http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/forgotten-idea-shaped-great-us-cities#sthash.NbxOA3y8.dpbs

How many times since the downturn in the later half of the Kondratieff Wave, from 1973, have Georgists been told “Land value taxation is an interesting idea – but there are no simple solutions.” ?

Meanwhile, as taxes on unearned incomes (economic rents in econospeak) have gradually been wound back, and earned incomes taxed more heavily, the downturn in wages and productivity has continued relentlessly, inevitably, towards its debt deflationary trough.

The productive economy and general prosperity has gradually given way to banks and rent-seekers feeding a series of bigger and bigger bubbles in land prices – and progressively worse recessions. Mortgage debt is at record levels as poverty and homelessness has increased.

This one is a doozie, eh Australia? Guess we must pay for it because “There is no panacea.” ?

Seems the Georgist case for taxing away unearned incomes is in the invidious position of being both “single issue” and a panacea for all economic ills. Surely, proof positive it has no merit?

Warren Mosler could advise our shock jocks, as well as our politicians:

Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy

1. The government must raise funds through taxation or borrowing in order to spend. In other words, government spending is limited by its ability to tax or borrow.

2. With government deficits, we are leaving our debt burden to our children.

3. Government budget deficits take away savings.

4. Social Security is broken.

5. The trade deficit is an unsustainable imbalance that takes away jobs and output.

6. We need savings to provide the funds for investment.

7. It’s a bad thing that higher deficits today mean higher taxes tomorrow.

See http://www.moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf

Then, Warren himself might take a look at Henry George, in order to see land price as the cause of inflation.

Unless you were in his sights, you just had to enjoy Paul Keating’s incisively clever verbal barbs, first as Treasurer, then as the Prime Minister of Australia.

Having lived through the period and read Kerry O’Brien’s 2016 book KEATING (794 pages), I can see how some people have come to see Paul Keating as ‘Australia’s most competent Labor Treasurer’, even though he didn’t achieve the prime ministerial popularity of his neoliberal predecessor, Bob Hawke, the man he overthrew in 1991.

It’s striking, however, that like all other politicians Paul Keating was unable to utter one word about:

1. the up-until-then world’s greatest real estate/land bubble of 1973, which burst and, inter alia, had the Whitlam Government of which he was a member dismissed,
2. the 1981 land bubble in land prices that saw Australians throw the Fraser Liberal government out, and;
3. the 1988/89 property bubble over which Keating himself had presided, bringing about “the recession we had to have” in 1991.

That’s a narrative needing to see the light of day, if the world is to see and understand:

1. why the land market isn’t a real market (because land may simply be held out of this ‘market’ with virtually no penalty)
2. why we have tremendous–though largely unrecorded–asset price inflation; and
3. why we’re witnessing world economies currently imploding – and popular unrest rising.

This is a story, not about the binary system which mainstream media daily puts before us–viz, a fight between labour and capital–but about a third actor, the extraordinary rentier economy which sets our agenda – and about which no one in authority may speak.

https://thedepression.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/KPI-compressed.pdf

‘The Argus’ was a Melbourne newspaper from 1848 to 1957.

“Our history lies within a period filled with a deafening clamour for rights, and a few shrill protests about duties. Our nationalism is a struggle between the landless majority and the landowners, and the air is rent by the complaints of those who have less against those who have more.” – WS Moyes, Anglican Bishop of Armidale NSW, The Argus 2 December 1930.

From The Argus’ leading article on 6 December 1930, discussing Bishop Moyes’ remarks:-

“Our history lies within a period filled with a deafening clamour for rights and a few shrill protests about duties. The air is rent by the complaints of those who have less against those who have more.”

To this day in Australia, it seems land must remain invisible.