All posts by Bryan Kavanagh

I'm a real estate valuer who worked in the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) before co-founding Westlink Consulting, a real estate valuation practice. I discovered, by leaving publicly-generated land rents to be privately capitalised by banks and individuals into escalating land price bubbles, this generates repetitive recessions and financial depressions. We need a tax-switch: from wages, profits and commodities onto economic rents/unearned incomes, if we are to create prosperity and minimise excessive private debt.

WHY A UNIVERSAL INCOME?

Introducing the Georgist millennium.

Scenario 1: Abolish taxes, capture land and resource rents. Some people receive no income, so they must be given exemption and a means test instituted. …. Game over.

Scenario 2: Abolish taxes, capture land and resource rents. No exemptions are required as a living wage universal income has been introduced. Abolish poverty and welfare. …. Win/Win.

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AN INVERSE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WAGES & LAND PRICES?

The government has just had legislation passed to achieve real wage increases, but it doesn’t understand that it’s unattainable without a decline in land prices.

These charts suggest an inverse relationship between wages and land prices.

Here’s the explanation:

And again:

But unions and government believe real wage increases can be obtained by ‘bargaining’. Good luck with that one!

THE GRAND FURPHY

“Our grandchildren are going to have to pay off the national debt.”

Only if the federal government keeps ‘borrowing’ to ‘pay for’ deficit budget spending.

This bloke knew better 143 years ago.

Sir Ronald East had a pretty good grip on the matter, too.

ODE TO LIBERTY (HENRY GEORGE)

In our time, as in times before, creep on the insidious forces that, producing inequality, destroy Liberty. On the horizon the clouds begin to lower. Liberty calls to us again. We must follow her further; we must trust her fully. Either we must wholly accept her or she will not stay.

It is not enough that men should vote; it is not enough that they should be theoretically equal before the law. They must have liberty to avail themselves of the opportunities and means of life; they must stand on equal terms with reference to the bounty of nature. Either this, or Liberty withdraws her light! Either this, or darkness comes on, and the very forces that progress has evolved turn to powers that work destruction.

This is the universal law. This is the lesson of the centuries. Unless its foundations be laid in justice the social structure cannot stand.