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Physiocrats – The Catalysts of Economic Thought

Cross Posted from Monmouth University The Physiocrats Ordell P. Olson Assistant Professor of Economics France, at the end of the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century, was gradually going bankrupt. Wars were depleting both the natural and human resources of the...

House prices, not wages, is the bigger issue

Letters, Australian Financial Review  15 January 2014  p33    Peter Pitt (“High wages force companies to consider offshore options”, AFR January 10) suggests that a lower minimum wage will improve employment retention in Australia. The lower wage countries he uses to...

Water – Beneficiary Should Pay

Letters to the Editor Australian Financial Review LAND BENEFITS The comment by Marcus Spiller (AFR 3-5 January, Our cities should be allowed to water their own green shoots) on why per kl charging for water was better than “property” taxes nicely illustrates what is...

Marvelous Melbourne, Magical Margins

    The weighted net annual rate of return on land investment in Melbourne 1880-92 was a remarkably high 34.6 per cent, peaking at 78.3 per cent in 1887, according to a fascinating paper researcher Philip Soos has unearthed Rates of Return on Melbourne Land...

Trade Advantage Replaced by Rent Extraction

This interview has gone viral with over a dozen sites posting it, including Naked Capitalism, Truth Out and Max Keiser. Prof Michael Hudson was interviewed on the Renegade Economists radio/ podcast entitled Crony Competition on the road to Unearned Income: Hudson...

Can the Senate address housing affordability

By Catherine Cashmore Reposted from Macrobusiness In the final hours of Federal Parliament for 2013, Labor Senator Jan McLucas succeeded in establishing an inquiry by the Economics References Committee, in addressing Australia’s growing housing affordability crisis,...

Kohler condemns expensive land

Alan Kohler is out this morning on Business Spectator with a big swipe at Conservative state governments.  Yes, that is conservative with a capital ‘C’. He sees at last the destruction the cost of land is wreaking from Port Hedland to Hobart. The high price of land in...

The mystery of unearned income

As published today on Truthout The wealth gap is dividing society at an astonishing rate as the lessons from the Great Recession are helicoptered away. QE3 has worked for Wall St but little else. Over 30 nations are facing the shock and awe of property bubbles as the...

Companies spy a way to exploit tenants

By Philip Soos and Paul Egan Reposted from Business Spectator Suspend disbelief for a moment and imagine you are a residential landlord with a property for rent, seeking prospective tenants through a property manager. After advertising, it later comes to your...

Stamp Duty stifles labor mobility

The Productivity Commission is out with a major study that recommends ending Stamp Duty on conveyances in favor of a land value tax to avoid trapping people in their homes when better jobs beckon elsewhere. The Geographic Labor Mobility report examines the match...

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