Rent revenue for a resilient society

So, with both the right and left in political denial about land and resource rents, and the communist system having disintegrated, let me put the proposition that capitalism urgently needs to rediscover it, or we will otherwise be consigned to languish in the same deep torpor and economic malaise that has characterised Japan over the last twenty years.

Worse, when they can't exit the economic depression, western leaders will no doubt look to manufacture a war with China. Whilst the precise nature of the heroic cause that will send us to war is unknown, let's remember that when we were called to WWs I and II to liberate nations, they were ultimately born of the frustration of economic depression and stagnation.

So, here's an idea. What if we allow enterprise to be truly free, free from all arbitrarily imposed taxation, and to socialise only society's surplus, the people's rent?

The stumbling block - the political parties

However, it is insufficient to achieve change simply by educating Australians to the manner in which the FIRE sector and mining industry have been ripping us off for years per medium of a tax regime that fines productivity, effort and thrift and rewards parasitic rent-seekers.

Like the USA, Australia is riven by a party political system. Once divided in this manner, it becomes a cinch for rentier plutocrats to quietly run the show from the shadows. They'll give generously to the parties, provided they don't interfere with their free ride.

Thus was Barack Obama castrated by a generous Wall Street. Thus was Kevin Rudd set aside as Prime Minister of Australia for daring to challenge billionaire mining magnates.

So, even if Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott were educated to see the people's rent is 50% of the Australian economy, both are likely to keep pumping up land price bubbles and kow-towing to billionaire holders of mining licences. The plutocracy is now too powerful for our politicians; they are no longer in control, no longer our representatives.

Change is unlikely to come from baby boomers, stuck in their ways, and clinging to one or other of the parties. It's also probably too late for it to come from many Generation Xers.

No, the hope of the side is Gen Y. It has been cynically locked out of affordable access to housing by governments feeding the land price escalation with first home buyers' (sic) grants, and a tax system that fosters all these property rorts.

Where the oldies say Gen Y want what they haven't earned, I see things quite differently. I've seen their high mindedness, enthusiasm and reasoned comments regarding Prosper Australia's call for a residential buyers' strike. They've seen and understood a perverse tax system's complicity, and the shrug of shoulders from their political 'representatives'. They want change.

Many of them have the indelible imprint on their minds of a system that completely sidelined them as young adults or condemned others of them to decades of servicing impossible mortgages. It is they will bring about this most necessary of all political reforms.