Prosper Australia

The reform challenge for our beloved country is to discard the taxes that weigh on effort and creativity, and to put them instead on economic rents, like land and mining.

A soundly-based Land Value Tax to reduce the taxes on labor and enterprise would restore the rewards to effort and propel the economy forward like a rocket.

photo credit: Express Monorail Australians have a disturbing mind-set: we prefer foreign experts over our own.  People like Steve Keen and Gavin Putland make waves overseas with their valuable commentary on The Great Australian Housing Bubble, but are ignored at home. So be it.  I will pander to your cultural cringe and offer an overseas [...]

photo credit: Travis S. The US housing market is a living hell.  Homeowners are being boiled alive. The price of land was bid up to staggering multiples of incomes, until it no longer made sense to buy a house. And then the trend turned, hard and fast. One in five US mortgages is ‘underwater’: the [...]

photo credit: djking To win the election, the new Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu pledged to phase in reductions in Stamp Duty by fifty per cent on real estate transactions under $600,000 for first home buyers. This is a very modest proposal.  Mr Baillieu’s incoming government has a blank page on which to write.  We urge [...]

photo credit: Lucia. . . A secret map of Melbourne’s transport plans for the next 30 years was published in The Age yesterday. Doubts were raised about its authenticity (weakly, unconvincingly) by the Victorian government. Average householders may shrug, but this is a treasure map for property pirates speculators. “Here be Gold, mateys! Arrgh!” Knowing [...]

photo credit: RR and Camera At the peak of his career Elvis Presley was so popular audiences would sit and clap at the end of the night, demanding encore after encore.  They couldn’t get enough.  The only way to end the demands and disperse the crowd was for him to leave and to announce: “Mr [...]

photo credit: itmpa Last week Treasury made public its Red Book – the economic advice it gives to the incoming government. In it, Treasury lays out a big, bold reform agenda.  On housing, the Red Book is scathing: “Access to adequate housing affects all Australians and is integral to a decent life. It is part [...]

photo credit: Nicholas Erwin At the moment, Victoria’s Metropolitan Fire Brigade and Country Fire Authority are funded by the Fire Services Levy, a charge added to fire insurance. But the FSL gives a free ride to uninsured property owners – they don’t pay for the level of fire cover provided. Free riders increase the cost [...]

photo credit: Dru!   A survey of property investors in The Age today by Colemar Brunton shows sentiment delicately poised between those who see the market flat or falling and those anticipating further rises. This is not the bursting of The Great Australian Property Bubble that Prosper and many other commentators like Jeremy Grantham and [...]