“As long as there is a child in any place in Milwaukee, any place in Wisconsin, any place in this country, who is languishing in poverty and barred from opportunity, our fight goes on”, President Barack Obama told an estimated crowd of 20,000.

“Our fight goes on because America has always done best when everybody has got a fair shot”, he added with a populist flourish.

How about some action against the rent privatizers then, Mr President?  That will win the fight for opportunity and freedom from poverty. Anything at all in that regard because, surely, that’s what the banksters have been up to? No? Nothing at all? Why not? Oh, it was Wall Street helped bankroll you again?

Obama also hit out at what he says is Romney’s effort to roll back the clock to the days when Wall Street had “free rein to do whatever” it liked, contributing to “an economic crisis that we’re still cleaning our way out of.”

Oh, really? Cleaning up Wall Street?  How exactly, pray tell, Mr Prez? A charge against land rents, maybe?

“And governor Romney now is a very talented salesman,” Obama added. “So in this campaign, he is trying as hard as he can to repackage the same old ideas that didn’t work and offer them up as change.”

And, despite the rhetoric, you’re not doing a bad job in that regard yourself, boyo!

By failing to euthanize the rentier parasite, the candidates of both parties are ensuring the US depression will linger.

Dr Gavin Putland’s 2012 update of the Kavanagh-Putland Index continues to show there’s a BIG crunch ahead, but the timing remains indeterminate.

The bust’s timing, of course, depends on how long governments can continue kicking the can down along the road; that is, artificially supporting the Australian bubble in land prices instead of adopting programs to address the damaging outcomes that must accompany its inevitable bursting.

Will we support the banks – or the people?

Despite all the evidence now showing austerity in favour of the banks overseas neither assists people nor economies–surely people and economies are the same thing anyway?–I’m betting an ALP or Liberal government will nevertheless consider people are less important than banks.

That’s in the DNA of crooked governments.

9/11 (2001) was a despicable terrorist attack that changed America forever. Then, Hurricane Katrina struck to destroy New Orleans and surrounds in 2005. This was followed by the 2007 to 2009 stock market crash, and now Super Storm Sandy hits the east coast on 29 October with horrific results across Atlantic City, New Jersey and New York.

And that’s not to mention a number of wildfires and other hurricanes to which the nation has been subjected in recent years.

So what’s next for Americans? They’re surely overdue for a run of good luck.

In my visit to the US, I took the opportunity to take a peep at The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. I thought the appearance of the Times, particularly, came up short in comparison with The Age at home in Melbourne, where the pictures are eminently sharper and more visible on a superior quality paper. I reckon our layout is better, too. But newspapers are struggling pretty well everywhere.

Interestingly, I believe I obtained my best information, not from newspapers nor television, but from speaking with a number of seemingly ever-friendly Americans, despite being beset by mounting natural and social disasters. Not journalists, not ‘experts’: people with everyday cares. People in Central Park, bus drivers, waiters, people in hotels and airports, “Occupy New York” demonstrators who know something at the top is also politically amiss and want it fixed.

I was particularly interested, of course, in how people had adapted to the financial collapse, because that’s a man-made occurrence that the nation has in its power to turn around.

Not once was I let down in talking with Americans; their analyses were always considered and thoughtful. Especially Tony, who took us on a tour of the Hollywood, Beverly Hills area. I’d vote for him if he stood as my political representative in Australia.

Natalie, the young New York waitress, had first disabused us that America didn’t appear to be suffering. “You don’t see that we’re holding onto our jobs – if we have one”, she said, “and not contemplating changing it. You don’t see that we are desperately paying down debt and amending our spending to go without in many areas. This has a compounding affect and it certainly impacts on our lives.”

“You’re Australians?” young singer-songwriter/waiter Scott asked us at Universal City in Los Angeles. “You haven’t had a financial collapse yet, have you?” he asked.  “We’re on our way to a national debt of $17 trillion”, he volunteered. “Well, you’ve actually just gone past $16 trillion”, I said, surprised, because I’d not revealed my particular interests. (Perhaps it must show, I thought.)  For a minute or two an exchange on economic matters ensued before Scott had to attend to another customer.  He returned later during our meal with what I think must have been a couple of Midoris “Compliments of the manager for our Australian visitors.”

The pleasantness and professionalism of Americans we met was more than impressive. Unfortunately, our service doesn’t always come up quite so well back home.

The most common thread in speaking with people was that they believed they were being dudded by the big guys at the top politically–whether Democrat or Republican–that, and the banks.

Something basic needs changing came through again and again.  Although people want change, there’s not much sign they’re getting any.

It was only when I had a good chat with Justin at “Occupy Wall Street” that I let my proclivities slip by mentioning that I know Michael Hudson.  “Oh, Michael’s spoken here”, he said, handing me a copy of The Debt Resistors’ Operations Manual:  “It’s free.” He mentioned he’d been attending “Occupy” at Trinity Church Wall Street (on Broadway) for 158 days.  I made a donation.

Natural catastrophes and 9/11 aside, most Americans are clearly doing it hard during the country’s financial demise. Add the natural disasters back in, and daily life amounts to a quiet heroism for many.

It’s a shame they allow the tax and political system to divide them and to create such pettifogging hatreds.

That’s what’s been really laying waste to America.

A report to the Senate Legislation Committee by Dr Gavin Putland.

This BBC interview with Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax reform, attracted my attention overnight.

As with President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney on the subject of taxation, Norquist is partly correct: taxation and excessive government is indeed a problem. As it has always been, it is the stuff of revolutions.

But Norquist’s well-researched data and detail is simply part of the mindless bifurcation on taxation in American politics (and elsewhere), where both sides have latched onto only a glimpse of the truth.

Add a layer of party politics to this partial truth, and the argument for each party boils down to: “We’re right and you’re wrong!”

Is it possible there could be a third alternative which offers enough common ground to resolve this seemingly irremediable impasse on taxation?

What if we were to agree with Norquist that ALL taxation is indeed theft, but that a certain amount of revenue is essential if any mixed economy is to be workable?  (And it is a mixed economy, surely, Grover?)

What if we were to agree with Obama that the wealthy haven’t been carrying their fair share; that, in fact, the 99.99% have been ripping off the middle class.

So, what remains which might bring such warring parties to common ground?

How about the common ground itself: the land?

A community charge, based on the value of land held, is NOT an arbitrary tax: any decent economist will tell you it’s a rent in nature. It can’t be passed on in prices like a tax and, if used to abolish other taxes on labour and capital, this must surely free up labour and capital to generate real wealth?

But, no, I rather suspect Grover Norquist’s interests are not in resolving the revenue quandary, but in ensuring the poor and middle class continue to lose out badly to the 0.01%–the parasitic rentier class–which has brought this economic depression upon us.

I may be wrong, but it sounded like Grover Norquist remains in love with the disgraced ideas of Ayn Rand.

AUSTRALIA’S SUPER SYSTEM IS A NATIONAL DISGRACE

ACCIDENTS AND IRONIES

I kept accidentally running across memorials to Alexander Hamilton in my recent visit to New York: his statue in Central Park, his grave at Trinity Church Wall Street (when speaking with “Occupy Wall Street” participants), and the former US Custom House also bearing his name (now being used as a disappointing National Museum of the American Indian).

I couldn’t help wonder how Alexander Hamilton, as first Secretary of the Treasury and founder of the Bank of New York, would regard the current parlous state of the United States of America’s finances.

Although Hamilton was not without his foibles, I consider he was a man of principle on matters of national finance and would have had no truck with the shenanigans of recent Secretaries of the Treasury nor those Wall Street banksters who proffered credit into a land price bubble.

We stayed on 44^th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, near the Durst Organization’s debt clock.

I almost collapsed in a fit of supreme irony that the debt clock, funded by a big real estate agency, actually abuts an office of the Internal Revenue Service!

Is it not banks, real estate agencies–the latter unanimously opposing land value taxation–and the IRS that are entirely responsible for the national debt? (Well, if you’ve followed the contents of this blog you’ll know exactly what I mean.)

The point, no doubt, is lost on the successors of Seymour Durst who are co-redevelopers of the One World Trade Centre, together with the Port Authority of New York.

Whilst I’m pleased Durst is engaged the latter, I wish the developer/agent could understand that taxing labour and capital (instead of land values) is responsible for the figures tracking towards $17 trillion on their national debt clock.

Whilst in New York I went along see Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”.

What a shocker of a movie!  What a heavy-handed attempt to ensure that uber wealthy rent-seekers should remain free riders and not have to pay their fair share!

“Who is John Galt?”, indeed!

Ayn Rand’s impact on the Thatcher-Reagan era has been undeniable.  Are not the results of Rand’s pernicious influence patently now about us for all to see?  Namely: lower real wages since 1972; higher household debt; dangerously narrowing small business margins …. but obscene profits by banks and other rent-seekers.

Yes, and increasing government intervention has necessarily flowed from all these pathologies.

This period has been anything but “free enterprise” in action.

Yet, these people, this 0.01% which has cruelled our pitch and brought about an economic depression, now blames it entirely on government excess and socialism!

Forget their rent-seeking parasitism, and their passing off their responsibilities onto the 99.99%. They themselves are absolutely blameless. “It’s governments wot done it, gov, not us!”

I’ve said it before: their greed knows no bounds.

As if to underline the point, I see a Hungarian-born American billionaire (no, not George Soros), Thomas Peterffy by name, is taking out ads on US TV saying in effect “Leave us alone – or else you’re being socialist!” Maybe Peterffy also helped fund “Atlas Shrugged”?

No, Ayn Rand, Maggie Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Tom Peterffy, et al – you’re wrong.  Whilst creeping socialism has been a pain, your actions have proven to be far worse.

Certainly, bloated government has aggravated the situation, but there is, of course, a third alternative which you fail to mention (and has not been tried) that frees up enterprise whilst precluding the rentier class from stealing from  the people, in order to make themselves billionaires at society’s expense.

It’s called Georgism.

Socialism failed; monopoly capitalism has failed; maybe it’s beyond time to try free enterprise?

Make no mistake about it, this global financial collapse is not about capitalism. Not at all. We have been playing Monopoly, and lost – badly.

There can be only one winner in the game of Monopoly—The Biggest Rent Seeker—and in the real life version he has won out twice. Once he had taken our trillions by way of mortgage indebtedness, when it became impossible for us to pay him anymore, he even got the umpire to make good his shortfall.  Not bad work, eh?

A new Harper’s Magazine special feature tells us Monopoly was originally invented in 1903 by an actress by the name of Lizzie Magie. It’s a most interesting account.

But Lizzie obviously had a spiritual side to her, because she supported the ideas of Henry George, so she nominated it as “The Landlord’s Game”.

Dead boring!

Superficially alter a couple of things here and there, as Charles Darrow did 30 years later, call it “Monopoly”, patent it under your own name (now there’s the typical underhanded real monopoly for you!) and you have a winner in which there’s great fun: something that matches real life a little closer – sending all your opponents to the wall.

OK, Rent Seeker, now that we’ve all been sent to the wall, where does your game go now?

It’s clear there’s no such thing as bringing an open mind to address US foreign policy.  That’s seen as a weakness.  It’s largely about bluff,  and sabre-rattling bravado.

Mitt Romney knows this and exploited it to Barack Obama’s disadvantage in the meantime.

The President has got the message, but lost a few points on the issue .

On economic matters, Romney came across well, but he has the US depression on his side because, like Australians, the American swinging voter is greatly influenced by how he or she is travelling financially.

Obama performed well oratorically, though.

However, although it’s not usual for an incumbent President to be thrown out of office after his first term, the upcoming election is likely to be a close one – because the economy will be the main issue with the people.  I’ve taken the time whilst  in the US to speak to people, and the economy certainly comes out as THE issue.

Tragically, although both candidates for the leadership of the world’s greatest economy know a healthy real estate market is essential to running the show, neither understands how to bring this about.

The purpose of this site, of course, is to attest to the fact there’s only one way to create a genuine free market in real estate.

The long term economic outlook for the US, and the world therefore remains bleak – bleak in the extreme – whoever wins the November election.