The pandemic has shown how much we rely on the producers and distributors of food and essential supplies, along with other basic services such as health, teaching, cleaning and banking.

We are led to wonder about the enormous disparity between the incomes earned by people in these necessary occupations and the astounding incomes of the rent-grabbers who feed at the top off the financialisation the economy, like bankers, fund managers, mining or other monopoly company executives such as at Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, &c.

It’s obvious we’ve not been able to get to grips with those people who create wealth and those who mercilessly extract it.

A switch from taxing productivity, wages and good and services onto the taxing of land and natural resource values would go a long way towards remedying this anomaly and repairing faltering economies.

It would also prove to be sufficient to provide a living wage universal income and to abolish poverty.

The response of big rent-seekers: “No! You too can do this!” may appeal to so-called ‘libertarians’ but it really isn’t good enough.