Waleed Aly & Scott Stephens

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Listening to the recent Minefield episode on ‘Social Cohesion’ with Waleed Aly, Scott Stephens and guest, I was struck by the absence of the core driver of social disintegration: the bifurcation of wealth.

Etymologically, ‘economics’ implies ‘household management,’ yet our current management of the Australian household is clearly faltering.

Neoclassical theory ignores the ‘economic rent’ generated by our shared resources—land, minerals, and spectrums. Rather than these rents being shared equally, they’re being captured by a financialised elite.

We need a fundamental tax shift: capturing public rent to replace the ‘fines’ we currently place on labor and consumption. This could be the structural glue for which Waleed and Scott were looking.