Uh, no – it works all right, but it hasn’t been tried because it’s been working extremely well for the 1%: they’ve been monopolising it for centuries.

Although economic rent flows virtually from ALL land, just as surely as oil flows from parts of it, who’s even heard of it? There’s silence, lies and ignorance on land and on economic rent.

Those who have heard or thought about it are lied to. Although it constitutes nearly 50% of the economy, they’re misadvised (and usually believe) that economic rent is as low as 1%.

Our ‘representatives’ and media—whom the 1% have always schmoozed—can’t let the cat out of the bag.  We, the people, have been played for fools for centuries. But now the social media offers a ray of hope.

So, “If it worked, it would have been tried” has become part of the continuing contrived ignorance about the world’s natural surplus.

We have been taxed and bullshitted to for too long.

Why not make it a New Year’s resolution to do something about it?

– And beg, borrow or steal a copy to see the documentary expose, “Real Estate 4 Ransom“!

…. NOW FOR THE ECONOMY  (OTHERWISE KNOWN AS DAILY LIVING)

LAND TAX – The only way to get at these freeloaders.

Speaking of freeloaders:  Here’s some lovely carols at the Bank of America, Seattle.

“All real wealth is in the ground, and societies only become prosperous by exploiting that wealth.” – Lang Hancock ~~[That’s why the net profit needs to be split 50/50 with the people.]~~

Necessary revolutions sweeping the world at the moment, whether in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain, or the Occupy movement in the USA, Britain, or elsewhere, will ultimately fail – unless they are underpinned by an economics capable of reconciling people and the planet.

Economic justice and prosperity can only be founded in these terms.  Bills of Rights are a mockery and don’t cut it at all.

There’s only one such economics; some call it Georgism.

Anything else is a wannabe.

As no government nor revolution has the abolition of taxes in its program, there will be no win in this regard in 2012, hopelessly inadequate fumbling with property and land ‘taxes’ in Greece and Ireland notwithstanding.

Such is the power of the 1%.

Nevertheless, folks:  All the best for 2012!

I see the mayor of Richmond, Queensland, John Wharton  has called in local support, including that of his federal member Bob Katter in opposing Bankwest selling up Runnymede Station which has been in Wharton’s family for 96 years.

The mayor claims Bankwest has indulged in corrupt practices.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the unfortunate case, it seems the property was leveraged with the bank for one reason or another, and risk is always attendant upon mortgages.

The station’s name, “Runnymede”, conjures up memories of Magna Carta and freedom of the individual against (Bankwest’s?) arbitrary authority, but those who’ve ferreted a little deeper see Magna Carta as the Barons’ subterfuge for throwing off responsibilities relating to their lands, setting the British landholding system on course for repetitive boom and bust.

Amongst other things, charts here and here suggest Magna Carta may have proved to be less of a success than the lords of the land were in gradually throwing off their land rents since 1215 (and putting taxes on us).

I’m very pleased that the federal member for Kennedy saw fit to support his friend, John Wharton at Runnymede Station.

I’d also be pleased if Bob Katter could hold fire on his down home chuckle and chatter and explain to people exactly where he stands on Australians capturing their mineral rents to the public purse, and whether he is behind the principle of property rates and land taxes.  Seems he’s opposed to both.

Yet, there it is, standing proud in the policy platform of his new party, Katter’s Australian Party – “Stop selling off State Assets”! Oh, I’m taking that the wrong way, Bob? We have no right to the annual rent of our most precious asset, the land – to the ‘super profits’ of our natural resources?  Why not, pray tell?

And I trust you’re going to support ALL Queenslanders who lose their home to the banks, Bob?

There are lessons to be learnt here.

Banks should NOT lend against bubble-inflated asset prices—for the sake of ALL Australians, including John Wharton—and capturing annual land and natural resource rents instead of taxes will not only stop bubbles from forming in the first place, but would see productivity replace property speculation as Australia’s national pastime.

C’mon Bob, tell us who you’re really with: the people – or the 1%?

A GOOD ACCOUNT

I’m no accountant nor bookkeeper.  Apart from having a brother-in-law who is an accountant, the nearest I’ve got to them is having mine produce our annual financials and tax return, and to address a group of chartered accountants at their dinner at the RACV Building in Melbourne about five years ago on the subject of the coming financial collapse.

Since Boxing Day, however, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Jane Gleeson-White’s “DOUBLE ENTRY:  How the merchants of Venice shaped the modern world—and how their invention could make or break the planet”.

Gleeson-White’s research into the founder of double entry bookkeeping, Luca Pacioli, is as admirable as the genuine homage she pays to the fifteenth century Franciscan friar for his clever and dogged approach to improving the system of recording financial dealings.  Pacioli broke with tradition to write in the vernacular to capitalise, in every sense of the word, on the invention of the printing press to get his message out.

But it was to where Jane Gleeson-White then takes the book that grabbed me most.

Yes, Pacioli’s system of double entry has served the world well, she notes, but practitioners have not been beyond abusing it, as did the recently departed Arthur Anderson company in Enron’s grand fraud.  (I’ll long have the memory of the bastard at his monitor, crying “Burn, Baby, burn!”)

It’s still a matter of garbage in, garbage out, or maybe hiding the nasties by cleverly taking them off balance sheet. (Why am I reminded that Paul Keating’s 9% superannuation guarantee levy couldn’t possibly be a payroll tax by stealth because it is compulsorily directed into non-government funds?)

Gleeson-White notes that we’ve improved the national accounts since Keynes’ first applied Luca Pacioli’s principles to them, but says the state of the planet and of economies attests to the fact we’ve still got a long way to go.

The author comes tantalizingly close to seeing economic rent’s relationship to people and the planet! (I like to think of natural resource rent as the glue that holds society together.)

Maybe the problem is not the limitations of GDP as a measuring stick—i.e. that it underestimates the true costs involved in the making of a Big Mac, or the real value of trees—but by so obviously failing to break incomes down into earned incomes and (unearned) natural resource rents, we don’t expose those shysters who continue their destruction of the planet?

And as it’s little known that ‘super profits’ (especially land and natural resource rents) make up close to 50% of GDP—and are mainly captured by the 1%—what a great follow-up that might make, Jane?

“Opening the tax act is like entering the door to a parallel universe.”

– Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia, Patrick Keane, January 2011.

Stephanie Gardiner has done Australia a great service in exposing these parasites – because there are many others like the Wakils.

The tax system – the lack of any significant annual charge on the holding of land values – makes them do it.

That’s just another reason  Australia needs to heed Ken Henry’s call for reform of its aberrant taxation system …. quickly.  Like many other nations, taxation’s deadweight is rapidly bringing the country to its knees.