Australia used to capture rent even better than the USA (shown in this chart). We taxed rent at all three levels of government, compared to the US at only municipal and state levels. In fact, the Australian Taxation Office was set up in 1910 in order to introduce the federal land tax. [Yup!]

People from John Locke to Mason Gaffney have noted that all taxes eventually come out of rent, so who is it that benefits from them coming vicariously via incomes and goods and services, if not big rent-grabbers such as banking, big-tech, big pharma and other monopoly rent-seeking interests? Is it so obvious that it has become invisible?

It could all be so much better: without boom-bust; without high land prices; without declining wages growth; without increasing poverty.

And, of course, a universal citizens’ dividend is not only ‘affordable’ as shown in this chart–with economic rent at 50% of the economy–but assists struggling businesses, too, as they would only have to offer an amount additional to the dividend. So there are saving for them, too.

Such a universal living wage at once abolishes involuntary unemployment and gig jobs. The interests of labour and capital are shown in the chart to be complementary, not opposed. They are in the same boat.

At the moment, our tax regimes completely ignore that it is the rent-grabber who is the interloper.

Things need changing.