Prosper Australia

Melbourne City Council is selling lanes to developers, according to The Age today. It makes a pretty penny, too, having pocketed $1.2 million from the sale of part of three lanes in the last 12 months alone. The article sparked an intense debate on the newspaper’s blog.  Sales are energetically supported by citizens disgusted by [...]

I had a letter published in The Sunday Age on the 25th of May. Real estate agents and their constant spruiking of the “boom” had finally gotten up my nose. They go around crowing about the rising prices while ordinary Australians get priced out of the market. When you really think about it who benefits [...]

Is The Age suffering from split personality disorder? On page 8 of The Sunday Age (18.4.10) we read that house shopping is a “nightmare”, the market is “out of control” and that we are heading toward being a rental society where only the rich can afford to own a house. As Maris Beck points out [...]

Negative Gearing provides cream for nation’s wealthiest Our topsy turvy tax system sees commentators claiming: “In most businesses, losing money is frowned on. In this one, however, it has become the spirit of the game, with landlords writing off their claimed losses against tax, and effectively using the savings to subsidise their property investment.” So [...]

Letter to the Age Dear Sir, So let me get this right. Messrs Howard and Costello say the economy has been going so well that the RBA intervened by increasing interest rates to slow it down again? But why should anyone want slow down a healthy economy? Did the government have it going too well? [...]

Letter rejected by the Age (Melbourne) As the Federal Government is planning an emissions trading scheme — not a carbon tax — why will households foot the bill? (“Householders to bear brunt of trading scheme”, the Age, June 25.) Answer: An emissions trading scheme is a carbon tax payable not to the government, but to [...]

Dear Editor, Re: BCA: 56 taxes a company curse (The Age “Business Day” 10/4/07) We hear low overseas wages given as the reason our manufacturers cannot compete with Chinese imports, but we don’t hear of the penalizing effect of the multitude of taxes on our manufacturers. It would be surprising if Chinese manufacturers were similarly [...]

The Age Dear editor, Alan Moran (The Age, August 3, “Land-based wealth an illusion”) has it partially right. He correctly claims that inflationary pressures provide the impetus for interest rate pressures. He also correctly claims that there is a disparity between supposed wealth levels and savings levels, most of which is due to a monstrously [...]