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.
BLOG: economic rent
Obfuscating Economic rent
A tax on economic rent is not, as Davidson says, a tax on “entrepreneurship and innovation”, but a tax on the surplus over the necessary returns to human inputs, including entrepreneurship and innovation.
Australia’s world-beating real estate
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.
Thank you, Dr Henry
Tax reform will turbocharge our economy. It will make Australia a genuine centre of excellence: a magnet for investment, for jobs, and a shining example to stunted and downtrodden citizens everywhere.
Grand Sale! Grand Sale! Grand Sale!
The Australian Government is about to sell real estate worth billions. It is a matter of critical economic importance that they get it right. Up for sale is radio spectrum for mobile phones and data signals for the next fifteen years. This is real estate as rare and...
Port of Portland: sunk
Portland (pop. 10,000) remains seriously underdeveloped. While the rest of the state has grown by leaps and bounds, Portland sleeps. Its laggard status should be a matter of considerable concern to all Victorians.
Will ninjas burst the Great Australian Housing Bubble?
photo credit: The Library of Congress Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked. Warren Buffett In the US housing bubble, banks and financiers gave a mortgage to anyone with a discernable pulse. NINJAs (No Income, No Job, no Assets) were...
Can a tax be beautiful?
The Senate Select Committee on New Taxes is pondering the implications of the Mineral Resource Rent Tax, holding a hearing yesterday in Perth. Here is a new tax measure that, even diluted for the election, will still raise over $10 billion a year. This is a beautiful...
Melbourne’s secret plan
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...
Treasury to Gillard: “Fix Housing.”
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...