Guest blogger Bryan Kavanagh challenges the way economists assess the damage inflicted by taxes on the economy. He describes his method by estimating the impact of the tax burden on Australia. Land price bubbles are part of the equation. There is, he believes, a way of converting the losses into huge gains: by switching the revenue system from conventional taxes onto the direct collection of revenue from the rent of land and nature’s resources.
Archive | Capitalism
The Recovery of Private Rights
Scotland, it seems, is going to change whether her people vote for independence on September 18. That’s the conclusion of Financial Times analyst Merryn Somerset Webb. Her article on August 2 summarises the plans and proposals for changing property rights in land which are now in the pipeline. But the headline is misleading: “The twilight […]
From Capitalism back to Feudalism
The world was turned upside down in the 20th century because people believed Marx. The masses would rise up, overthrow capitalism and build the socialist state. Then, the communists scrambled back to capitalism. And now, we see the early signs of capitalism retreating back to feudalism. Marxism was what I call a coping doctrine (in […]
Carry on Camping
The media panned the people who set up camps in the centre of cities under the Occupy Wall Street banner. But the people who chose to protest by sleeping on concrete pavements have done more to deepen the debate about the global economic crisis than the feather-bedded academics who are paid to think about these […]
Cannibalising the Western Economy
Is the world becoming short-sighted? So begins an investigation by Andrew Haldane, the Bank of England’s Executive Director of financial stability. The answer is No! China is now investing for the future. The West, meanwhile, is cannibalising for all that it is worth: a bankrupt system determined to squeeze the last cent out of the […]