBLIC TRANSPORT FUNDING

Whilst we’re discussing public transport proponents, an article “Maybe buses should be free” in The Economist on the same day Paul Mees died  received a number of responses. I reproduce the most logical of these comments which came from Dr Gavin R. Putland:-

“The benefit of public transport, net of fares paid for actual use, is shown in prices of access to locations where that benefit is available — in other words, LAND VALUES. So the beneficiaries of any extension or improvement of public transport include not only the passengers, but also the affected property owners. The same principle applies to other types of infrastructure whose benefits are location-specific.

Equity therefore demands that property owners give back some of the benefit through a charge on UNEARNED INCREMENTS in land values. Paradoxically, the property owners would be better off than they are now. If the responsible government, through the tax system, received a certain fraction of every unearned increment, infrastructure projects whose cost/benefit ratios are less than that fraction would be profitable for the government and would therefore proceed. Thus property owners would reap land-value windfalls that they would not otherwise get, due to projects that would not otherwise be funded.

Implementation does not require an increase in taxation. It requires a one-off change in the tax BASE so that future investment in infrastructure pays for itself by expanding the tax BASE without any increase in tax rates. The initial change in the base could be revenue-neutral. For example, a range of inefficient taxes, including existing property-transfer taxes, could be replaced by a property-vendor duty on real capital gains. The rate of the vendor duty might then be in the “sweet spot”: high enough to drive infrastructure investment at full capacity, but low enough to give property owners an attractive slice of the benefit.

Because the uptake of public transport will be socially optimal if tickets are priced at marginal cost, and because taxes on uplifts in land values have low efficiency costs (none if they are implemented as holding charges), the efficient way to fund public transport is to cover the marginal cost through fares and the fixed costs through uplifts in land values. Allowing for transaction costs and for the savings that can be made by smoothing the load, the best practical approximation to marginal-cost fares is to offer free travel at off-peak times, using fares only as congestion charges. If that requires a proof-of-payment system, so be it. But with better funding through land-value capture, hence better provisioning, the scope for “congestion charges” would be narrower than at present.”

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

…. BECAUSE LAND PRICES CAN, AND DO, GO DOWN (EVERY 18 YEARS)

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

The media’s preoccupation with Rudd v. Gillard v. Abbott amounts to beer and circuses as Australia disappears down the gurgler.  The excesses of reality TV and the footy compound the craziness into a new normal.

And you can rely on radio’s shock jocks to keep the pot boiling because this sort of pap is popular, even if it does get Howard Sattler sacked. It keeps peoples’ minds off blaming themselves for the strife they’re in–the amount of debt they’ve been carrying–and of course it’s easy to blame the Labor government and the Prime Minister, because they certainly have let us down.

Looking the other way–away from what the almost invisible 0.5% has done to Australia–has replaced leadership.  Mainstream media knows from whence its pay emanates, so the only reform it’s going to call for is a change of government.

And so Australians beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past …. so to speak.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

Richard Cobden also documented this process in an 1845 parliamentary debate on the Corn Laws:

“I warn ministers, and I warn landlords and the aristocracy of this country, against forcing on the attention of the middle and industrial classes, the subject of taxation ….. If you were to bring forward the history of taxation in this country for the last 150 years, you will find as black a record against the landowners as even in the Corn Law itself.

I warn them against ripping up the subject of taxation. If they want another league at the death of this one – if they want another organisation and a motive – then let them force the middle and industrial classes to understand how they have been cheated, robbed and bamboozled …..

For a period of 150 years after the conquest, the whole of the revenue of the country was derived from the land. During the next 150 years it yielded nineteen-twentieths of the revenue. For the next century down to the reign of Richard III it was nine-tenths. During the next 70 years to the time of Mary it fell to about three-fourths. From this time to the end of the Commonwealth, land appeared to have yielded one-half the revenue. Down to the reign of Anne it was one-fourth. In the reign of George III it was one-sixth. For the first thirty years of his reign the land yielded one-seventh of the revenue. From 1793 to 1816 (during the period of the land tax), land contributed one ninth. From which time to the present one twenty-fifth only of the revenue of the revenue had been derived directly from land.

Thus, the land, which anciently paid the whole of taxation, paid now only a fraction, or one twenty-fifth, notwithstanding the immense increase that had taken place in the value of the rentals. The people had fared better under despotic monarchs than when the powers of the state had fallen into the hands of a landed oligarchy who had first exempted themselves from taxation, and next claimed compensation for themselves by a corn law for their heavy and peculiar burdens.”

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Conclusion?  We’ve been dudded into penury and debt. We don’t even have the disposable incomes of the 15th century English labourer with a family of five after allowance for the cost of our food, clothing and shelter, much less the better-paid artisan English carpenter!

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

Jews and Christians have managed to skirt around this command and yet maintain they are still observing Jews and Christians.

Passing strange?

And if ever they rediscover this most fundamental covenant, the “separation of Church and State” will see to it that it’s never put into practice – because you must understand the State also works for the 0.5%.

So much for reconciling Jews, Muslims and Christians – so let’s get on with bombing the shit out of each other.

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You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

Yes, indeed.  Unfortunately this is the bit the Greens just don’t get, Fred.  There’s an abundance for everyone except the rampant 0.5% if we capture land rent: that action alone will circumscribe their environmental plunder.

Zeepoppers are unwitting stooges for the 0.5%

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.