Category Archives: Manifesto

Party policy

Visitor levy Bill illustrates the commons of local authority infrastructure

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Yesterday I happened to turn on a Parliamentary debate on a Bill called the Southland District Council (Stewart Island/Rakiura Visitor Levy) Empowering Bill. The legislation would give the council, whose rating basis is very small, the right to charge visitors up to $5 to pay for the island’s growing tourist infrastructure. It would be expected to raise about $250,000 a year.

I was heartened by this debate. Not only had the Select Committee had a very collegial discussion on it, but there was little opposition in Parliament, other than worrying that other councils might follow suit. I hope they do. Far North District Council could be one.

The infrastructure of roads, sewers, community halls, water, wastewater and stormwater is part of the local commons. It was built by the people and belongs to the people so the people have the right to charge others for the rent of it, no matter how temporary.

Our national built infrastructure of our roads, dams, power stations and electricity network is similarly part of our commons and should never be sold off. The sweat of our nation’s grandfathers is in those dams. The vultures are coming to get it, including the land. Those who would sell it are guilty of treason. And they are coming to Greece right now. Imagine selling off the Parthenon, the cultural commons of the Greeks.

Our land will increase in value with this new community facility

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I am excited. We have a wonderful new gym which has been built by Te Wananga O Raukawa, the Maori university on the main road to the beach and I think, because it will attract so many top level basketball and netball games, it will be an asset to the small town of Otaki where we live. On the opening day today we had two top teams playing netball here and that will only be the start.

I am even thinking the value of our own land, less than 1km from the gym, might go up. It will over time and the land values in all the surrounding area will be affected as well, depending on how close they are to this new community amenity (and depending on how many businesses disappear as well). It is a very fine complex, described in the local paper as a world class facility. It came in under budget, on time and without debt, thanks to the great people at the Wananga.

So why should private landowners gain from the increase in land value? Most of us didn’t work to cause it. And those who don’t own property (plenty of renting in our town, plenty of poverty).That is stealing from the public purse. Land value taxes should be imposed so that the public recaptures all this privately accumulated value. That will only happen if rates are levied on land value not capital value and not with 70% of the rates being in fixed charges, as we have now. So we are far from that now and we have adopted the philosophy of user pays. This, because user pays is so convincing, is going to be hard to change.

This happens any time there is a new public facility. Everyone near the the terminal of the Waikanae Railway station benefited when the Paraparaumu line was extended to Waikanae (well it was that part of the cycle – their values didn’t go down while others did). So if a gym raises the value of our land, how much more would the railway coming to our town affect it!!

I just think of all the poor people in our town with no hope of ever owning land. It will widen the gap between rich and poor. And when land prices go up, the banks benefit,the money supply increases and we get inflation. No good for the poor!

We just have substantial challenge how to solve this politically.

What Greece needs is a land backed currency (and so does New Zealand)

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I have just been listening to the most informative and important interview by Adrian Wrigley of the Systemic Fiscal Reform Group in Cambridge, UK.  Here it is: http://podcast.3cr.org.au/pod/3CRCast-2012-02-22-19953.mp3

Karl Fitzgerald of Earthsharing Australia interviewed him on the radio station http://3cr.org.au on a programme called The Renegade Economist.

To address the problems of Greece, and for other reasons, Adrian is studying the economic history of Germany during the early 20th Century, and says it is tragic that Economic History has been dropped from economics departments of universities because in history lies a lot of wisdom and knowledge. He describes what happened leading up the period of hyperinflation in 1923 and then what the German government did to solve it. They banned the private reserve bank from issuing currency for profit, formed a new reserve bank which issued paper money backed by mortgages and this stopped hyperinflation really quickly. It was called the Miracle of the Rentenmark. However, (as with Gesell inspired currency in Wørgl Austria some ten years later), the banks quickly stepped in. The Rentenmark was a danger to the status quo. A land backed currency is the big danger for the ruling classes.

However, like the other miracle, Wørgl, it only lasted a very short time. Soon the banks stepped in to have their way.

This is quite a long interview but full of fascinating facts. Well worth the time out of your day. It makes me realise that noone who really cares about monetary reform can turn a blind eye to the fact that the owners of banks will do anything to squash land backed currencies and kill them instantly. It reminded me of a time when I was writing my book and discovered that land tax went out at the same time as the private banks insisted that the NZ government use income tax instead. Before then we were reliant on just excise taxes and land taxes. And since then we have assumed that income tax is normal! Our money system is backed by income tax, not by land. The private banks, creating money for profit, have got that windfall. No wonder they are falling over themselves to lend to farmers.

It also reminded me of the struggle within the complementary currency movement to invent a currency backed by land. Everyone has talked about it, but to my knowledge it has never been done. It remains a dream. Now I can see why.

I hope you enjoy the interview. A lot of history in it. It is great on Greece too.

 

Official report on Oil Prices and Transport Sector Resilience suppressed by Brownlee and Joyce

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Yes we have had an official Government report called Oil Prices and Transport Sector Resilience in Nov 2009. This unsigned report had to be ferreted out by the wonderful Thames-based Dennis Tegg, who blogs so responsibly on the topic of peak oil. http://oilshockhorrorprobe.blogspot.co.nz/2011/08/new-zealand-at-greater-risk-from-oil.html. Our unique vulnerability on many fronts is described in the report. Gerry Brownlee and Steven Joyce apparently don’t believe an informed public is going to be useful for their oil friendly and lignite friendly agendas! The road transport lobby is no doubt also doing some effective lobbying to bend their ears.

There is another report, the one written by Clint Smith for the Parliamentary Library in Oct 2010. http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/ParlSupport/ResearchPapers/4/6/a/00PLEco10041-The-next-oil-shock.htm and to date is still on their website. It is excellent.

And of course there is a report commissioned by NZ Transport Authority from 2008 which was never given much airtime. It was 148 pages long.

And during January Australia suppressed its long and comprehensive report on peak oil too.

The Minister of Defence is also turning a deaf ear to military reports overseas and neglecting to commission a report for our country’s security. Like the others he has his head firmly in the sand. When a US CNA Military Advisory Board Report on peak oil came out last year, calling for a 30 percent reduction in US oil use over ten years to reduce “grave national security risks”,  I wrote to our Minister of Defence, Wayne Mapp, to find out whether he had seen it and asking under the Official Information Act for copies of all reports on oil, and the implications for security that he had received. He replied that he hadn’t.

No wonder we have seen all this rush for deep sea oil exploration and lignite production in Southland. Tag Oil in early January spoke of the potential to build thousands of oil wells in the largely untouched region of New Zealand, and said that New Zealand could become the Texas of the South. This was repeated by MPs and Ministers. The dangerous and resource intensive practice of fracking continues. So widespread is the local concern, even the Christchurch City Council has asked for a moratorium on fracking.

 

 

Location Value Covenants – joining land tax reform to monetary reform and solving lots of problems at once.

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You will have been wondering what we are up to.

Well remember I said we were working with Adrian Wrigley and Robin Smith from a Cambridge think tank? This has continued until I understand what their proposal is and what are the possible objections to what I think is exciting new policy. I have been talking to many members of the party about my enthusiasm for this, because it overcomes all sorts of objections to introducing land tax.

Adrian is the brains behind the Location Value Covenant idea and I have adapted it for Rates Vouchers issued by a local authority. Basically the national version of it is this:

People with a mortgage go to government and bargain. They say we will covenant our property to pay a substantial sum to you if you give us a Treasury Note to the value of the current mortgage (or a lesser amount). The amount settled between them is the sum of what they were paying annually in mortgage plus what they were paying in rates, minus 10-15%. When the deal is done, the government is the recipient of a high sum linked by a covenant to that property. Their revenue increases. The property owners take this Treasury Note (or an electronic version of it) to the bank to pay off their mortgage. 60% of our total mortgage bill is in fixed interest so has no penalty.

Their property now carries a financial burden, so as a result its value drops, but the home owners equity doesn’t. Note above it is Treasury Notes not Reserve Bank notes. Why? Because the Reserve Bank, like other central banks, is too linked to Wall Street and the commercial banks of the world. Treasury is the Government department which accepts taxes. A Treasury Note is something valid for the payment of taxes.

So government is soon gathering enough revenue to pay a citizens dividend and then will be able to drop GST, income tax and company tax. Whereas before the banks had hold of our citizens through mortgages, they are left out in the cold. The Dominion Post put the value of current mortgages recently at $173 billion. This will gradually reduce.

 

Then the local authority version is this: (another paper)

Would be property purchasers are short of $200,000 for buying a house they want. Instead of going to the bank they go to the local authority and say “We would pay $x a year for mortgage and $y for rates. How about we add those two together, drop it a bit and I agree to pay you that amount regularly and this is written into a covenant on our property title? Would you then give me a note for $200,000 in Rates Vouchers?” The council says that sounds like a good deal and then the purchasers go to the vendor and say “I can pay you in Rates Vouchers for some of this property.” They answer
“What would we do with that?” “Well you could buy a house in this district and pay for it with that because they are valid for the payment of rates.”

This would work as long as the vendor wanted to buy in the area. If they bought using rates vouchers as part payment and this went down the chain till they struck a vendor who just wanted to spend the money in the council area. The Council would help by persuading some of the bigger local businesses to accept part payment in Rates Vouchers. All local tradespeople could accept part payment, and of course they could save their precious national dollars for paying GST and income tax. Perhaps there could be an incentive for circulation built in to the local currency so it would circulate fast, doing good all the way.

The payments are linked not to inflation but to an land value index worked out for the general area. For instance in Chch after earthquakes if the land value in a big area dropped by 50% the payments would drop 50%. Generally land values are less variable than interest rates.

Sooner or later the Government would see that several local authority areas are thriving economically. Unemployment is starting to drop and business confidence is rising. Then local authorities could tell them they could do it themselves you know. Use Treasury Notes to relieve current mortgage holders.

In this way if it came in at local authority level first, the regions would thrive and their economies would move towards using local materials, and local labour and its home prices would drop dramatically. The trend is towards sustainability (a word I rarely use these days but I can’t help myself here, because it isn’t just fashionable rhetoric, it is true!). When government started to reduce income tax, GST and company tax, the people’s purchasing power greatly increases. Take a person aged 40. If you capitalised the value of their future labour it would be much bigger than the capital in their home. Prices would drop without income tax or GST or interest on money (there is less bank created money in the system after it has been operating for a while).

I am inviting New Economics Party enthusiasts to view these papers. Just let me know by email or see me on Facebook or twitter or google +. There is so much to discuss. Everyone has different ideas to raise, but we are making headway.

We are working to combine our land tax policy with our monetary reform policy in a new way

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During the holiday season I have been talking on email and skype and phone to various people round the world and in New Zealand. One of our challenges will be to get sufficient government revenue and introducing an adequate level of land taxes is a political challenge of immense proportions. Many are implacably opposed to land taxes, although they see the importance of the type of monetary reform we propose on this site.

It seemed to me always that those involved in the Georgist movement for land value taxes have thought they had all the answers, while those involved in monetary reform thought they had all the answers. It was in 1996 that I visited the New Economics Foundation in London and had started to understand the money issue, and during that time also spent time at the Henry George Foundation or whatever it is called in London. A few years later I noticed that Margrit Kennedy, the author of Interest and Inflation Proof Money, also had the beliefs that the two reforms should come at the same time, otherwise there are problems.

I found in 2005 when I was writing my book, that the man involved with promotion of Land Value Taxes in NZ, believed there was nothing wrong with the money system and any reform to it would be terribly damaging. So I couldn’t communicate with him. I was also aware that promoting an adequate land tax would be fraught with political trouble, so I was motivated to find fellow travellers internationally and see if they had any solutions or suggestions. Land tax has to have exemptions and there are anomalies, opposition. Scottish Greens have got it through, but only as far as local authorities And what is the use of a land tax at a local authority level when a local authority can’t remove income tax or GST?

In my search for these potential colleagues I discovered that the LibDems in UK had a subgroup called ALTER and Chairman Dr Tony Vickers had written an excellent paper on the political strategies needed to introduce land value taxes (LVT). I emailed him and he replied to me, copying in his executive in the process. So it was wonderful to discover Robin Smith in London and his colleague Adrian Wrigley in Brittany and talk with them about their proposal for what they call a Location Value Covenant.

I was also alerted just before Christmas to an email to many leading figures in the international Georgist movement. It suggested there was heresy in the ranks and people should stick to the Georgist dogma, (yes it used the words heresy and dogma.) This flushed out more people, from US particularly and from the Occupy movement who were convinced on both issues so I started an ongoing skype chat (no audio, but easier to work with than emails) with those people. We paused for breath every now and then while we had one-to-one skype chats or small audio groups as we came to understand what they were talking about.

I can’t pretend we have completely arrived at a solution, because we are still in the process of collaborating on a document with the new proposal and what it can do. But I can say it is looking at private debt, at mortgages, because it is mortgages where the two issues intersect. I can also say I am very excited and there are others round the world who are equally keyed up. It is taking a bit of time to get this to a stage where the proposal is easily understood and clear and feasible. So please be patient, and if you want to talk about it, do give me a call. (Skype callers please post a message first!)

 

Maori Party must be naive to negotiate for a committee on poverty

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Set up a committee on poverty and say that is a way to stop it? Daft as. Hone is right. Koretake! Useless!

The way to stop poverty is to legislate and tax so that it stops the profiting from the passive ownership of land, resources or money. This is the New Economics Party policy and gets to the root of poverty issues. Tax what you use not what you earn, tax what you take not what you make.

Today I found that after the Global Financial Crisis in UK, there was a conference on Economic Justice and a Council of Economic Justice was set up. To the conference were invited many organisations which advocated monetary reform and many who advocated Land Taxation Tax and other resource taxes. This Council will have a great deal in common with our party. Meanwhile the Libdems have a group called ALTER which advocates land value taxes and the Scottish Greens now has a policy on this at local level. We are in touch with Earthsharing Canada and it is very gratifying to know that Frank De Jong is starting to read on the topic of monetary reform.

So oh dear Pita and Tariana. You are more naive than I thought. All you will do is watch the gap between rich and poor widen and widen, but you will at least know that statistics. To have a committee chaired by the very person who introduced a rise in the regressive GST tax regime shows how utterly ineffective it is going to be.

Monetary reform and land value taxes have been around for centuries, but in my lifetime they have never been implemented except for a brief period when we had unimproved value as a basis for  most of our local body rates.