The matter that labor converts into wealth comes only from land.

There must be land before labor can be exerted.

And labor must be exerted before capital can be produced.

Capital is a result of labor, a form of labor, a subdivision of the general term. It is only stored-up labor, used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force.

Therefore, labor is the employer of capital, not vice versa — and it is even possible for labor to produce wealth without being aided by capital.

So the natural order is this: land, labor, capital.

Instead of using capital as our initial point, we should start from land.

–  Henry George, “PROGRESS AND POVERTY – An inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with increase of wealth … The Remedy”

OK, so how is it that those who privatise our land income fare much better than those who actually create our wealth? (i.e. labor and capital)

Perhaps we’ve permitted capitalism’s distributional system to be terminally distorted by the one percent’s rent-seeking in publicly-generated land income?

That was Henry George’s conclusion, and he was THE expert on economic depression, the subject of this blogsite.  Note the sub-title of his PROGRESS AND POVERTY (above).

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

In THE CONVERSATION today.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

The Institute for Public Affairs (IPA) and Prosper Australia’s research body the Land Values Research Group (LVRG) both turned 70 this year.

Whilst each organisation purports to be the true voice of freedom, in reality only one is: the LVRG.

Amongst others, the IPA receives funding from Gina Rinehart, whilst the LVRG continues to struggle to find funding which might enable it to digitise the studies it has conducted over its seventy years.

It was nice for Gina Rinehart, Rupert Murdoch, Tony Abbott and Cardinal George Pell to be able to attend the IPA’s recent celebratory dinner. These luminaries are not to be found at Prosper Australia’s annual dinners. Power and privilege are not known to be close friends of Truth.

There’s a strong raison d’être for conservatism. If you want social change, you need to be certain you’re headed in the right direction. The thoughts of history’s great conservatives are often as valid as those of its notable liberal progressives.

Over the years, however, the IPA has drifted from holding socially conservative views to throwing its hat in with the big rent-seekers, the one percent.

On the occasion of its 70^th birthday, I thought I’d give the IPA the opportunity to deny the charge, so on 1^st April I put the following question via its website:-

“Does the IPA see anything wrong with the privatisation of publicly-generated economic rents? Your stance that miners ought to be able to retain them suggests you do not.

I’m giving someone at the IPA the opportunity to respond to my blog today.

BTW, I see the taxation of labour and capital as a form of theft.”

I consider the failure of the IPA to respond to my question speaks volumes about where it stands.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

I’m tired.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

Once you understand the importance and centrality of land to the economy, the above index provides unique insights.

The three areas coloured red on the top line of the chart in 1973, 1981 and 1988/89 represent real estate bubbles. Each was followed by an economic recession when the bubble burst. You will see the fourth red bubble dwarfs the earlier three by an enormous degree of magnitude.

It should be noted the 1994 real estate peak was not a national bubble because it actually included the final bank sell-off of major commercial and industrial distressed properties from the late ’80s-early ’90s bubble.  It also included a booming real estate market in Queensland which was out of kilter with the rest of Australia (and for which Queensland, along with South-East Asia, paid the penalty in 2007.)

Many consider Australia has avoided the worst of the global financial collapse and that the extended bubble we’ve experienced since the late 1990s won’t also burst. This hopeful scenario is along much the same lines as the great American economist Irving Fisher who is unfortunately best remembered for a great mistake, when he announced just before the Wall Street collapse in 1929 that the stock market had reached “a permanently high plateau”.

The purpose of this website is to deliver the good news that a fiscal remedy to bring a quick turnaround from financial collapse IS available. Unfortunately, the US and Europe haven’t been allowed to discover it yet.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

The English aristocracy unwittingly engineered the British Empire’s downfall, just as surely as the latifundia of Ancient Rome created its collapse.

Wealthy landholders will never concede they have a duty to pay the rent to the public purse for the lands they occupy. As they have unequalled power and influence, they’ve successfully written out of the annals of history how their techniques dispossess and impoverish people. History can deal with anything else. It may describe all the battles, all the personalities, but it must never admit they are ultimately fought over natural resources – LAND – because this would lead to certain fiscal conclusions.

The rent-seeking 1% in the USA now control 40% of the nation’s wealth, but reform movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party haven’t discovered the simple mechanism by which the US plutocracy is bringing the once great nation to its knees. Pax Americana is destined for the same scrap heap to which Pax Brittanica was consigned.

“Arab Spring” revolutions are also failing because their leaders haven’t seen the economic urgency to shift revenue bases from workers and profits to holders of land. This would reconcile people, economics and the planet: however, the “revolutionaries” seem unaware of the fact.

Sadly, both ancients and modern Greece and Italy seem to have learned nothing at all over the centuries about the ills wrought by land speculation and monopoly, nor the system of credit which supports this malady that lingers.

Breaking the longstanding pattern offers the prospect of economic justice, peace and stability, but is the 99% up for it?

Watch this space …

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

Michael Lind deftly exposes the economic parasites in three excellent articles at SALON.com.

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/private_sector_parasites/
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/22/how_rich_moochers_ruin_america/
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/25/defeating_useless_rich_people/

These people are not only to be found in the USA.

It’s time we captured economic rent back from the rent-seeking thieves.

Are you listening, Institute of Public Affairs – or perhaps you’re squarely behind the rentiers? If so, shame on you!

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF STATISTICS RELEASE DATED 28 MARCH 2013: POPULATION AND HOUSING

It’s not about class warfare, folks (although there’s a bit of that, too).  Australia’s locational living differentials are explained by the BIG rent-seekers (the 1%) capturing OUR land and resource rent unto themselves and clotting together to retain it. The tax regime has rigged the distributional system to assist them.

The only difference between Africa and Australia is that the rentiers haven’t worried too much about covering the scene of the crime in Africa. Their techniques are a little more sophisticated here in Oz.

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.

From THE AGE letters today:-

You say we need more funds to tackle poverty, homelessness, health, the environment, education and infrastructure? I say instituting the Henry Tax Review is a BIG step towards solving those problems.