Latest News & Commentary
From capitalism to rentierism?
Taxes on wages in Australia were fairly minimal until WWII, since which time they’ve been ratcheted up significantly. Federal taxes before the war consisted mainly of customs and excise charges and the federal land tax, introduced in 1910. The States and...
A Land Tax for the Top End?
Amid recent GST distribution cuts of $400m p.a. (about 12% of revenue) and a flagging property market, the Northern Territory Government is facing severe fiscal challenges. The NT is the most stamp duty reliant government in the federation, and has been hard hit an...
Australia’s economic trajectory
An article has been doing the rounds - House of Cards - by Matt Burnie and Craig Tindale, that we highly commend. Rarely do articles array so much data in devastating order. There must be over 100 links highlighting the risky nature of our economic miracle from one...
Where we failed: a telling chart
In his paper American Government Finance in the Long Run: 1790 to 1990 (Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol 14, Number 1) John Joseph Wallis demonstrates that US government finance experienced three separate phases:- Asset Finance Phase 1790 to 1842, where...
What Australian really wants to lower house prices?
by Jesse Hermans In an AFR op-ed this week , the Federal Member for Banks, David Coleman asks, “What Australian really wants lower house prices?” Australian’s are obsessed with housing, he writes. Everyone is piling into bricks and mortar. The value of property is...
National land prices up $594 billion
MEDIA RELEASE Wage growth suffers from record increase in Australian land prices. “The $593.7 billion uplift in land prices announced today is thirty times larger than total banking profits. The average annual gain has been around $180 billion, so to have an increase...
Banking on Profits
Letter to The Age October 10th, 2017 How ironic that boss Ian Narev is concerned that global wage growth has been "relatively weak" ('CBA boss says sorry over ATM scandal', The Age, 7/10). Adam Smith noted in Wealth of Nations that privatised land rent adds one-third...
The Queen’s Land Rent
Phillip Anderson's recent speech to Prosper's 126th dinner provided this enticing talking point. Read more on the ramifications of such leadership.
Regulatory bodies paid to look like idiots?
All the great social philosophers have held that land must be rented, not sold, if communities aren’t to implode. One of them put it into a formula, saying that if we were to capture the social surplus, then labour and profits will receive their full and...
The Queen Pays Her Dues, Do You?
This week the Renegade Economists radio show celebrated ten years on the 3CR airwaves. Much of the show was based on the following. Have a listen: Reverberations from Phillip Anderson’s presentation to the 126th Annual Henry George Dinner are still being felt. Phillip...
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