Will The US and Japan reach a deal on agriculture and automobiles, and offer virtually nothing to everyone else

Posted on November 9, 2014 by Deirdre

Last Saturday was a very successful International Day of Action against the TPPA! Here is something Jane Kelsey wrote about the various scenarios. Here is hoping we don’t get option 3. And watch the timing, as it could all happen when we are busy with Christmas…And here is Jane writing now:

“It is a hell of a lot easier to stop the TPPA being concluded than trying to prevent it coming into force after the deal has been signed. This is the time to ram that message home, not just to the government, but to the opposition parties as well – including the prospective Labour leaders whom I have yet to see stake a position on the TPPA.”

There is a mythology that the TPPA will never happen. That is a reckless assumption. It encourages complacency and inaction. And it is seriously wrong.

The political leaders of the twelve countries know they have to do the deal soon or it will become paralysed.

That won’t happen when the trade ministers meet on 8th November in Beijing on the margins of APEC. But it could happen within a couple of months. No one should doubt how serious they are.

That was obvious at the ministerial meeting ten days ago in Sydney.

The pressure on the negotiators in the handful of remaining sensitive chapters is intense, as if they have instructions to finish their technical work so the ministers can finalise the deal.

What has been saving us all is the continued standoff between the US and Japan over agriculture and automobiles.

That could continue to save us. But don’t bet on it.

There are mixed views about what the Republican victory in Tuesday’s mid-term Congressional elections in the US will mean. It is already being spun to say that Republicans are pro-free trade and will be better for the TPPA, so they may give Obama fast track authority to ease the TPPA through Congress. That would reassure the other governments at the table and encourage them to finalise the deal.

Those who are tracking developments in Congress, such as Lori Wallach from Public Citizen, disagree. There is a real hatred of Obama in some Republican circles, and the price for fast track would be hugely controversial, such as rules on so-called currency manipulation, which some countries couldn’t agree to.

On the Japan side, it is unclear how the political scandals in the Abe government might affect the shape of a final deal with the US on agriculture and automobiles. Abe also has a controversial tax change to steer through the Diet in the next few months that will use up a lot of his scarce political capital.

Despite these factors, both the US and Japan need an outcome. Soon. They could well do a pragmatic deal that works for them, and let the dominos fall.

I can see four scenarios.

Scenario one: The US and Japan decide to play by the supposed rules of November 2011 and liberalise everything for everyone. And flocks of flying pigs will fill the skies over the twelve countries.

Scenario two: The US and Japan cannot reach agreement on agriculture. Everything remains stalled. After some time – who knows how long – they stop pretending and suspend negotiations.

They know that once they do that, the momentum is almost impossible to regain. The Doha round at the World Trade Organization started in 2001, was suspended in 2007, then restarted but no-one would know! In this scenario, expect the TPPA to drag on with no one willing to pull the plug.

Scenario three: The US and Japan reach a deal on agriculture and automobiles, and offer virtually nothing to everyone else. That is consistent with what Japan reportedly offered to New Zealand on dairy in Sydney. Canada will happily follow suit, hiding behind the US and Japan. Faced with this, Groser can’t bring himself to walk away, swallows the rat, accepts what’s on offer and agrees to trade-off our medicines, internet, investment, SOEs, etc.

Scenario four: Groser does what he has threatened to do, and walks away because there is no meaningful liberalisation on agriculture. More flocks of pigs join their whanau in scenario 1.

The agriculture lobby is terrified because they know the third option is the most likely. That saw them at panic stations last week with a series of statements from Federated Farmers, the dairy lobby, Groser and sympathetic journalists insisting that New Zealand must be prepared to walk away from a lousy deal.

Groser will never walk away. He views the TPPA deal as his brainchild. He will spin whatever is in the final deal as the first step to something that will bring huge long-term benefits to New Zealand. ‘We can’t afford not to be part of the biggest deal between the world’s biggest trading powers … ‘

If he is clever – and he is – Groser could seek to defer implementation of the worst parts of the TPPA so the impacts are delayed. Better still, if Parliament didn’t have to change the law immediately, the US would be unable to hold New Zealand to ransom over compliance (the blackmail process known as ‘certification’).

Then Groser can say, ‘see, the scaremongering about the TPPA was a big beat up.’ By the time the impacts are felt, his role as the minister who negotiated the TPPA (and hopefully the National government) will be history.

This could well happen unless we turn up the heat, on and after Saturday.

Defeatists will say that taking to the streets won’t make any difference. But activists in Australia, Japan, Malaysia and the US will be doing the same. The collective pressure does matter. The other governments are nervous about who can deliver on what they are promising, especially when it is unpopular at home.

It is a hell of a lot easier to stop the TPPA being concluded than trying to prevent it coming into force after the deal has been signed. This is the time to ram that message home, not just to the government, but to the opposition parties as well – including the prospective Labour leaders whom I have yet to see stake a position on the TPPA.

Gatherings on Saturday were in Auckland, Hamilton, Raglan, Tauranga, Rotorua, New Plymouth, Napier, Palmerston North, Levin, Wellington,Nelson, Christchurch, Timaru, Dunedin, Invercargill. Details on itsourfuture.org.nz.”

Land enclosures in England took centuries

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Deirdre

Andro Linklater’s book Owning the Earth – the Transforming History of Land Ownership is a fascinating chronicle in the history of civilisation.

If you think that land speculation is something modern contemplate this: Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s lord chancellor was big speculator. Here is Andro Linklater on the topic:
“In three frenzied years, from 1537 to 1539, he bought almost twenty properties in the southeast of England at a cost of £38,000, then sold most of them again for a total profit of more than £4000…..

But the profit to be made from the rising price of land was irresistible. When the mighty abbey of Tewksbury lost its lands near the south coast, a wealthy London cloth merchant, Sir Robert Palmer, bought three of its manors in 1540 for £1255, and immediately cleared off the villeins and cottagers. Then he turned on the tenants, harassing them and even breaking into their homes.”

Jump two centuries forward and the enclosures are well advanced. He writes “The rising price of land triggered a new surge in enclosure. Much of England’s farmland had continued to be cultivated as ‘open fields’ with some common rights of pasturing livestock, and almost a quarter remained communally owned and used. It was a measure of the landowners’ influence in Parliament that more than four thousand ‘Inclosure acts’ were passed between 1700 and 1830, allowing their promoters to hedge and fence in most of this land as private, exclusive property….. Altogether some seven million acres were transferred into private ownership through the enclosure orders, brutal testimony to the political power now wielded by landowners. In many cases compensation was paid, but the total value of enclosed land represented the transfer of about £175million of assets from communal possession to the lawyers, merchants and wealthy landowners who controlled Parliament.”

Why did landowners want to enclose their property? Because they ran sheep and when the sheep were confined to one area bounded by hedges or ditches or stone walls, they manured the soil. The word ‘manure’ also meant ‘improve’. Their land was then more productive.

So let’s go back to 1485 and follow it through.

1485 Henry V11 first year on the throne
1489 The land revolution was well underway. Henry legislated to stop engrossment
1536 Pilgrimage of Grace opposes enclosures
1549 Robert Kett’s rebellion against enclosures. None statutes and 3 government commissions designed to prevent ploughland being turned into pasture and highways being thronged with homeless who were dispossessed of their land.

1517-1537 fines or imprisonment for those who enclosed land including 264 peers, bishops and knights.
1533 Inheritance issue. Struggle was won by the landowners and Henry V111 found that he was short of taxes.

Review of Naomi Klein’s book This Changes Everything, Capitalism vs Climate

Posted on November 3, 2014 by Deirdre

Book Review by Peter Healy, Marist Priest of Otaki

This Changes Everything, Capitalism vs the Climate by Naomi Klein, 2014, $37

This is a comprehensive and timely book. Klein says in part one, “If there has ever been a moment to advance a plan to heal the planet that also heals our broken economies and our shattered communities, this is it.” In the introduction she says “this is the hardest book I have ever written because climate change puts us on such a tight and unforgiving deadline.”

This book is about our “climate moment” with all its challenges and opportunities. First, Klein says we have to stop looking away. We deny because we fear letting in the full reality of a crisis that changes everything. The need to change everything is not something we readily accept. If we are to curb emissions in the next decade we need a massive mobilisation larger than any in history. She quotes the Bolivian Navarro Llamos who suggests it is time for a “Marshall Plan for Earth”.

The question is posed: What is wrong with us? What is really preventing us from putting out the fire that’s threatening to burn down our collective house? The global economy always takes centre stage. Market fundamentalism has systematically sabotaged our collective responses. Our economic system and our planetary systems are at war. We are faced with a stark choice: “either we allow climate change to disrupt everything about our world or we change pretty much everything about our world to avoid that fate”. We need a radical rethink for these changes to be remotely possible.

Our “climate moment” is accompanied by what she calls a “fossil fuel frenzy”. A wild dig is going on in most nations on the planet. Aotearoa/NZ being no exception. With the “fossil fuel frenzy” Klein says, “We have become a society of grave robbers, we need to become a society of life amplifiers, deriving our energy directly from elements that sustain life. It’s time to let the dead rest.” Our most important task now is to keep carbon in the ground.

To do all this we need to be thinking differently. A new worldview is required, “a project of mutual reinvention” has to be entered into. The door to 2 degrees of warming will close in 2017. We are in the midst of a civilisational wake-up call. This call is coming to us in the language of fires, floods, droughts and extinctions. We are being called to evolve, and the thing about a crisis this big is that it changes everything.

Wealthy nations need to start cutting emissions by 8-10 percent per year. They have to begin this now. We need to consume less and get back to 1970’s levels. Low consumptions activities like gardening and home cooking are good. Changing everything means changing how we think about our economy. Large corporations dodge regulations, and they refuse to change behaviours. No company in the world wants to put itself out of business, their goal is to always expand their market share. Klein talks about addiction rather than innovation when it comes to new methods of extraction. We need to keep all the fossil fuel we can in the ground, at the same time more extreme and innovative methods are being invented to get at whats left. The madness of “extractivism” is a relationship of taking with little care being given to regeneration and the future of life. As Klein says the market economy and the fossil fuel economy emerged at about the same time. “Coal is the blank ink in which the story of modern capitalism is written.”

There are no messiahs. The green billionaires will not save us, we have to change our lifestyles. Our most intoxicating narrative is that technology will save us, and this is one of our forms of magical thinking. There are some fascinating passages about Klein going to a geo-engineering conference in the UK. She describes the attendees as, “a remarkably small and incestuous world of inventors and scientists and funders.” It is all very risky, untested and dangerous stuff that they are proposing. The solution to global warming is not to fix the world, rather we need to fix ourselves.

The book has inspiring things to say about “Blockadia”. This is a broadbased grassroots resistance movement intent on shaking the fossil fuel industry to the core. Indigenous peoples are key in the Blockadia movement, their rights can be a great gift for the revival and reinvention of the commons we all love. Bolivia and Ecuador have already put “the Rights of Mother Earth” into their national statutes. Blockadia asks the question, “How come that a big distant company can come to my land and put me and my kids at risk and never ask my permission?” The corporations come from far away and go everywhere because the fossil fuel industry is one of extreme rootlessness.

Followers of recent global climate talks are well aware of failure and deadlocks. A Greenhouse Development Framework from the Stockholm Environment Institute is an attempt to deal with disparities within and between countries claiming the rights to develop and pollute.

In chapter 13 of the book Klein talks about her attempts to have a child while researching this book. There are some lovely descriptions of Klein coming to realise that earth is facing fertility challenges of her own. Many species are now against “infertility walls” and finding it hard to reproduce. Fertility is one of the first functions to erode when animals are under stress.

The challenge for the climate movement hinges on pulling off a profound and radical economic transformation. In extraordinary historical moments “the usual category that divides “activists” and “regular people” become meaningless, the activists are quite simply everyone”.

So this book is for you and me and everyone. We are all implicated in everything this book is about, so get hold of it, read it and pass it around. As a slogan at the recent climate march in New York said, “To change everything we need everybody.”

I found myself saying to someone the other day, “If any book will push us through and beyond the Great Transition that we all have to make, then this is it!” Along with the film that Klein’s partner is making on the same subject, we can take some hope. We still have our brief window of time. We are inventive and creative. We can join with the tangata whenua as guardians of Mother Earth.

Obvious solution to housing bubble – put a price on the holding of land

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Deirdre

Dilapidated, no power, no water. But still worth $1million

The debate on Auckland’s out of control housing crisis is missing one critical factor. While some commentators actually realise it is the rising price of land that is the issue, most ignore it. If only there was a price on the holding of land, values wouldn’t rise so fast.

The key is understanding that the Auckland Council was enshrined in legislation mandating that rates are struck on capital value. That financially disincentives building. For most of NZ history council rates were struck on land value only. This may be the reason that Wellington, Napier and Dunedin are relatively compact.

If you strike rates on only land value it
1. Encourages development and building because there is no financial disincentive to improving land.
2. Prevents urban sprawl
3. Prevents leapfrogging where there are holes in the development.
4. Is progressive, favouring the poor. Property ownership is more concentrated than income so rich people end up paying more.
5. Stops land value from rising too fast.
6. Stops rents from rising as rents rise more if the landlord needs to pay extra rates if the house is upgraded.
7. Forces slum landlords to sell or develop.(especially if the price on holding land is high enough)

Section 13 of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act 2010 requires the general rate to be set on capital values.

In 1998 Pennsylvania changed its laws to allow urban authorities to split their property taxes into land tax rates and building tax rates. The cities that put more tax on land than on building all avoided property bubbles and prevented urban sprawl. Pittsburg survived and thrived after steel.

Unless something is done to reverse the part of the legislation mandating for capital value rating, we will continue to have rising house prices, urban sprawl and inequality.

We also have to get rid of Universal Fixed Annual Charges. The Shand Report of 2007 recommended this as it found them to be regressive. They also recommended getting rid of rating differentials and recommended everyone go on capital value rating. What a shame. Their recommendation to go on capital value rating was wrong, but the other two right recommendations seem to have been completely ignored.

However rating systems, even when imposed on land values do not capture all the capital gain from holding land. It is important that a full rental is placed on land value and the revenue is shared by local and central government. A land based rating system can only go so far to capture the rental and stop it being privately captured.

Why our are farmers farming for capital gain?

Posted on October 20, 2014 by Deirdre

Andrew Gawith, Director of Gareth Morgan Investments, described the economics of farming in New Zealand as “speculative” as the financial benefits are almost entirely dependent on capital gains. Other than dairy, income is puny and unreliable, he said.”Farm finances don’t add up.” (NZ Herald, Nov 30, 2010)

Whereas UK and US price of rural land doubled in a decade, the value of farmland in New Zealand has risen at 10.7% a year over the past 20 years. (That is the value of farmland doubles in less than seven years). “That’s a real after tax return of something in the order of 7 percent to 8 percent a year.” He points out this is double the return of sharemarkets.

He says, “Farming is the most popular business for banks to lend to. While other areas of economic endeavour are starved of capital, banks have very nearly drowned farming with debt. The ease with which farmers can get capital has helped push up the price of land.”

If farmers are drowning in debt, they will not be able to withstand a rise in interest rates. An article in NZ Farmer warns that with the drop in the price of milk, a quarter of farmers are heading for loss unless prices rise. So as China’s economy slows the high debt farmers are most vulnerable. Winston is watching.

This is our dairy debt from 1990-2014. It has multiplied by eight over those 24 years. Gareth Vaughan reminds us that nearly 70% of this dairy debt is on floating mortgages. Dairy debt was around $32 b in 2013, up from $8 b in 2003, which makes a quadrupling in a decade!

Farming is very capital intensive, with only mining and utilities more so. According to a NZIER study “Around three quarters of value added in agriculture is from capital (land, plant and machinery). This is higher than the economy wide average of around 50%.”

If dairy farming turns out to be the cause of our country’s Minsky moment, can we avert a crisis by taking control of our currency creation and land tenure system at Community Board level? Not only is this our only hope, but it will lead eventually to greater productivity and equality – as well as getting good young farmers on the land at an affordable entry level.

Is there a future for Labour and what will happen if they move to the right?

Posted on September 24, 2014 by Deirdre

The Labour Party, as they reflect on their biggest loss in 92 years, is struggling to come to terms with the consequences of being environmentalists. No self-respecting westerner these days would say they weren’t concerned about the deteriorating environment. The threat of global warming is a massive wake-up call. Even the Rockefeller Fund founded on oil has just divested from coal and tar sands. Politicians finally have to face reconciling protecting the environment with creating the fiscal and monetary conditions for a thriving economy.

That is a huge challenge. The Greens can talk all they like about ‘smart growth’ and a ‘green economy’ but unless they address the money system and stop the growth imperative at is source ‘smart growth’ will just continue to be nice rhetoric.

Over the last few years we have noticed the Labour Party aligning itself more and more with the Greens. But in the last weeks of the campaign Labour leader David Cunliffe actually stole the Greens rhetoric. He said, “It’s got to be a clean, green, smart, strong economy” (14 Sept, Stuff)

So while Labour has moved towards the Greens, for strategic purposes it had also to distance itself from them right at the beginning of the campaign. Doing the splits eh? Electoral realities dictated that it could no longer afford to align itself with a party who questioned every job creation initiative the National Government started. But there is a large faction in the Labour Party that wants expressways, deep sea oil drilling, mining in conservation areas and fracking – all for the sake of jobs.

But Labour’s resounding defeat in the 2014 election should really be seen in the international context. Labour Parties and Social Democrat parties are struggling all over the western world – in Australia, UK and Canada and even Sweden they are losing ground. Cunliffe hasn’t got it on his own. All social democrat parties are struggling to reconcile protection of the environment with the economy so voters just cast their lot with the conservatives who promise “economic growth” (no matter what kind of growth). IN the case of New Zealand you can add in a personable Prime Minister with the common touch, a Leader of the Opposition who is prone to lecture and the challenge is almost insuperable.

The price of West Texas oil on 23 Sept 2014 was $91.50 and Brent Crude was $97, due to falling demand. But it is costing $100 a barrel these days to produce “tight oil”, the sort that is costly and difficult to extract. As Richard Heinberg recently wrote “Extracting and delivering those resources at an affordable price is becoming a bigger challenge year by year.” We have the perfect storm of peak resources, climate change and economic instability and no Labour Party is has the facility to deal with them. Moreoever it is no good reminiscing about the great days of Micky Savage, Norman Kirk or David Lange. The Labour Party now has a huge leap to take to adapt to the real world of 2014.

While the Greens move towards the middle, the Labour Party probably has to move to the right for electoral purposes. With so many environmentalists in the party these days they are damned if they align with the Greens and damned if they don’t. The alternative is for the Greens to move over and let Labour occupy more of their territory.

The challenge requires much more than bandaid solutions of Kiwibuild, raising minimum wages and Working for Families. It requires the complete rethinking the political economy, one which works for a post fossil fuel age.

Over the last three years the New Economics Party has been doing this and we have come up with some proposals. We believe it requires a massive change to the tax system and fundamental currency reform so that we get public creation of money with strict inflation control. Furthermore it requires recognising we live in the age of automation so a Universal Basic Income must replace our welfare system. The Labour Party has been talking jobs, jobs and jobs. But it is more realistic to talk of having enough money and enough choices. Only a Basic Income will emancipate the welfare system, improve working conditions and provide a real incentive to work.

As Michael Bauwens, Founder of the p2p (peer to peer) Foundation said “any movement dependent on labour and the power of labour is futile, because labour is disappearing.” They are stuck in a Cold War narrative and have no stories for the future. The workforce has also been casualised as employees are made redundant. Many of them set up a small consultancy. The trend continues. Labour is bleeding and becoming freelanced.

Is the future 3D printers in microfactories in small towns ?

There is another factor. According to economic historian Philip Mirowski the left doesn’t understand neoliberalism. When they don’t understand it, they underestimate the cleverness of their foe and simply cannot counter it. Neoliberalism has re-engineered society. We need to tackle Capital in a different way, by disempowering it through the empowerment of people. Through real democracy, through new technology allowing real people to own the means of energy and production. Maybe this is 3D printers in microfactories in small towns with a local bank. Many on the right will get on board with that.

Perhaps we have to write Labour off and accept they are not a movement of the future. Do they really have to move into National’s space to better “play the game”? Well, it’s not a game, it’s about survival and it’s about now. Fewer and fewer people will vote. Labour will be seen as a weak ineffectual version of National. And if the Greens continue to sing from Labour’s songbook, they’ll likely stay at 10% too. The more they try and portray themselves as CEOs the further they will lag behind the international Greens movement.

However, given the fact that the Labour Party is unlikely to adopt either the massive currency reform, tax reform and welfare reform required for a redesign of the political economy, it may either continue to thrash itself to death or stagger on as a less environmental party. Neither option is good. The challenges of the post fossil fuel age will indeed be very hard on social democracy parties with a proud history.

by Deirdre Kent and Aaron McLean

Capital Gains Tax on shares fails to differentiate between land, capital and labour

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Deirdre

Most of us spent some time as children playing Monopoly. The more properties you buy the more rents you collect. “I’ll buy Mayfair, its rents are high. Rent please!” Sooner or later you opponents are out of the game and you win.

I was intrigued to learn on TV3’s The Nation (Sat 6 Sept 2014) that Capital Gains Tax as proposed by Labour includes the gains you make on shares. I thought the whole idea of CGT was to discourage investment in property and encourage investment in the productivity sector. When replying to Lisa Owen on that point, Labour’s David Parker said it was quite fair. “The ordinary worker pays tax on every cent they earn so why not shareholders,” he said.

Well the gains on shares – which are earned and which are merely windfall profits? So I did some looking at the property investment companies listed with NZX and compared them with Xero, a software accounting company which makes its money from its leadership and its labour, and with A2 milk an innovative science based health oriented group.

So thinking about investment and looking at the various types of companies, let’s look at New Zealand’s big property companies – Kiwi Income Property Trust, Goodman Property Trust, Argosy and DNZ. The National Business Review in 2012 said “listed property companies outperformed the NZX50 last year” The listed property companies reported 11.8% growth compared to the NZX50’s 0.4% growth. There are 10 listed property companies in New Zealand and seven of them are listed on the NZX50 and account for 9.7% of the index weight.

If you want to know who owns the most valuable land in the country look no further than the listed property companies owning property in central Auckland and Wellington. Their skyscrapers house tenants as secure as Government departments and all the big names in retail and office. DNZ has warehouses at Wiri and Penrose that dominate the landscape.

Take Precinct Property for example. Their Wellington buildings included HP Tower, 125 The Terrace, State Insurance, Vodafone on the Quay, Pastoral House, No 1 The Terrace, Mayfair, AXA, Deloitte, 3 The Terrace and 29 Willis Street. In Auckland they have the PwC Tower, ANZ Centre, 151 Queen St, 21 Queen Street, and AMP Centre. Tenants include big law firms, big retailers, finance companies, Fonterra, Air NZ. Hewlett Packard and so on.

Argosy has properties in Woolston, Christchurch and the Albany Megacentre. Its tenants include The Warehouse, Briscoes, Mitre Ten, Bunnings, Farmers.

Every major shopping mall in the country seems to be owned by one of these property companies and they report occupancy rates between 96-99%. Tenants in shopping malls are NZ chains, international chains and supermarkets, with only about 10% being independent stores.

What is most intriguing is that they tend to borrow to invest, and Precinct has 37% leverage. (I recall just before the 1987 crash people borrowed to invest in shares and where did that end?) And they all keep acquiring new properties. Every year, their equity rises as properties are revalued higher each year, due to the activity around them.

When I looked at the shareholders of Precinct, (called a PIE or Portfolio Investment Entity for tax purposes) I found something new. Whereas in the 2010 annual report the shareholders didn’t raise an eyebrow, by 2013 report the major shareholder at 20% was National Nominees. Curious, I looked up the directors and found them to be four women, all with Sydney or Melbourne addresses. They each worked in a top managerial role in National Australia Bank.

This means that New Zealand’s most valuable land, our inner city land in Auckland and Wellington, is 20% owned by a Precinct, which is owned by an Australian bank, which in turn is largely owned by a variety of international banks. As someone tweeted back, “Nothing surprises me any more”.

Now what has this got to do with Capital Gains Tax? Well, firstly that property investment firms like Precinct will have most to lose from a even a very mild Capital Gains Tax and will be fighting it tooth and claw behind the scenes.

The point of Capital Gains Tax was, I believe, to get investment money directed to the productive sector not into land speculation.

And why we pray can’t we invest in firms like Xero or A2 milk, both of which are based on entrepreneurship and labour, without being taxed? David Parker says it’s because workers are taxed on every dollar they earn so why shouldn’t investors be taxed. I thought that was what you wanted David? So why tax it? Your logic fails me.

A complete inability to differentiate between land, capital and labour is at the root of the poor thinking on Capital Gains Tax on shares. When men as bright as David Parker and David Cunliffe blunder into this, they should have time off to think. We in the New Economics Party say Government should tax what we hold or take but not what we do or make. Taxing labour is illogical. Taxing the monopoly use of the commons like land and minerals is logical.

The New Economics Party

Let's fix the economic system that is killing our planet!