Post-industrial, post-cognitive

Their thinking was inspired!

And so it was that taxes on land began to be wound back as we sought to promote property investment, progressively relying on greater income taxes to curb the possibility of overproduction in the manufacturing sector.

In Australia, Prime Minister Menzies removed the federal land tax in 1953, and, at the outset of the '70s, Gough Whitlam decided to fund half of local government – which had formerly funded itself from property rates – out of the federal income tax.

We were well down the track to becoming post-industrial!

[Fast forward to the end of the first decade of the 21st century.]

HEAVEN ON EARTH?

So, here we are, Australia and America, along with other post industrial nations, having sent most of our industry offshore to China, to keep them making goods cheaply for us that we used to have to make for ourselves.

This allows us to direct our attention into using our often tertiary-educated brains to invest. We have the choice of investing in the share market, in real estate, on the gee gees, or on the pokies. And the super industry is able to invest our compulsory superannuation levy on any combination of all four!

These are but some of the benefits of the tax system having liberated us from the daily grind of actually producing widgets; we are free to exercise the gifts our education has given to us in so many areas.

We have been liberated and have so much leisure time on our hands, with so few cares or concerns. [On this score, has anybody noticed the tax regime has rendered our Productivity Commission redundant? Can't they all just retire and go home now?]

So, here we are. Aren't things going just swimmingly in the post-industrial west? Is this not what the Indians call nirvana?

I can't image who permitted Ken Henry's 'Australia's Future Tax System' panel to break into our reverie to suggest we ought to abolish most of our taxes on industry, and to institute a federal land tax and a mining rent. That's not post-industrial at all.

Tell him he's dreaming!