‘INSIDERS’ THIS MORNING

1. The Voice to Parliament

Australian may not yet be ready to introduce the Georgist solution, as in the proposed Constitutional preamble below, but the referendum is certainly going to determine whether or not Australians are snarks.

2. SAVING MEDICARE

It was of concern to the Insiders panel from whence the money was to come for AMA doctors to receive a greater rebate for their services. How about from the federal government which can issue its own currency, guys?

If this has the effect of the government proceeding into deficit, it will also mean that the public sector will go into surplus.

And we don’t need to issue bonds to ‘fund the deficit’.

3. THE RBA IS LIKELY TO RAISE THE CASH RATE NEXT TUESDAY

Yes, but it’s quite unnecessary. It does this to address inflation, but the best way to address inflation is to reduce inflation-generating land prices (‘cost-push’ inflation). It is these that create low wages and earned profits whilst pumping private rents and monopoly super-profits.

4. STAGE 3 TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY

I agree that these are quite unnecessary, guys. However, why don’t we take the opportunity to do what is urgently needed to be done, namely, re-visit the Henry Tax Review’s recommenations for genuine reform of Australia’s very inequitable tax regime? Especially those in connection with capturing more of our land and resource rents and abolishing the 100 or so taxes mentioned in the report.

5. THE ROBOTDEBT FIASCO

This is the mess we get into when a parasitic 0.1% is permitted to capture a great part of our economic rents and still cannot be satisified with invasive means testing of incomes.

Hopefully, we will shortly discover the need for the economy’s surplus product to to be taken from leeching rent-seekers and distributed, equally and fairly, as a universal income.

SUMMARY

You may note that ‘Insiders’ (the media generally) chooses to ignore solutions proposed by Henry George to ongoing social, economic and financial problems, so the following are some of the concerns he addressed at length (in “Progress and Poverty“, “Social Problems” and “The Science of Political Economy” and elsewhere).

  1. Abolishing poverty (per medium of a citizens’ dividend/universal income).
  2. Abolishing arbitrary taxes on earned incomes, goods, services and transactions.
  3. Achieving public capture of economic rents.
  4. Establishing public control of natural monopolies.
  5. Establishing and maintaining a free public education system.
  6. Establishing and maintaining a free public health system.
  7. Establishing and maintaining a free public transport system.
  8. Establishing a public understanding of the distribution and use of money. (Summarised in the second half of this piece by Stephen Zarlenga.)