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Allegra Spender’s informative tax reform roundtable today provided intriguing discussions from tax experts.

However, as a former ATO & CBA real estate valuer (before co-founding a real estate valuation company), I’m quite sceptical of expert economists, lawyers, and business people about taxation. They fail to see that real estate markets lead and direct economies.

What is tax? Do we need it for the federal government to be able to spend? Not at all: Abraham Lincoln won the Civil War by having Treasurer, Salmon Chase, keep up military spending until the war was won. Lincoln’s money was spent now, and future generations did not owe it all back, unless wrong policy decisions were undertaken – and mistakes were made.

The federal government actually spends its currency into existence then ‘taxes’ us back to curb inflation. Tax policy affects productivity negatively when it fails to tax publicly-generated economic rents sufficiently: escalating land prices and super profits generating repetitive bubbles and financial collapse.

I especially enjoyed Dr Bredan Coates’ contribution today regarding the ills of our compulsory superannuation scheme. That may be because I’m expecting 50% of the value of super funds to be written off during the upcoming financial collapse?

It would be wrong of me to infer that all of the economic experts are wrong Theyre not. There are many who see the need to tax economic rents more and to untax incomes and purchases, but they’re challenged by the reality of special interests. Some of the leaders in the field for the public capture of economic rents include Ross Garnaut, Joseph Stiglitz, Ken Henry and Marianna Mazzucato.