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 a pinpricks to a world rampaging monster. They say there is no silver bullet.

It takes Harrison’s razor sharp pen few words to zero in on the limitations of Joseph Stiglitz, Naomi Klein and Jeffrey Sachs.

Economics is a damaged social science because its exponents fail to work with comprehensive models of the real world.

As our understanding of the Silver Bullet grows, so does respect for the level of investigative reporting in the very readable 179 pages. Insights to Zimbabwe’s plight, China’s growing elite and even the Kalahari Bushmen are viewed through the lens of land rights and the reform needed to encourage their ‘creative energy’. The reports Harrison unveils give us hope that academics are wary of rent seekers.
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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 cartoonist Bruce Petty’s inspiring new doco-animation, Global Haywire, a must see for those concerned about the plight of the world and wanting to see a refreshing, humorous documentary.

Beyond the typical critique of the Washington Consensus, Petty looks into the eyes of the Enlightenment and asks if we’ve stuffed it up? The development of systems and statehood, rationality and reason have been distorted. The multitude of inventions, the white goods revolution, computing and bio-technology have done little for genuine liberty. Read a review here.

The usual drinks and nibblies will follow. We haven’t seen you or so long, we hope to see you for a social night.

$5 entry to cover the royalties.
RSVP appreciated

Diary Dates

• The True Cost of Food - Karl Williams presents on Fri August 1st, 7pm
• Economics for Activists - Karl Fitzgerald presents on Tuesdays nights 6.30 - 8pm, Aug 5 - 26th
• 117th Annual Henry George Dinner, Tues Sept 2nd, 6.30pm featuring Terry Dwyer (ANU) @ Pumphouse Hotel Function Room

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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 question: As land tax is a tax on site values, wouldn’t it be simplest if the tax unit were the site? Our first submission to this Review proposed a mechanism which would indeed make the tax unit the site, without creating winners and losers in the transition to the new system. With a little elaboration, the transitional arrangement can account for the effects of aggregation before doing away with it.

Origin of the problem

Because the acquisition of major assets requires income in excess of necessary consumption, the distribution of major assets, including land, is more unequal than the distribution of income. And because land tax (in NSW and other Australian jurisdictions) exempts owner-occupied residential land, the ownership of taxable land is more concentrated than the ownership of land in general. For these reasons, land tax would be strongly progressive even if applied at a flat rate with no threshold. The purpose of a threshold is not so much to make the tax more progressive as to limit the number of taxpayers, especially among swinging voters. But a threshold, by itself, creates the opportunity for landowners to minimize tax by holding a large number of low-valued sites, this strategy being especially viable for urban speculators who “buy at the fringe and wait”. To close the loophole opened by the threshold, site values are aggregated before the threshold is applied.
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