Prosper Australia

Residential rent crisis set to worsen RENTS are expected to jump another 10% this year after building approvals fell to their lowest since the end of 2006. Home-building approvals have dropped nearly 8% in a year, after falling another 0.7% in June, in seasonally adjusted terms. Apartment approvals have dropped 22% in a year, down [...]

State control urged as rent surges 12.7% is the headline that attracts our eager eyes in the Age today. Many of the city’s most affordable suburbs have been hardest hit, with the typical rent on a two-bedroom house in Oak Park, Glenroy and Fawkner surging by 25%, according a report by the Department of Human [...]

The Economics of Thailand Karl Williams A conundrum wrapped in a paradox is perhaps the best way to describe Thailand, and its economic system is no exception as our rolling travelogue will illustrate. To pick apart this puzzle, I had the assistance of the only two geoists in Thailand, who were also my gracious hosts [...]

Gavin Putland The ACT’s Land Rent Act, with promised savings of 79% compared to the standard mortgage-based system of home ownership, took effect on July 1. This is an innovative housing affordability policy. Here’s what I wrote about it a week before it became law. I make the following assumptions (which do not seem to [...]

Time: 7pm, Friday August 1 A kilogram of beef contains between 15,000 and 100,000 litres of embodied water. For every kilogram of wheat grown in Australia, seven kilograms of topsoil are lost. We give lip service to concerns about peak oil and greenhouse gases, yet our agricultural industry is utterly dependent on unsustainable quantities of [...]

Leading Georgist author Fred Harrison was interviewed on the Renegade Economists last week regarding his new book The Silver Bullet. Download his 16 minute interview covering issues such as Botswana’s success, a critique of Jeffery Sach’s Resource Curse theory and an overview of colonial motivations. Essential listening/ reading for those genuine in addressing the Millennium [...]

Hear the author Fred Harrison interviewed on the Renegade Economists tomorrow. Make sure you are podcasting us so you never miss the show. Fred Harrison’s new book levels some very serious charges at the current leaders of the poverty industry. The good intentions, the money, the rhetoric, the pity and the media histrionics are but [...]

Tuesday July 22nd at 6.45pm for 7pm, Level 1/ 27 Hardware Lane, Melb Join us for a warm night of films! See the Earthsharing Challenge film Who Owns Anglesea? This 10 minute short film shines a spotlight on housing affordability and how this effects the seaside town of Anglesea. Following this will be legendary Australian [...]

The tax unit for an asset-holding tax should be the asset! Gavin Putland Recommendation 10 of the Draft Report of the IPART Review of State Taxation suggests “changing the tax unit for land tax from joint ownership to the individual” as a means of reducing complexity caused by aggregation of site values. That raises the [...]

Desperation in the housing market is leading to varied responses. The latest the Age has promoted is the Container Home phenomenon. Miners earning $100,000 have been forced into them in Port Headland and other fast growing mining communities. Now a company is promoting shipping containers on the eastern seaboard as a means to solving the [...]