What is your solution?
One of the questions we often get asked is why not do monetary reform first and then do other things later.
Positive Money NZ and its parent in UK have done wonderful work in teaching about the dysfunctional money system. There is no doubting that. They are reaching a wide range of people and describing what is wrong with the money system, how it leads to growing debt, wealth disparity and the growth imperative. We really recommend going to their website and seeing all the wonderful youtube videos and articles and links there. It is a great website.
But when we are in a political party we need to aim to get a thriving economy and that means jobs.
Untaxing labour and sales is like unblocking a currency river
And when we think of where the money flows and why it doesn’t flow into job creation if you fix the money system, we also need to think about the tax system. Our party says it is time to untax labour and sales and to tax land and its resources. When we do this, all sorts of miracles occur.
Imagine having a currency where completely new rules apply. When using this new currency there is no tax on labour, sales or enterprise. No income tax, no GST and no company tax when using this money. Wow! What happens? Well employers realise that workers get 100% of their salary so they have a happy workforce. But that is not the end. When the workers spend their money they won’t have to pay GST. This is that they have more purchasing power. Their wages are higher now in relation to the prices of goods. And that is what unions have been crying out for for ages.
So it is like having the river bed carved out for a new currency. The new money flows in the riverbed unimpeded by taxes. So it flows into productive investment and creates jobs.
We have proposed the slow introduction of a parallel national currency created by a new agency (the Treasury) which adheres to these rules. The slideshow for this is now at http://www.slideshare.net/deirdrekent/sustainable-economics-without-fossil-fuels-21
Of course having argued that it is important to treat the global economic system as a living system and that we need to intervene where the effect is greatest, and having argued that the global economy is what Cantabrians would call ‘mega-munted’ and that you need to start again, people still come back saying Couldn’t we just have monetary reform for a start.
Yes I know a lot of people just want us to do the monetary reform and do the rest later. But what happens? Yes money is spent into existence rather than lent into existence so it doesn’t bear a debt and it has no interest due either. All good. But where does it go? With GST and income tax and company tax, it will of course go into buying up yet more property and naturally occurring assets, putting pressure on the limited resource of land and raising its price. And as before, the wealth concentrates with land owners.
Q. I thought you wanted to close the gap between rich and poor?
A. Oh yes we will do that now, we will impose a land tax.
Q. Well how are you going to do that?
A. Well we will start at 0.5% land tax and lower income tax a little across the board at the same time. That way we won’t shock the economy.
Q. But I am still paying my rates and my mortgage. Why should I pay a third land tax?
A. Oh I don’t know.
And there is stops. If there is another way, please would someone tell us about it! In all the time we have had this initiative up and running, nobody has come out with an alternative solution other than by starting again with a second national currency differently designed.
If you can come up with a suggestion which is better than the dual currency, we would be pleased to hear from you.