Author Archive

Cut Concessions

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

photo credit: Sushanta Meh Letter to the Editor – AFR 31/08/2010 Gavin R. Putland, Melbourne Instead of prosecuting small businesses for making mistakes with capital gains tax concessions (“Tax Office hits small business”, AFR, August 30), why not abolish the concessions and use the extra revenue to lighten the compliance burdens concerning personal income tax [...]

High Court Clears Henry Rent Tax

Friday, August 27th, 2010

photo credit: Catherinette Rings Steampunk Letter to the Editor – AFR 26/08/2010 Gavin R. Putland, Melbourne The High Court of Australia’s decision to strike down the Cadia copper royalties — on the ground that the NSW Government didn’t own the copper — is a vindication of Treasury secretary Ken Henry’s proposal for a federal resource [...]

The Old, the New and the Ugly

Monday, August 16th, 2010

Causes Behind the Global Financial Crisis and 70′s Stagflation Presenter: Steven Spadijer (ANU) 119th Annual Henry George Commemorative Dinner Thursday Sept 2nd, 6pm onwards RSVP by Friday 27th August. Steven Spadijer is an honours student in Arts/Law at the Australian National University, where he is currently completing a series of papers on business cycles the [...]

Making the Commonwealth a Bankers Bank

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

photo credit: Powerhouse Museum Collection Hon. Clyde R. Cameron A.O. Australian Minister for Labour (1972 – 1975) H/T – Liberty Australia Keynote address by Clyde Cameron to the Victorian Country Conference of the recently amalgamated Association made up of the former Australian Telecom Employees’ Association and Australian Telephone & Phonogram Officers’ Association held at the [...]

Liberty – A Word to Conjure

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

photo credit: jirotrom We honor Liberty in name and in form. We set up her statues and sound her praises. But we have not fully trusted her. And with our growth so grow her demands. She will have no half service! Liberty! It is a word to conjure with, not to vex the ear in [...]

History of Debt and Property from the Ancient East

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Michael Hudson As first published in The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times, David S. Landes, Joel Mokyr, and William J. Baumol, eds., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010):8-39. Also on Michael’s website. A century ago economists could only speculate as to the origins of enterprise. It seemed logical to assume that [...]

Protection for Importers

Friday, July 16th, 2010

photo credit: ob1left Australia’s tax system protects foreign producers against their Australian competitors, writes Gavin R. Putland in this LVRG article. The Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT) was sunk by the advertising firepower of the big miners, ostensibly because it would make Australian mineral deposits less competitive with foreign alternatives. The complex, bureaucratic, maximally-interventionist Carbon [...]

Systemic Analysis: How Close Can One Get?

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

Watch this masterful animation to an excellent speech by social theorist David Harvey: Continue on by reading two pieces in the world leading Financial Times newspaper. One by Michael Hudson on Latvia’s Third Option: As Europe’s banking crisis deepens, Greece’s and Spain’s fiscal crisis spreads throughout Europe and the US economy stalls, most discussions of [...]

Mining Democracy

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

photo credit: Urban~Spaceman Miners finally agree to tax reform. What are the changes? The attempt to harness economic rents for the public good has been renamed from the Resource Super Profits tax to the Mineral Resource Rent Tax. The MRRT kicks in at the corporate bond rate plus 7%. That is 12%, rather than the [...]

Use Rent to Pay Your Way: Dr Gavin Putland

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

When You've Paid Your Rent, You've Paid Your Way View more presentations from Prosper. Following Gavin’s recent presentation, we thought those of you who missed it might find this of interest. Flick through the 6 slides according to the audio below. Our premises is based in the Hardware Lane cafe precinct. Enjoy the background jazz. [...]