Sadly, we continue to revert to tried (and always found wanting) socio-economic ‘remedies’:

1. Less government spending
2. Less taxation
3. Improved education
4. Stronger union action
5. More cooperation between labour and capital
6. More government spending
7. More taxation
8. Reducing population
9. Better land distribution

when taxing land rent away and untaxing labour and capital does all that’s necessary to nourish the environment, abolish poverty and generate widespread prosperity.

That’s surely testament to our gullibility and to the power of the 0.1% to divert attention from essential political action?

Neoclassical economics treats economics as an art form or mystery that must be solved, although it does feature numerous theoretical mathematical models on which we can’t rely because many of the assumptions aren’t “real world”.

The rent of land having been buried into the incomes of labour and capital, economics as we know it is no longer a science.

The hallmark of a scientific explanation is its ability to predict.

Some heterodox economists have been able to forecast socio-economic events because they were prepared and able to factor the land market into their considerations.

Supporters of the ideas of Henry George have fared particularly well in this regard.

….. to shore up the status quo against heterodox trouble-makers!

At least, that’s what the uber-wealthy 0.1% want to do. And they have mainstream media and economics to support them.

It happened in the 1920s, and it’s happening now.

It was not coincidental that their Lordships abolished the UK land tax in 1920, seeking and achieving a refund of what they had paid since the land tax was introduced in 1910. (The same year, incidentally, that the federal land tax was introduced in Australia.)

Nor was the above graphical tax switch in the 1920s from an emphasis on rents to incomes in the USA coincidental. Under the cloak of neoclassical economics, an end was put to workable socio-economic conditions.

Affected by trouble-making social reformers gaining ground during the Progressive Era, power brokers had organised a counterattack. Action needed to be taken, and there was no better excuse for the uber wealthy to fortify their position than pointing to ‘troubled times’.

Similarly, it hasn’t been coincidental that US polity has thrown up Rent-Seeker King Donald Trump at this time, making his fair-seeming promises to workers threatened and suffering from an environment of stagnant wages and rapidly increasing private debt.

In this terribly bifurcated political scenario favouring inaction, Fred Harrison has patiently written Book 2 in his #WeAreRent trilogy: “Rent Seeking: the Crime against Humanity”.

In my opinion, this book rates with the works of Adam Smith, Thomas Paine and Henry George in its greatness. It’s an outstandingly researched work, calling for the most fundamental of economic reforms.

Without this action, humanity’s outlook is worse than grim.

One would expect that the man who was able to forecast and explain recessions from 1990 and 2018 merits a hearing about the financial depression that will set in following the 2026 collapse of land markets.

This book is so astounding that it cannot be ignored and buried. It’s where the real conversation is to be had.

So, I was inclined to tweet it today:

Click me: I have something to say.

Good video discussion (repeated on the ABC’s “Big Ideas” last night).

My opinion below