The social philosopher-economist Henry George demonstrated what neoclassical economics was later established to deny, that is, that an inverse relationship exists between taxes on incomes and purchases and a nation’s economic health.

Therefore, understanding the need to tax away the economic rent (or ‘surplus product’) instead of taxes on incomes and purchases, we may observe that land prices, namely, the private capture and capitalisation of land rent, is quite pathological in respect of a nation’s socio-economic health.

So, let’s take a peep at the rapid increase in this disease in Australia. Remember, the growth in land prices may be seen as a measure of the unnecessary infliction of private debt, dispossession and poverty on the Australian people. Of course, banking, real estate and media don’t accept the initial premise, because it’s not in their rent-seeking interests.

The Australian data on land prices are arguably the best in the world. By virtue of the Commonwealth Grants Commission and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, here are Australia’s impossibly increasing land prices from 30 June 1984 to 30 June 2023: –

It must end badly. Nuff said?