Archive for June, 2008

Rental Yield and Returns for All

Monday, June 30th, 2008

Today’s Age Artice Higher Rentals Seen as Spur for Investment by Chris Vedelago is a good prompter to peer behind the curtains of rental yield. Despite the headline quoting a new report saying that gross rental yields are at an attractive 5.5% for investors, CommSec’s Craig James sums it up nicely: “Investors are concerned just [...]

ABC TV on Canberra Land Rent proposal

Friday, June 27th, 2008

Interesting developments in Canberra can be tracked via this ABC report: Buy the house, rent the land: ACT’s new housing plan. As many will know, it’s not the first time this has occurred. Read one of our most popular web pages: Canberra’s Land Leasehold system (1910 – 1971).

A Tax On Your (Vacant) Houses – Gavin Putland

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

Letter to the Age Thursday June 26th WHEN we hear that the rental vacancy rate is less than 1% (“$155-a-week Lalor ‘shack’ highlights rental crisis”, The Age, 25/6), we need to remember that this figure includes only dwellings offered “to let”. If it included vacant lots and other unoccupied properties that are not on the [...]

Aussie News and Views

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Geoff Forster The International Union for Land Value Taxation is launching a campaign to modify the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Article 3 at present reads: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person. The proposed amended version is: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person, the [...]

Everybody Works but the Vacant Lot

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

What else need we say? Understand why making ends meet is such a challenge and what we can do about it.

Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826)

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Famous Quotes “The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not, the fundamental right to labor the earth [...]

The Rent of Italy

Monday, June 16th, 2008

A grasp of economic rent is vital to understanding geoism and the path to social justice and environmental sanity. Short definitions are helpful but limited – the return to privilege; a free ride at society’s expense; unearned increment; excess profits that monopolists reap in the absence of competition; income derived from assets that cannot be [...]

The Economics of Royalty

Thursday, June 12th, 2008

Karl Williams, Editor of Progress Magazine What I’m about to write here would almost certainly land me in jail if it were written in Thailand. I’m about to criticize its monarch, King Bhumibol. Yes, dear reader, it may be hard to believe that, in the 21st century in a modern and supposedly democratic nation, such [...]

Don’t Shoot the Rabbits! We’ll need to eat them!!

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

Robert J McAlpine, President Prosper Australia The time for thinkers on economic matters has come! By neglecting the field of property valuation, mainstream economists have missed some of the most important factors in market price determination There exists an almost complete chasm of two closely related economic considerations. One dealing with the abstract, which can [...]

An Independent A.C.T Taxation Policy

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

This article was presented at a late 1980′s meeting prior to ACT self government and published in the Canberra Times. Terry Dwyer ACT finances will come from three sources – taxes, grants and borrowings. I do not propose to say much about borrowings because borrowings are not a source of current revenue. Australian Governments are [...]