Prosper Australia

photo credit: Torley

David Smiley

All countries save about 25 percent of what they produce, their Gross Domestic Product or GDP, for investment as capital in future production. In national accounts these “savings” include environmental damage and natural resource depletion incurred in the process of production. This does not seem a very good measure of sustainable development, and the World Bank has come up with a better one. The Bank subtracted from Gross Domestic Savings, the cost of carbon dioxide damage, and the values of energy depletion, mineral depletion, and net forest depletions. The result of these subtractions the Bank called Genuine Domestic Saving, or GDS, and they are astonishing.

World average GDS was about 13 percent. Both World Bank regional and country data were tabulated in World Bank World Development Indicators report of 2001, pages 180-183. For East Asia and Pacific, a region dominated by the land reform countries of China and South Korea, GDS was 25 percent. Moving to areas of political turbulence, GDS for Sub Saharan Africa was 3.9 and for Middle east and North Africa minus 1.3 percent.
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With the growing pressure to find affordable accommodation and our excitement at the Canberra Land rent proposal, we thought it high time we showed you a growing trend through the northern hemisphere - Community Land Trusts

by Prosper Tasmania’s Leo Foley

(Based on material from the Institute of Community Economics, Massachusetts)

A Community Land Trust (CLT) is a democratically controlled nonprofit organization that owns real estate in order to provide benefits to its local community - and in particular to make land and housing available to residents who cannot otherwise afford them.

CLT’s recognise that land is a finite resource and will naturally appreciate in time due to social progress and population growth. This natural appreciation in land values is recycled back into the Community Land Trust to ensure that future home owners can afford to enter the CLT.
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Yesterday’s Federal budget surplus of $21.7 billion raises the spectre of a global trend tied to the principles represented on this website. Take the foreign reserves of Singapore (US$176bn), Hong Kong (US$160bn) and Russia (US$563 bn). Singapore and Hong Kong have raised a significant proportion of their revenue via the capturing of economic rent from land. Russia is a new boom entrant with the capturing of oil rents.

However, the returns on foreign reserves from government bonds are dropping, especially when denominated in the falling US currency. This has seen a diversification away from countries holding their budget surpluses in foreign reserves and towards what is called sovereign funds.

Fifteen of the top 20 sovereign funds in the world are dominated by revenue raised from the resource rents that nature’s resources provide. Australia has benefited greatly from China’s resource boom. Hong Kong and Singapore have maintained their growing funds by ensuring the public share in the real estate bonanza of the last decade. (Remember, land appreciates, housing depreciates.)

We propose a balance of the two strategies, capturing money from both land and the resources below and above it. Then small business can be freed from the shackles of the compliance required in meeting the 56 taxes Australian businesses face.
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by Karl Fitzgerald

as published in Arena Magazine, Feb-March, 2008, Edition 93

In a period where the twin crises of global warming and the wealth gap are attacking society from both sides, policy makers are continually limited in their effectiveness by a two dimensional approach to economics.

Land prices have increased at 4 times the rate of GDP and dwarfed wages growth by 1000 to 1 since WW2 (The Poverty Inquiry to end all Inquiries, Tony O’Brien, Figure 1, p5) . Such damning statistics beckon the ALP to take a hard look at the economic fundamentals undermining union wage demands. For Julia Gillard’s ‘War on Poverty’ to be successful, policymakers must look outside the square.

2008 marks the half way point in our promise to halve world poverty with the Millennium Development Goal’s 2015 deadline. With the wealth gap accelerating in both Developed and Developing countries, a serious flaw is evident in modern economics.
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With the recent passing of our number 1 ticket holder, Clyde Cameron, we were pleased to hear the ABC’s Phillip Adams replay the 1999 Late Night Live interview he held with the Honorable Clyde Cameron. It is a fascinating discussion with Clyde covering the foundation to his Georgist beliefs, involvement in the Henry George League of S.A and his disappointment at the ALP’s drift from its original intention to capture the community generated economic rent in lieu of all other taxes. Insights on ALP history and the Whitlam era abound in this fireside chat.

Download and listen to this essential piece of Australian Georgist history.