Catherine Cashmore

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Of all the policies employed by the government to exacerbate Australia’s housing affordability crisis, our inequitable tax system, which includes negative gearing, is top of the list.
Negative gearing has reduced Australia’s housing supply. Over 92% of investors chase the capital gains associated with second hand dwellings rather than increase the stock of housing through investment into new supply. We replace properties for sale, with properties for rent.
<img src="/images/2014/11/20/cashmore-nov-20-one.jpg" alt="">
Negative gearing has pushed up the price of housing and widened the gap between price and yield. High and rising house prices naturally put upward pressure on rents and assist in keeping first homebuyers locked out the market.
<img src="/images/2014/11/20/cashmore-nov-20-two.jpg" alt="">
Negative gearing has turned us into a nation of speculators. Today, the investor share of the market is close to 50%. Investor finance commitments are rising at their fastest pace since 2007. 65% of loans to investors are on interest only terms and an estimated 95% of all bank lending is being channeled into real estate – mostly residential. Negative gearing costs the government billions in lost tax revenue each year. Around 1.25 million taxpayers (approximately 13% of the total) now have at least one negatively geared property. <img src="/images/2014/11/20/cashmore-nov-20-three.jpg" width="676" height="440"> Negative gearing employs one rule for the landowner and another rule for the worker. Investors that negatively gear can deduct non-work-related property losses against wages and salaries.They can lower their taxable income as much as they wish by simply by buying enough negatively geared dwellings. The wage earner has no such advantage – why work when you can speculate? Negative gearing favours the wealthy rewarding high-income earners handsomely. Notwithstanding, the property lobby use artificially reduced taxable incomes to falsely claim that most investors are “<a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-24/janda-the-myth-of-mum-and-dad-negative-gearers/5766724">mum and dad</a>” average income earners.
Negative gearing merely scratches the surface of Australia’s inequitable tax system. 
Investor tax incentives and their effect on house and land values have been repeatedly clarified by independent tax reviews, as well as previous Senate Inquiries into housing affordability.
The first inquiry conducted by the Productivity Commission in 2004, determined that prices had surpassed levels explicable by demographic factors and supply constraints alone. They stressed that a large surge in demand had rather been “predicated on unrealistic expectations (in a 'supportive' tax environment) of on going capital gains”.
The second inquiry overseen by a Select Senate Committee in 2008, found that the average house price in capital cities had climbed to over seven years of average earnings and once again, they identified inequitable disparities in the overall fairness of the tax system, that had lead to “speculative investment on second and third properties.”
Australia's Future Tax System review conducted in May 2010 stated that tax benefits and exemptions had been capitalised into higher land values, encouraging investors to chase ‘large’ capital gains over rental income and landowners to withhold supply.
The Future Tax System review recommended allowing only 40% of interest (and other expenses) associated with investments as a deduction.
This would reduce the amount investors are able to claim against negatively geared dwellings and provide a good starting point for phasing out the policy altogether.
Negative gearing as well as stamp duties (which are a volatile source of revenue, dependent on the volume of housing transfers in addition to the transacted price), should be replaced by a broad-based SLT (state land tax) – as I recommended <a href="https://catherinecashmore.com.au/wp/?p=414" target="_blank">here</a>.
Under this scenario, the upfront cost of land would fall, the higher tax base would blunt potential capital gains from speculation, and housing supply would naturally increase as land would need to generate an income.
An enhanced land tax would also provide a steady source of revenue for state government giving them greater control over public finances for the provision of essential infrastructure.
Moreover, study after study demonstrates, that basing a system on the collection of resource rents and monopoly profits, for the direct application of facilitating local and community services, can reduce the tax liability on most households whilst also maintaining complete revenue neutrality.
Unfortunately, 95% of our federal MPs own investment properties. Collectively, the are in possession of an estimated <a href="https://blog.australiaboomtobust.com/2014/08/propertied-federal-political-class/" target="_blank">$300 million</a> personal portfolio of residential dwellings. 
It is therefore unsurprising that all recommendations from previous Senate inquiries for meaningful and equitable tax reform have been studiously ignored.
This is an extract from Property Observer's exclusive article where the experts were asked: <a href="/expert-insights/investing/38057-exclusive-negative-gearing-what-needs-to-change" target="_blank">Negative gearing – what needs to change?</a>.
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catherinecashmore-6LXia3pPQj

Negative gearing merely scratches the surface of Australia’s inequitable tax system

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EXCLUSIVE: Negative gearing – what needs to change?

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Australia’s low-income residents are expected to take on a colossal amount of private debt just to put a roof overhead in our rentier economy, and the only explanation they are being offered is that Australia is suffering from a ‘housing shortage’.
Speaking at the 2014 <a href="https://topics.bloomberg.com/bloomberg-australia-economic-summit/">Bloomberg Economic Summit in Sydney</a>, where the investor share of the market is close to 50% and finance commitments have sky rocketed some 44% higher than July 2013. Treasurer Joe Hockey, denied that prices were ‘credit fuelled’ because: "Fundamentally we don’t have enough supply to meet demand (and) that doesn’t suggest a bubble.”
<img src="/images/2014/09/22/cashmore%20sept%2022%20one.jpg" alt="">
His views were supported by David Cannington, senior property analyst at Australia &amp; New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ), who referenced an apparent shortage of ‘300,000 homes’, while at the same time welcoming an elevated level of foreign speculation “as adding about $4.5 billion every quarter to total dwelling construction”.
The shortage Cannington refers to, is derived in part from research put together by the National Housing Supply Council (NHSC) established in May of 2008, just prior to the last Senate inquiry into housing affordability, yet promptly disbanded by the incoming Abbot government who are now only too willing to use its findings to support their populist view.
Using ABS data, the NHSC assessed what is known as ‘underlying demand’ - the amount of extra housing needed per annum over the last decade for all residents in Australia (not just active buyers) - ‘if’ we had continued to produce enough homes for an increasing population based on existing household composition figures.
The supply side findings of the report were hotly debated and justifiably so.
Planning for population growth is not an easy task, it is predictive in nature and makes many assumptions and revisions along the way.
However, this was not the NHSC’s only role.
It was also commissioned to produce a comprehensive evaluation of Australia’s affordability problems, which included the status of those impacted most – homeless, renters, first home buyers, low wage families and tenants in the public and social housing system, which helped clarify its findings.
For example, the reports showed utility costs such as electricity, gas, water, and sewerage, have been increasing at more than 10% per annum – yet they are not typically calculated as part of current analysis of housing affordability constraints.
They gave a good statistical overview to show a dramatic shortfall of affordable rental accommodation for low-income families. And clear evidence that our housing crisis is not that we do not produce enough homes ‘per se’ – but that we do not produce enough affordable and feasible options across the sector as a whole – in both the public and private sphere.
For example - the report noted a “shortage of housing for lower-income people  (specifically families) that results from a mismatch of housing prices relative to income”.
It made a point of stressing that Australia’s supply challenges cannot be met by ‘simply adding to the housing stock’. And further elaborated on the inability of apartment construction to meet both need and price for the majority of family residents - the value of the land and associated costs being too high, and the size of apartments being too small to adequately fulfil the task.
This places Cannington’s second comment – regarding the level of foreign investment pushing an unprecedented inner city boom in apartment construction, into context.
For individual renters, students and a small percentage of couples living downtown, the increase in high-density accommodation will assist in placing downward pressure on rents.
It cannot however assist in addressing Australia’s real housing shortage or accommodating the growing number of family and low-to-middle income residents, that want to buy – not just rent - and in the face of declining wages, find it increasingly difficult to do so.
This is not because we have booming population growth and a shortage of roof space, as our ministers are fond of sermonizing. But because our tax policies work directly against it, subverting supply side policy and negatively affecting wage growth by pushing up the price of land and the associated costs of doing business.
They encourage a system of false scarcity, in which land and dilapidated housing is hoarded and not effectively utilised, forcing a process of social polarisation, as low income residents are forced to ‘hop’ both the middle and outer rings, in search of cheaper options further afield.
They distort the use of the nation’s savings, encouraging speculation on rising land values.  This negatively affects the financing of new supply, as investors chase the capital gains associated with established stock, over and above rental income.
<img src="/images/2014/09/22/cashmore%20sept%2022%20two.jpg" alt="">
The behavioural impacts are profound, amplifying the boom and bust swings of the market cycle.
The financial sector accommodates, with property prices dependent on how much ‘endogenously’ created credit a bank chooses lend, subject once again, to our dysfunctional tax system.
Negative gearing, depreciation and lower land taxes, leave more economic rent available to be pledged to the banks in the form of higher prices, producing a rentier economy which prioritises ‘creating wealth’ through asset inflation and rising levels of private debt - rather than improving living standards by supporting tangible investment into value adding activities.
<img src="/images/2014/09/22/cashmore%20sept%2022%20three.jpg" alt="">
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The distortion that inflated values have on the economy acts to subvert housing policy as any danger of a marked decline in prices, places an associated risk on financial stability.
Affluent neighbourhoods are therefore protected from ‘over development’, while inelastic responses to market conditions, allow professional land-bankers to squat on sites at low cost and secure windfall gains when they are later rezoned for residential development.
Stamp duty further restricts labour mobility and the regular turnover of housing stock.
The resulting effect is illustrated on the <a href="https://www.natsem.canberra.edu.au/publications/?publication=the-great-australian-dream-just-a-dream">maps below</a> that show where affordable options were located in 2001 for low-to-middle income buyers, compared to 2011, in all of our major capitals.  
The yellow patches being affordable, and blue patches unaffordable.
<img src="/images/2014/09/22/cashmore%20sept%2022%20four.jpg" alt="">
<img src="/images/2014/09/22/cashmore%20sept%2022%20five.png" alt="">
<img src="/images/2014/09/22/cashmore%20sept%2022%20six.png" alt="">
<img src="/images/2014/09/22/cashmore%20sept%2022%20seven.png" alt="">
<img src="/images/2014/09/22/cashmore%20sept%2022%20eight.png" alt="">
Source: <a href="https://www.natsem.canberra.edu.au/publications/?publication=the-great-australian-dream-just-a-dream">NATSEM</a> Income and Wealth Report Issue 29 - The Great Australian Dream - Just a Dream?
Prior to the 1970s, infrastructure financing was funded in part through the capture of economic rent from the land that directly benefited from the accompanying improvements. 
Now, infrastructure costs are financed through deadweight taxes on productivity from residents who derive no benefit in their own local neighbourhood, or loaded onto the upfront cost of new dwellings and promptly passed to the buyer.
The banking lobby loves minsters like Joe Hockey that offer no threat to their profits and instead, waft away any necessary concern over rising prices with simplified responses that fail to identify the root cause. 
It has driven up the cost of housing – damaging the potential of future generations, with a lifetime worth of debt sold as “forced savings”, while the interest is re-packaged an into an array of obscure financial instruments, allowing the country’s wealth to gravitate into an elite nuclei of financially strong hands.
Notwithstanding, all the above points were highlighted in the last <a href="https://www.propertyoz.com.au/library/A%20good%20house%20is%20hard%20to%20find%20report%20JUNE%202008.pdf" target="_blank">Senate inquiry</a> into housing affordability, as well as being set out clearly in the <a href="https://taxreview.treasury.gov.au/Content/Content.aspx?doc=html/home.htm" target="_blank">Henry Tax review</a>.  Yet studiously ignored in a budget that surgically set about reducing the living standards of Australia’s low to middle-income earners, the most productive sectors of our economy, rather than collecting the tax revenues from resource rents and monopoly profits.
Joe Hockey has reaped substantial unearned gains from an <a href="https://blog.australiaboomtobust.com/2014/08/propertied-federal-political-class/" target="_blank">impressive portfolio</a> of property investments - reportedly, picking up his Canberra home <a href="https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/taxpayers-footing-bill-on-treasurer-joe-hockeys-15-million-canberra-house/story-fni0cx12-1227026624945">“for a song”</a> in 1997 at $320,000, and watched that land value more than triple in nominal terms to an estimated  $1.5 million today.
In light of the above evidence, it can only be assumed that Hockey’s comments are based on a vested interest to protect his own back pocket and seat in power, rather than the urgent need to invest in Australia’s future by eliminating the losses inflicted by our current system of taxation that forces up the cost of land and associated levels of private debt.  
Instead we need to move toward a system that finances society’s needs and infrastructure requirements, from capturing the <a href="https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/11/land-tax-must-kill-negative-gearing-stamp-duty/" target="_blank">economic rents</a> currently capitalised into the price that buyers negotiate when they purchase a home, which would eventually act to improve the living standards of all, not just the privileged few.
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Supply v demand: A political game of smoke and mirrors

The story of skyscraper hubris – pride before a fall

"Our distrust is very expensive": We can't have a trustworthy financial market without an honest property system

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Nick Xenophon (along with other groups, such as the <a href="https://reia.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Super_Homes.pdf">REIA</a>), is advocating a policy that will be responsible for making housing affordability worse. 
He is using the Canadian "Home Buyer Plan" as an example to promote a similar idea in Australia. That is - allowing first home buyers to raid their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia" target="_blank">superannuation</a> account – sold under the pretext of ‘helping them get onto the property ladder’. 
The theory goes that to progress up this mythological ladder, buyers must bet their income and in this case, future savings, on a speculative process that translates into higher house prices, without thought for the next generation of required ‘property ladder’ participants, who will no doubt fall dependant on similar schemes, to keep the tide rising.
The procedure in Canada allows eligible buyers to withdraw up to C$25,000 tax-free from their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_Retirement_Savings_Plan">retirement fund</a>, on the condition that they pay it back over a 15-year period.
If they fail to do this, the amount withdrawn will be taxed as per the income earner's tax bracket. Currently, 35% of Canadians fall into this category however, according to the <a href="https://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/menu-eng">CRA</a>, roughly one out of two – that is, 47% – contributed less than the required repayment amount over the 2011 tax year. 
These means, while the government picks up the added income revenue windfall, buyers, buoyed on by a rent seeking culture that fools the public into believing such policies are designed to be ‘helpful’, overstretch their budget and in weak economic conditions are left to carry the can.
In short - you borrow money from yourself at 0% interest and in doing so; lose 15 years of compounding 'tax free' interest with average returns in the order of 7%. 
It’s notable that many low to middle-income individuals have inadequate funds to draw upon, therefore even assuming the scheme were to be effective, it’s limited in the difference it can make.
But the real ‘nub’ of the issue, which Nick Xenophon has failed to acknowledge, is that the Canadian Home Buyer Plan was never intended to aid affordability. 
It was <a href="https://annualreport.crea.ca/2012/advocacy.php">promoted by the real estate industry</a> as a temporary measure, following the recession in the late 1980s, to stimulate land values and benefit the FIRE sector, along with it's economic offshoots - renovations, furniture, appliances, moving costs, tax revenue to government and so forth.
The FIRE sector has lobbied to keep in place ever since and also pushed for the threshold to be raised.
This is because most Western economies have constructed their tax and supply policies to reward real estate speculation over and above productive enterprise.
The process is assisted and abetted by a banking industry that seeks to lend against land as collateral, favouring the extraction of economic rent, over and above extending loans for the purpose of productive enterprise 
<img src="/images/2014/08/06/cashmore%20aug%206%20one.png" alt="">
Canadian residential real estate tripled from an estimated C$1.3 Trillion in 2000, to <a href="https://in.reuters.com/article/2014/06/19/canada-economy-debt-idINL2N0P00FG20140619" target="_blank">C$3.8 trillion in 2014</a>, however, only C$550 billion of this was for renovation projects or new home building - the rest was pure inflation.
By the end of 2011, the Home Buyer plan had been used <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finance/retirement-rrsps/why-the-home-buyers-plan-should-be-wound-down/article8211010/">2.6 million times</a>, with total withdrawals adding up to around $27.9-billion – that’s $27.9 billion of additional credit, feeding into existing house prices.
Between 2005 and 2011, Canadian house prices rose 58%, while average income for 25-34 year olds, increased by just 6%.
The <a href="https://www.rbc.com/economics/economic-reports/pdf/canadian-housing/house-november2013.pdf" target="_blank">Royal Bank of Canada</a> reports that detached housing now requires more than 80% of the median household income for mortgage payments in some of the country’s major cities.
Household debt to disposable income in Canada is currently 163.2%, up from 129% at the peak of the boom in 2006 and sitting only a few degrees lower than the recorded level in Australia. 
SIZE OF HOUSEHOLD DEBT COMPARED WITH ANNUAL INCOME in Australia, Canada, France and Italy. (ABS)   <img src="/images/2014/08/06/cashmore%20aug%206%20two.png" alt="">
Mainstream economists like to focus on government debt as a barometer of the heath of the economy. However, high and rising levels of private debt, as a consequence of such policies, <a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/https://www.amazon.com/The-Next-Economic-Disaster-Coming/dp/0812247043">constrain demand</a> and eventually exceed the income and economic activity they helped create.
Nick Xenophon cites the <a href="https://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf" target="_blank">Demographica Housing Affordability Report</a> in his press release, however it’s clear he has not read it. 
If he had, he would know that like Australia, Canada's largest major markets are also rated as “severely unaffordable” – and by studying the ‘affordable markets’ such as <a href="https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2014/04/australian-property-through-foreign-eyes/">Texas</a>, or areas of <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/news/2014/07/28/pittsburgh-recovers-from-recession-better-than">Pittsburgh</a> for example, Mr Xenophon would have a better understanding why these states avoided the harsh consequence of the GFC, and continue to generate healthy levels of economic growth. 
Significantly, both cities have land tax and liberal supply policies that deter speculation – helping to keep real estate affordable, while investment is channelled into other areas of the local economy.
While, Australia rewards speculation, allowing the geo-rent (the unearned gains) from rising land values to capitalise into the land price, year upon year, taxing income earners, instead of resource rents, which by design, distorts economic activity, housing supply policy, and subverts social justice.
<img src="/images/2014/08/11/cashmore%20aug%2011%20one.png" alt="">
(<a href="file:///C:/Users/sub/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/GK6LDSBE/90%25%20of%20taxation%20revenue%20has%20a%20distortionary%20effect,%20pushing%20prices%2023%25%20higher%20than%20need%20be.39" target="_blank">90% of taxation revenue</a> has distortionary effects, pushing up prices 23% higher than need be, while economic rents from land and natural resources have no such deadweight loss.)
Never, throughout the course of history, has such a policy been sustainable. 
At some point the productive capacity of the economy can no longer support the boom and the consequences, particularly for first home buyers, can be particularly severe, as <a href="https://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/Bubble_Economics_Egan_Soos.pdf" target="_blank">Australia’s history of land induced financial crises reveal</a>.
However, when you appreciate how <a href="https://blog.australiaboomtobust.com/2014/08/propertied-federal-political-class/" target="_blank">lucrative</a> and wide spread this activity can be, it is very easy to see how policy fails us, and it’s additionally easy to see why a country with a plentiful supply of land like Australia, submits its younger generation to a life time worth of debt slavery, just to get onto the ‘property ladder’.
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Not a super idea: Raiding superannuation accounts will make affordability worse

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“Too many workers live too far away to fulfil our cities’ economic potential,” is the conclusion of a recently published study by the <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/" style="line-height: 1.3em;">Grattan institute</a>.
The report maps the dollar value of goods and services produced by workers within a particular area of Australia’s biggest cities.  Demonstrating a disproportionate 80% is created on just 0.2% of the nation’s land mass.
 <img src="/images/2014/07/28/cashmore%20july28%20one.png" alt="">
Source: Grattan Institute.
It mirrors findings highlighted in a recent speech by Luci Ellis, head of financial stability at the RBA, who collected the addresses of people’s workplaces from the 2011 Census, to construct a picture that is particularly striking if directly contrasted with where employees actually live.
<img src="/images/2014/07/28/cashmore-july28-two.gif" alt="">
“Inner areas have become even greater job magnets in recent years; some middle and outer areas added people, but not so many jobs, so their job-to-worker ratios actually declined,” wrote Ellis. 
Places with ratios well above 1 are employment centres. They pull in commuters across the city even from outside its borders. While the very pale fringe areas, attracting the largest population growth due to pressures of affordability, are the ‘commuter districts’, dormitory suburbs, where jobs and community infrastructure have failed to follow through.
The picture is one of increased social polarisation – fringe localities tend to face higher crime rates, elevated levels of unemployment, along with reports of <a href="https://theage.domain.com.au/health-fear-on-estates-20120314-1v3lw">depression and mental illness,</a>
Poor supply policy and delays zoning pockets within the urban boundaries for residential development, means a typical house and land package on a compact 450 square metre site, transacts for no less than $400,000.
Instead of a sensible system of bond financing, where residents pay back proportionally over a lengthy period of time, or a broad based land value tax to replace other taxes as advocated in the Henry Tax Review, funds for the provision of essential infrastructure are loaded onto the upfront cost of housing and promptly passed to the buyer. 
Yet councils can wait years for the finances to arrive.  The funds are only payable upon subdivision and with no control over the development or release of newly zoned land; buyers often pay for services they may never receive.
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The Grattan report is subtitled “Cities as Engines of Prosperity” and charts Australia’s evolution from a country that “made things”, into one that is now reliant on centrally clustered “knowledge-intensive and specialised services”.
<img src="/images/2014/07/28/cashmore%20july28%20three.png" alt="">
Together, the cities above, account for 15% of Australia’s economic activity but despite declining job-to-worker ratios in the outer suburbs, along with increases in the price-to-distance trade off for home buyers, only 8% of Australia’s employed population actually work in the central hubs of each major capital.
In Melbourne for example, over 50% of jobs in are located more than 13 kilometres from the inner core, with fewer that 20% of jobs in the CBD itself.
These are not high paying jobs however, which leads the authors to imply we need to move closer in and“minimise barriers to highly productive activity in CBDs and inner city areas”.
They suggest this would provide industries with a “wider range of potential workers to choose from”. 
 “Australia’s cities are the backbone of our economy, with CBDs and inner city areas critically important to the nation’s prosperity….The more highly skilled and specialised a job, the greater the need to find the best person to fill it.”
Knowledge based and specialised services cover a diverse area, including industries such as, finance, insurance, real estate, and business services, as well as cultural, media, communication, and education facilities for example.
They are gaining predominance across the globe, due to a technological boom that is powering us forward in an expansion not unlike the industrial revolution.
3-D printing is lowering the cost and logistics of production. Advances in the research of solar and renewable energy have paved the way for homeowners to store electricity overnight and possibly <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/storing-solar-power-is-the-key-to-cutting-energy-bills-csiro-says-20140502-zr2zw" target="_blank">disconnect from the grid</a> completely.  
Companies such as Uber and Lyft have created innovative apps to provide cheaper transport options for consumers and ironically, changes in the way we interact and communicate have allowed people and jobs to disperse over a broader footprint and successfully collaborate across international borders.
However, this is not where Australia excels.
Moves to take advantage of the innovation revolution have been continually hampered by government intervention, winding back tariffs and scaling down their 2020 Renewable Energy Target, acting to protect the cartel of the Taxi industry’s ‘licensing’ monopoly, and cutting funding to organisations such as the CSIRO. 
No - the predominant sector that yields the most “knowledge intensive” gains in Australia comes from the FIRE industry (finance, insurance, and real estate)– which has its infrastructure webbed like a parasite on the back of the great Australian housing boom. 
<img src="/images/2014/07/28/cashmore-july28-five.gif" alt="">
At a global banking conference in 2013, the question was asked: "Why the hell are Australian Banks performing so well!?" It was in response to a chart showing a decade rise in market capitalisation on the global banking index, from 2% to 14%.
The answer was obvious; the banking sector <a href="https://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/01/31/therovingcavaliersofcredit/" target="_blank">makes its money by creating debt</a> – mostly mortgage debt and our highly leveraged ‘too big to fail four’ are the world’s most heavily exposed to residential and commercial real estate, capturing 88% of the mortgage market alone.
To be clear, the FIRE Economy is not a value adding economy; it profits by extracting economic rent from the debt on rising land values, impeding areas of productive enterprise and trading the interest in a multi trillion-dollar derivatives market to advantage those sitting at the top of the financial pyramid.
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To survive, the FIRE sector must sell the illusion that the economy and its participants can achieve economic prosperity through speculation on rising property values.
This has been assisted by tax, housing, and monetary policy, resulting in Australian’s holding some of the highest levels of private debt in the developed world. 
Tax withholdings or exemptions given to land holders for example, result in an increase of unearned monetary gains (economic rent) available to be capitalised at the current interest rate into the upfront cost of land. 
This was aptly demonstrated in a recent release by <a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/2014/07/24/negative-gearing-is-costing-you-a-lot-more-than-you-think/">Moodys’ Analytics</a>, estimating how the tax policy of negative gearing, has acted to inflate Australian house prices by no small degree.
 <img src="/images/2014/07/28/cashmore-july28-seven.gif" alt="">
Supply policy has further assisted.
Inelastic responses to market conditions have allowed professional land-bankers to squat on sites at low cost and secure windfall gains when the sites are later rezoned for residential development.
Allowing the uplift of land values to capitalise year upon year into the cost of housing, may be gift-wrapped with corporate spin to suggest it somehow benefits the community, however, a cursory analysis reveals the exact opposite to be true.
It raises the cost of living for every single household, increasing welfare costs, and leaving less to invest in sustainable industries that contribute to the county’s real ‘value adding’ economy. 
As demonstrated by the British economist and historian Fred Harrison in his book The Great Tax Clawback Scam.
The pull of the centralised core, where property values and wages are highest, results in decades of progressive taxes on every worker in the state being clawed back by a few, as inner city land values benefit from higher wages, increased demand and improvements to social infrastructure and transport arterials to do precisely as the Grattan review suggests – and keep us locked and reliant on a small pocket of land for our economic gains.
It brings with it the theory of urban consolation – reduce sprawl and force residents into apartments, however doing so can have the adverse effect of increasing sprawl, as lesser industries ‘hop’ the middle ring, in search of cheaper options and their employees move out further still.
If we were living in ancient Rome where walking was the general mode of transport, you could understand the need to stay centrally located; however we are not. 
We’re in an age of mobility where global research is being poured into innovative modes of transportation such as solar roads and electric cars.
If a buyer is able to travel to the supermarket, park and any other amenity on the priority list within a 30 or 40-minute period, the distance from the CBD is not an imposing factor. The decider is the time it takes to drop the kids off to school in one direction and travel to work in the other. 
Since the 1970s, successive governments have poured millions into incentives to try and decentralise and boost regional localities.  However, all attempts have failed, because the funding mechanism is flawed.
Decentralisation requires affordable land for both business and buyer, which is not unduly inflated due to policies that promote speculation, as well as growth enhancing infrastructure and flexible supply policy that responds in a timely manner to homebuyer (not speculator) demand.
The Henry Tax review was not slow to <a href="https://taxreview.treasury.gov.au/content/finalreport.aspx?doc=html/publications/papers/final_report_part_1/chapter_12.htm">point this out</a>, when it suggested slowly phasing out a vast array of ‘bad taxes’ that impede productivity and reduce mobility (stamp duty, payroll, insurance, vehicle registration, and so forth, as well as phasing out those that ‘reward’ speculation) and instead, collecting more of the economic rent from the unimproved value of land.
Historically, the capture of economic rent (through land tax and to some extent ‘betterment’ taxes) financed some of the most remarkable infrastructure we have. Sydney Harbour Bridge being a case in point.
It was <a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/tony-abbotts-big-plans-at-odds-with-infrastructure-history/5404212">acknowledged</a> at the time, that residents on the north shore would benefit significantly from an increase in their property values as a result of this essential piece of infrastructure.  Therefore, a framework was set in place to capture a proportion of the uplift – approximately one third – to assist with funding.
This was in no way detrimental to the property owners.
The increased advantage of economic activity coupled with the rise in prices resulting from the enterprise, more than compensated. A win-win if you like – and readily accepted by the public as ‘fair’.
A more familiar example can be used for owners of apartments. 
When buyers purchase a unit, they expect to pay a yearly corporation fee for maintenance and improvement of community services. In doing so, it reduces the up front cost consumers are willing to pay as they configure the fee into their budget, yet it is also an investment, as the benefits and any subsequent improvement attracts future purchasers. 
A broad based land value taxation as advocated in the Henry Tax review is essentially no different.
In markets that have similar policies – a change in the tax mix, with higher taxation on land in lieu of those on productivity in order to fund related infrastructure, coupled with good supply policy, enables a process of decentralisation and increased affordability to follow through.  Both reforms work hand in hand.  
The prosperous economy of Texas in the USA is a good example of this.
Since June 2009, about 48% of all jobs created in America have been in the state; it has booming population growth, high levels of disposable income, low house prices and has been termed 'The Texas Miracle'.
This is because with no income tax employees get to keep more of their earnings while higher property taxes used to fund community infrastructure stem speculative inflation, which along with good supply policy has created a truly decentralised city, with only <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQtDHY_tkns" target="_blank">7% of jobs located ‘downtown’</a>.
We do not have to mirror another country’s policies, but it does prove the ability to create a system that provides a fairer regime for the funding of infrastructure and stops runaway house price gains.
However, in an economy that is dominated by the financial sector, and reports such as the latest Grattan review celebrating Australia’s city-centric culture, efforts to decentralise and produce a fairer system for all Australian’s is, once again, likely to fail.
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We need to change our city-centric economic views

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Five years on since the US recession ‘officially’ ended in June 2009, urban land prices are rising, the pattern of history is repeating, and this time the players on the chessboard have changed.
But our governments are turning a blind eye. 
They have yet to acknowledge why the crisis happened, or put policies in place to prevent it happening again.
Expensive welfare systems, elaborate tax and transfer policies, and the financial ‘cures’ following the previous land induced crash in the early 1990s did nothing to prevent the swiftest and sharpest synchronised global downturn in human history.
Taxpayers were punished, bankers got a “get out of jail free” card, and the largest real estate investment trusts spent $50 billion purchasing 386,000 foreclosed homes, to rent out to previous owners who believed and acted on the lie “there is no bubble”.
The IMF and policy makers are now twisting themselves in economic knots trying to pin down a ‘cure’ for the dangers of excessive house price inflation they readily admit lead to most banking crises, with Australia featuring in the top five of each of their highlighted risk assessments;
“Our research indicates that boom-bust patterns in house prices preceded more than two-thirds of the recent 50 systemic banking crises,” an <a href="https://blog-imfdirect.imf.org/2014/06/11/era-of-benign-neglect-of-house-price-booms-is-over/" target="_blank">IMF blog post warned</a> last month.
The IMF claims the ‘neglect of house price booms is over’ but as the OECD ‘Post Mortem’ of the 2008 crises reveals, these economists can’t see. 
They ignore the role that rent (unearned income), debt and the financial sector play in shaping the economy. 
They have a colourful history of recurrent boom bust land cycles, all replete with rampant speculation and easy credit, spanning in excess of 300 years from which to study … and yet:
 “The macroeconomic models available at the time of the crisis typically ignored the banking system…”  (OECD Forecasts During And After The Financial Crisis: A Post Mortem – February 2014).
In other words, based on the aesthetic qualities of their equations, the 2006/7 bubble couldn’t exist. A story we hear repeated every year as prices continue to defy gravity and economist try and explain it away with ‘sound fundamentals’.
Neo-liberal policy made matters worst. 
Less government interference, protecting labour, redistributing wealth through taxing the rich, deregulation of capital markets, lowering trade barriers, and reducing state influence though privatization and fiscal austerity were termed by American scholar Robert Waterman McChesney as “capitalism with the gloves off”.
It promised to lead to efficient markets and lower unemployment.
But at the onset of the GFC, unemployment in developed nations rose above any previous recession of the past three decades, whilst wages, as a share of GDP plummeted to their lowest point since the Second World War.
<img src="/images/2014/07/14/cashmore%20july%2014%20one.png" alt="">
“This should be a wake-up call,”concluded the UN in their annual <a href="https://unctad.org/en/PublicationChapters/tdr2012ch6_en.pdf" target="_blank">Trade and Development report that revealed the findings</a>:
 “There must be something fundamentally wrong with an economic theory, that justifies the rise of inequality mainly in terms of the need to tackle persistent unemployment.”
In the UK, Bank of England has imposed a 4.5 times loan to income cap on 85% of mortgages, along with various ‘stress tests’ to please the regulators.
But the Council of Mortgage lenders show only 19% of recent London mortgages are at or above this ratio, whilst the national figure is a mere 9%.
By volume, London accounts for around a quarter of loans nationally, (Q1) so the 85% cap will do little to nothing, except perhaps eliminate home ownership for low-income groups.
But stemming inflation or deterring speculative activity is not, and never will be, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jun/26/bank-of-england-limit-large-loans-housebuyers-mortgage-lenders" target="_blank">Central Bank policy</a>:
"These actions should not restrain current market housing activity … these actions will have minimal impact in the future if the housing market evolves in line with the Bank's central view."
In the U.S.A just five megabanks and their holding companies control a derivatives market worth hundreds of trillions of dollars, in Australia the ‘Big Four’ command 80% of the market and 88% of residential mortgages.
“These are the men who have the most economic power in the world’’ wrote British philosopher, mathematician and historian, Bertrand Russell, one of the 20th century’s leading logicians; “and they derive it from land, minerals, and credit, in combination.”
Russell understood only too well, that all productive gains, every improvement in society and the economy, would be capitalised into rising land values, enriching those who owned the assets but more so, those who created the credit and traded on the debt. 
Milton Friedman meanwhile tutored that societies are structured on greed. 
But greed means taking something from another, grasping for a larger slice of the pie (see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency" target="_blank">pareto efficiency</a>).
Greed is not a natural feature of a well-functioning community; rather it’s a feature of a dysfunctional economy that allows a country’s wealth to gravitate into an elite nucleus of financially strong hands.
It remains that the economy is fuelled by what is termed the ‘FIRE’ sector – finance, insurance, and real estate.
The FIRE Economy is dependent on rising asset prices – on you and me buying houses - so it can extract economic rent.
The three sectors work together – they’re intrinsically linked.  
The banking sector pumps a colossal amount of credit into the system by way of a home loan. Real estate businesses sell the products – some trading as REITs - insurance companies underwrite the owners debt, property, and income, and as the interest payments compound – doubling and doubling again – the debt is recycled into more lending, more borrowing, higher house prices - making those who trade on the debt in an obscure concentrated market of derivatives, increasingly wealthy.
<img src="/images/2014/07/14/cashmore%20july%2014%20two.png" alt="">
Source: <a href="https://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/books" target="_blank">Bubble Economics</a>: Australian Land Speculation 1830 – 2013, by Paul D. Egan and Philip Soos
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The government, many members of which come directly from the industry itself, receive substantial payments from the FIRE sector.
For example, between 1998 and 2008 the banking industry spent <a href="https://newint.org/features/2011/01/01/10-worst-corporate-lobbyists/#sthash.nyyaPmr4.dpuf" target="_blank">$3.4 billion</a> lobbying the US government.
In Australia, the ICAC investigations into Illegal donations from developers and <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/comment/even-i-am-shocked-by-icac-revelations-20140516-zreh2" target="_blank">“wealthy property tycoons”</a> reveal tens of thousands of dollars have been used to influence decisions by local, state and federal governments.
It should therefore be of no surprise that ‘affordable housing policy’ always seems to work in reverse. 
Generous subsidies are handed over to investors – all of which are capitalised into land prices.
Restraints on supply are imposed, ‘rich neighbourhoods’ are protected from over development, land on the fringes is no longer dirt cheap, acreages are banked, <a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/2014/06/18/no-land-for-you-melbourne/" target="_blank">exempt from State Land Tax</a> until subdivision at the owner’s pleasure.
To survive, the FIRE sector must effectively sell the illusion that the economy can grow on rooftops, that we can all take part in an orgy of economic rent.
“Only the little people pay taxes” (i.e. work for a living) - we can all become wealthy through property investment, dining out and trading on leveraged gains, perhaps donating a little to charity, or taking part in some publicity-generating event to raise funds for homelessness along the way – as our politicians are fond of doing.
Of course, first home buyers suffering alarm at rapidly escalating costs are necessary oxygen for the system.
So their judgement is manipulated as housing affordability is now reclassified as mortgage serviceability – how far the pay cheque can stretch each month rather than highlighting the upfront cost, while young buyers are encouraged to enter the market as speculators, living off their parents, until they gain a ‘foothold’ from leveraging the equity.
Banks assist with an array of financial products – offset accounts, honeymoon rates, shared equity schemes – mortgages treated like credit card payments, where all that’s required is the interest and should the market collapse with money still outstanding, they’ll collect the house too.
The result is land is now used for greed rather than need, pushing city boundaries outwards, requiring an excessive use of durable capital, which eventually leads to a shortage of loanable funds. 
You will never be told the system can fail.
Instead you will hear that house prices can maintain a ‘high plateau’ – stagnate for a while until we all ‘catch up.’
However, the increase in the annual rate of growth is now part of the income that buyers pay for and lenders rely upon.
This is how real estate is sold – investors gravitate to areas that advertise ‘good capital gains’, calculating the land’s value based on both the rent a tenant will pay plus the projected annual increase (land rent).
Buyers live in fear of land values collapsing, yet, while prices trend higher, expectations over shoot the mark by no small degree.  Landowners treat their unearned increment as income, raising consumption, lowering saving, putting to upward pressure on inflation, which eventually results in interest rates rising.
Never, throughout the course of history, has such a process been economically sustainable.
At some point the productive capacity of the economy can no longer support the boom – and as Australia’s history of land induced financial crises reveal, the end is not always as kind as experienced in 2008. <a href="https://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/books"> </a>
“House prices don’t always go up” warned the Governor of the RBA, Glenn Stevens at a recent speech in Hobart, just as he did in <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2014/s3958842.htm" target="_blank">March</a>, - a message he has <a href="https://www.mywealth.commbank.com.au/property/house-prices-rises-cyclical--rba-s-stevens-news20131029" target="_blank">repeatedly</a> <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/glenn-stevens-says-aussie-dollar-needs-to-fall-further-20131213-2zapf" target="_blank">reiterated</a> since appearing on Seven Network’s <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s2858942.htm" target="_blank">Sunrise</a> in 2010.
But Australian investors aren’t listening to Glenn – they’re reading the media headlines, covering the latest findings in the BRW Rich 200, which shows property to be the ‘single biggest source of wealth’, and entrepreneurs “piling into property faster than ever”.
Banks remain disturbingly under-capitalised. 
“I’ve had land that has doubled in value in the past 12 months,” <a href="https://www.brw.com.au/p/investing/brw_rich_fatter_profits_for_property_tBzXYYtLFJ8zKUsFclS3eJ" target="_blank">said Harry Triguboff</a>.
But while Triguboff paid a lot for his land, but he did not make his cheque payable to the local school, park, rail network, or the array of public and community services that yield his land a healthy source of locational revenue that grants such windfall gains.
His payment went direct to the previous owner of the land, who pocketed the profit, while the funding needed for maintaining the facilities and attracting workers to the city, come from an elaborate network of taxes, which fall primarily on income and productivity – ‘the little people’.
<img src="/images/2014/07/14/cashmore-july-14-three.gif" alt="">
Source: <a href="https://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/books" target="_blank">Bubble Economics</a>: Australian Land Speculation 1830 – 2013, by Paul D. Egan and Philip Soos.
This is the kind of rent seeking most of us have some experience of, a process that effectively punishes and disheartens the priced out sectors of the community, whilst encouraging the hoarding of land as the road that leads to riches – thereby ignoring the social and ethical problems that result from the process. 
The effect is to turn us into a nation of speculators where moral judgement is subverted by the unearned yields one can receive.
Investigate most societal problems, wages, housing, health, poverty, the loss of jobs to off shore markets, and this will be found at the root.
No one is born into poverty or inequality – these things are not by-products of nature – in a modern society the extremes we experience that lead to protests and riots over cuts in expenditure to welfare (a requirement exacerbated by the process outlined above) are due to policy and political ignorance.
When the Henry tax review in 2008 concluded: “Economic growth would be higher if governments raised more revenue from land and less revenue from other tax bases.”
It was onto something important.
Lifting taxes off labour and restructuring our tax and supply policies is a good start, but alone it won’t do.  Removing the power embedded in the banking industry to create credit based on their own vested interests is equally important, it would free up the creative capacity of the community and move instead toward a society and culture that is able to provide for all.
However it remains, that every effort in history to effect the changes suggested above have been fought by the establishment.  In this respect, change can never come from the top down. It requires a system that can return democracy to the people through a slow process of re-education, and it’s a system we need to advocate if social and economic justice is the goal.
But until such a time, it’s business as usual – and in this respect, the date for the next financial crisis has been set. 
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With rising land prices history is repeating and the date for the next financial crisis is set

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I was contacted twice last week to comment on news stories that featured young Australians building their way to retirement, through debt, leverage and speculation, on the back of rising property prices.
Described as ‘an entrepreneur,’ another a ‘wonder kid,’ both stories told a similar tale.
A gift from mum and dad had helped with the deposit - living in the family home had enabled investment into areas that may not have suited their 'home' buying requirements.
Rising property prices had enabled equity to leverage into the second acquisition – it was not reinventing the wheel, rather a repeat of an all too familiar theme. One had managed to reach his sixth investment by the age of 26 (having started at only 19) - both were on their way to becoming property investment advisors – wanting to help others achieve real estate riches too.
“Young buyers are entering the property market as investors” prompted one reporter – which is no more obvious than saying “circles are round”.
Everyone who enters the property market is an investor, I responded. 
There would be few in the industry working on the buying side of the equation who had not been involved in what I often term ‘the capital gain game’ – where every option suggested is followed by the question “but which will get the best growth?”
Australia has a lopsided neoliberal economy founded on the back of a 5.1 trillion dollar housing market, over 4.1 trillion dollars of which is irreplaceable land.
We’re slaves to a system where the retirement wealth egg is the family home – our personal economic leverage for all lifestyle and business needs - something that is only achievable if policies are manufactured to ensure values remain high (and climbing), whilst debt levels remain ever affordable.
Click to open in new window:
<a href="/images/2014/06/23/cashmore-june-23-one.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/images/2014/06/23/cashmore-june-23-one.jpg" alt=""></a>
Source: <a href="https://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/books" target="_blank">Bubble Economics</a> by Paul D. Egan and Philip Soos
It used to be called ‘Monopoly’. Today its termed: ‘getting onto the property ladder’.
Retire as a renter or find a way to ‘work the system,’ playing a dangerous game of debt and leverage, and hoping when the wind finally blows, you’re not left holding the house of cards.
For those unable to afford current high prices, they will see no tax benefit - unless their income is low enough to require welfare assistance. 
Rather they will be at the mercy of rising rents with an uncanny tendency to outpace inflation, tight vacancy rates and few low budget options.
If, as above, they are the ‘lucky’ beneficiaries of family assistance to enable their step onto the first rung of the ladder, they’ll enter a tax system skewed toward ownership, the benefits of which are capitalised into the price, pushing values higher.
<img src="/images/2014/06/23/cashmore%20june%2023%20two.png" alt="">
Source: <a href="https://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/books" target="_blank">Bubble Economics</a> by Paul D. Egan and Philip Soos
Under such a system, the final consequences are set in stone.
On a global scale, the land bubble induced financial crisis of 2008 left millions suffering fatal burns.
Tough austerity measures that followed destroyed the hopes and dreams of thousands of Europe’s youth.
For those just entering retirement, savings were wiped away, along with any chance of employment in later years.
Australia escaped relatively unscathed, but this isn’t because we’ve solved the boom/bust cycle.
Our policies differ little from the affected countries that promote ownership with similar inflationary measures.
First time buyers have no memory of a recession and understandably want their share of the pie.
However our history is littered with recurrent patterns of <a href="https://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/books" target="_blank">boom-bust credit and asset bubbles</a>, commonly triggered by high land prices. 
They all heralded financial instability and dreadful social consequences - a study of which should perhaps feature higher on the school curriculum.
We’ve just entered into another cycle and already prices have exceeded previous peaks. 
Housing cycles are long-term affairs, however unless we begin to studiously take measures to change our tax and supply policies, when the clock ticks round again – as it inevitably will – our house of cards will blow over like the rest.
Many applauded Malcolm Turnbull as he made the most of his share of publicity during the CEO sleep out last week, to raise money for the homeless. 
However, Turnbull is part and parcel of a budget and government that exacerbates housing affordability, and by consequence, the very problems he endured a cold night to help ‘solve’.
This is because the government has structured the tax burden to fall predominantly on wages and productivity – which advantages those at the top, who see their landholdings increase way in excess of any taxation or earned income through no individual effort of their own, rather the collective efforts of community investment (<a href="https://catherinecashmore.com.au/" target="_parent">items of which I’ve detailed previously</a>) – whilst the productive earners at the bottom of the pile, struggle to make ends meet.   
In other words, by hoarding housing, the rich pay less - the poor pay more.
Unless we restructure our tax and supply policies to address this and reduce land prices, encouraging instead individual investment into productivity rather than rising land values. Welfare measures to help the homeless are merely a Band-Aid to capture the increasing number falling foul of the system and never a cure.
Which brings me back to the one question both reporters failed to asked,
“Who are rising property prices good for?”
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Housing hoarders: Where the rich pay less and the poor pay more

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Protests that continue to erupt across the country against the federal budget consist of two sectors:
Those who are disadvantaged through cuts to government expenditure - young people, job seekers, groups on low-incomes, the homeless - against political parties who want to exploit the situation to swing the popular vote in their favour.
It comes at a time when many young Australian’s are growing increasingly disillusioned with what politics in a neo-liberal capitalist culture is able to achieve.
The various groups opposing the current budget may not be aware of the full backdrop that sits behind the issues they dispute.
Separating the politics of envy from the basic principles of equity is not an easy task, not only in the items we consider ‘wealth,’ but also in judging whether income is a true representation of skill and effort, or granted disproportionately at the expense of others.
Most however recognise a process that favours the rich - one where politicians subject themselves to the interests of lobbyists and promise what they need to gain a seat in power.
We’ve seen this most recently with the ICAC investigations.  Tens of thousands of dollars pouring into the major party coffers from property developers all claiming to be ‘legitimate’ – yet, as we know, you don’t hand over cash without expecting special favours in return.
It would be nice to think that democracy alone could remedy this, but democracy unless underpinned by good policy, has a fatal flaw - that of short-termism.
While voters will champion the environmental crisis of climate change and affordable accommodation, they will recoil at the thought of living near a wind-farm or high-rise block.
Public housing and commission homes are fine in theory, but not in the local neighbourhood, or indeed, anywhere in view.
We’ll welcome the stranger and rally in defence of the asylum seeker, but only on the condition they don’t take away our jobs or price the locals out of housing. In other words, you can come in, but just don’t join in.
No one cheers at the thought of saddling our younger population with student debt – however, when it comes to the cost of shelter, a different attitude arises. ‘Generation Whine’ are instead told to shut up and save up. 
While we desire a country built on the pillars of community, equity, and economic justice, it’s simply not possible in country that is pinned to the foundation of rising land values, as a necessity to fund retirement and most other lifestyle and business needs. 
The social consequence that arises from this costs us millions in welfare payments throughout the year.  Yet it is still advertised and promoted as the road to riches, creating a “FIRE” economy (finance, insurance and real estate) - disproportionally inflating land costs without due acknowledgement of the consequence.   
Unfortunately, the web of confusion that surrounds the subject has put capitalist democracy, which has managed to free so many from the dominance of politically oppressive and controlling regimes, under attack. 
Yet, capitalism, which in its truest form is simply a free market system of competing goods and services, is not what we have presently.
Today, faulty economic thinking has allowed items that are not made, or earned and by nature cannot compete; to be traded and profited from as if they were created capital. This has corrupted what should be a very good and fair system.
It’s important therefore to understand what wealth and capital is exactly.
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Wealth is not the paper and numbers in our bank account. Money is simply a measurement of the resources we need, to produce the goods and services we consume (capital) for both business and pleasure.
In simplest terms - a person’s wealth is made through his/her own enterprise; whilst a country’s wealth consists of its land and natural resources.
When we earn money in exchange for our skills and labour it can’t be considered unjust or unfair. 
However, when it comes through a government legislated process, of allowing some to profit at the expense of others, by trading items that are not capital or derived from any physical effort, this yields a special kind of unearned income, which in classical economics is termed “rent.”
Rent seeking can take on many forms – such as patents and government licences for example, which cripple competition from smaller industries and produce an unfair advantage. 
The <a href="https://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-06-10/uber-protests-spread-across-europe-as-taxi-app-backlash-grows#p2" target="_blank">Uber and Lyft revolution</a> is one such example. 
It threatens to undermine the cartel of the Taxi industry’s licencing monopoly, which gleans an economic rent from purposely-limiting the number granted.
Uber and Lyft offer a cheap and reportedly safe match-making alternative for consumers; however their progress has been repeatedly stifled by government intervention, determined to protect a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/no-tears-shed-for-backward-taxi-industry-20140424-37696" target="_blank">monopoly and a culture of regulation</a> evidently fearing a cut to revenue.
The most damaging of rent seeking behaviour however, and the one that yields the most gains, is trading the economic rent of land. 
An increase in the market price of land is an expected result when economies are improving along with capital investment in infrastructure. Therefore, of all rent seeking behaviour, owning a plot of land in path of this progress yields not only the greatest windfall of passive gains, but is also used as a significant source of territorial and political power. 
This is not surprising when you consider all the goods we consume come from it.  Our oil, natural gas, timber, coal, and water reserves are the product of it. 
We travel on it, work on it, party on it, sleep on it, and bury our dead in it.
Wi-fi, airplanes, all forms of technology need it. We evolved from it and progress on it.
Try and think of an activity, or item, that does not include land, and you will come up short. 
However, the flow of income that comes from owning land over and above the value of building on it, when capitalised into the price, leads to a monopolist culture that feeds speculation, attracting a cabal of banking and finance interests and concentrating the vast proportion of a country’s wealth in the hands of a few, above the very real needs of many.
Rupert Murdoch ironically coined it best when, in his 1994 John Bonython lecture <a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/https://www.cis.org.au/events/event/53/RUPERT-MURDOCH---The-Century-of-Networking-/0" target="_blank">“The Century of Networking</a>” he said: 
"Because capitalists are always trying to stab each other in the back, free markets do not lead to monopolies.  Monopolies can only exist when governments protect them."
This is in essence what the Arab Spring was all about. 
Many mistook it as a grasp for democracy – however it wasn’t. It was a grasp for true capitalism – the freedom to prosper unimpeded by onerous regulation or rent seeking behaviour. At its essence was a desire for economic justice, equal access to opportunity – matters we look to government to provide.
Since politician and the driving force behind the early settlement of South Australia, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gibbon_Wakefield" target="_blank" style="line-height: 1.3em;">Edward Gibbon Wakefield</a> (1796-1862), devised his grand plan of “systematic colonisation” – making land just so 'sufficiently' unaffordable as to create a willing workforce of labourers. Economists and politicians have done everything possible to distract public attention from what is nothing more than a modern day game of feudalism. 
They do this by allowing people to play a dangerous game of leverage, gambling on land price inflation by borrowing as much debt as possible to maximise their ‘capital gains,’ without acknowledging what is given with one hand, is taken with the other – or more accurately, from another.
This is clearly highlighted in the response to the budget.
Whilst rich land-‘lords’ and mining magnets grow wealthy, collecting their unearned windfall in economic rent – they ironically tell the young tenant saddled with student debt “so you think the world owes you a living?” while government stretches out its hand to the low waged worker commanding they “pull their weight.”
<img src="/images/2014/06/16/cashmore-june-16-one.jpg" alt="">
Source: <a href="https://taxreview.treasury.gov.au/content/downloads/final_report_part_1/00_AFTS_final_report_consolidated.pdf" target="_blank">Ken Henry tax review</a>: “The current charging arrangements distort investment and production decisions….. they fail to collect a sufficient return for the community because they are unresponsive to changes in profits.”
It is no coincidence that whilst far from a perfect system of equitable land reform, the greatest equaliser in Australia and the one that had the most profound social and economic effect on reducing inequality, was the Mabo Judgement over land rights for the Aboriginal people.
The monopolists in the mining industry stringently and shamefully lobbied against it, as they did most recently with at mention of a resource tax, turning it into a national crisis.
This is essentially why Clive Palmer entered politics. 
Each year <a href="https://www.minesandmoney.com/london/report-ernst-young-business-risks-facing-mining-and-metals-2013-2014/">Ernst &amp; Young</a> produce a business report for the mining and metals industry, highlighting the top ten risks that can affect fat cat profits, along with tips on how to avoid them. 
<img src="/images/2014/06/16/cashmore-june-16-two.jpg" alt="">
SWource: Ernst &amp; Young
Featured prominently is “Resource nationalism” (sharing the gains) with the comment;
“Miners have had to become more politically savvy... the most successful are building strong relationships with government” to...”educate on tax reform”.
It is against this backdrop, that he loveable founder of PUP, which claims to “Unite All Australian’s” has bought himself a seat in power by promising peace, prosperity and goodwill to all men, alongside a raft of economic goodies.
When Clive comes to town, Christmas does too, ower income tax, free education, higher pensions, you name it, Clive will promise it.
His <a href="https://palmerunited.com/national-policy/" target="_blank">policies</a> are overwhelming wishy-washy with no detailed assessment as to how they’ll be funded – but that doesn’t matter. Economic analysis is not the PUP agenda.
Instead, it will act in the best interests of its leader ensuring the abolishment of any mining and carbon tax, whilst driving the cost of land higher with incentives for home buyers.
However, the corruption of politics to favour the vested interests of leaders is nothing new.
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It is no coincidence that just about every housing policy designed to increase affordability results in quite the reverse.
This can be witnessed in any country that allows the economic rent of land to capitalise into the price, thereby becoming a tradable asset to gamble on.
All tax incentives such as negative gearing for example, simply inflate costs rather than reduce them.
Zoning policies create false scarcity by protecting affluent neighbourhoods from over development, restricting the use of fringe land with urban boundaries and onerous regulation, and advantaging existing owners by pushing up the price of marginal land – which buttresses the price of all land.
<a href="https://www.neweconomics.org/blog/entry/working-paper-is-inequality-exacerbating-our-housing-crisis" target="_blank">The evidence shows</a>, the richer vendors become, the more energetic they are to restrict development near their own land holdings – unless it acts to inflate values.
Many Melbournian’s will be familiar with the historical figure of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bent" target="_blank">Thomas Bent</a> for example, who became the 22nd premier of Victoria. 
His corrupt dealings are well documented, not least, using his political clout to extend the railway line from Caulfield to Cheltenham, thus enormously increasing the value of his own property developments, which just so happened to fall alongside the proposed route.
A more recent example is being alleged in New Zealand.
The country is undergoing a crisis of housing affordability and has been termed the world’s most over priced.
Policy makers are tying themselves in economic knots to uncover solutions, with the central bank employing strict lending regulations to prevent exuberant speculation, while 'up-zoning' to increase supply is underway.
However, these ‘up zonings’ <a href="https://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2013/05/len-browns-zoning-hypocrisy-outed/" target="_blank">miss</a> Auckland mayor Len Brown’s spacious lifestyle block, which conveniently falls outside the Metropolitan Urban Limit (MUL). 
Mayor Brown, who has recently purchased an American V8 whilst sporting the public face of being very ‘pro public transport’, has uncharacteristically <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&amp;objectid=10788288" target="_blank">infuriated</a> his council’s transport leader, by rallying in defence of significant road projects which are reputed to have a beneficial and value enhancing effect on his own <a href="https://www.nbr.co.nz/article/len-browns-lifestyle-block-%E2%80%98outrageous-hypocrisy-nk-p-139628" target="_blank">estate</a>.
There are numerous academic studies world wide, which outline housing affordability problems, yet fail to identify the root cause and therefore effective solutions. 
Economist <a href="https://www.wealthandwant.com/docs/Hudson_Lies" target="_blank">Michael Hudson</a> points out in USA studies, how the magnitude of land-price gains are brushed under the carpet to hide the massive unearned profits reaped by those who hoard it.
The same phenomenon is happening in Australia, not only with the ‘<a href="https://avo.govspace.gov.au/" target="_blank">soft closure’</a> of the Australian Valuation Office and ‘rubbing out’ of first home buyer statistics from the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/first-home-buyer-statistics-not-adding-up-20140609-39sam">RBA chart pack</a>, but through budgetary cuts to <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mediareleasesbyCatalogue/745695D9AEBEFE64CA257CEE0004715C">ABS funding</a>, which threaten to end the official “House Price Index” (considered the most reliable market indicator) in favour of private <a href="https://www.rpdata.com/" target="_blank">unaudited data</a> providers, whose transparency and reliability are consistently questioned. 
When you appreciate how lucrative rent-seeking is to those in power, it is very easy to see how democracy fails us – working tirelessly to silence voices by politically reinforcing faulty economic theories, while strenuously working against efforts to liberalise them.
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Catherine Cashmore

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