Tag Archives: tax

Declaration of Interdependence by a Community

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The following is a Declaration of Interdependence that could be made by every community of, say between 5000 and 25,000 people. Since there are over 4 million people in New Zealand, it could be made by hundreds of different communities.

We as a community believe we have rights and responsibilities.

We find ourselves tired of growing inequality where the wealth of 62 individuals is now equal to the wealth of the bottom half of the the planet’s population. We are frustrated by the growing power of the corporates and the super wealthy. We are alarmed by decades of inaction on climate change because economics is fundamentally odds with the climate. We grieve for our steadily growing loss of sovereignty with so-called Free Trade Agreements like TPP ceding power to the corporates.

Recognising the power of nature to bat last and the social dangers posed by economic collapse or major climate events, we wholeheartedly believe it is time our economic system was at peace with the planet.

We, the people of …………, now desire to share the values of the land and gifts of Nature and of our inheritance with our whole community, for that is all we have within our power.

Given the power of the corporates to influence governments and therefore the relative futility of national action to bring our economic system in line with nature, we recognise that this fundamental change can only happen at the local level.

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We therefore agree among us to:
• Gradually own all our own land collectively so that no one will profit or lose from owning land. We will gradually bring more and more land into a Community Land Trust while compensating the owners fairly. We will thus take land out of the marketplace.
• Create a new currency, acceptable for our public revenue. This currency will be designed to circulate smoothly. It will not be created as interest-bearing debt because that creates more debt, but be spent into existence.
• Organise ourselves as a governance unit, electing our own people, making our own rules and being responsible for enforcing them. This includes keeping the value of the new currency stable. The rules will include rules for businesses using the currency and rules for imposing appropriate resource rents from water, minerals or any other part of the commons.
• Gather revenue from land and other resource rents and use it for public purposes including for regular distribution of a dividend for all our citizens resident here for a year or more.
• Collectively budget together at least twice a year.
• Create and maintain a register of citizens eligible for dividends.

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We further agree to:
• Co-operate with neighbouring communities to build and maintain such infrastructure as needed by a larger community and perform other governance functions that are better organised and financed on a larger scale.
• Co-operate with district and regional councils as above.
• Co-operate with central government as above.
• Co-operate with district, regional and central government for any revenue sharing in the new currency as we believe mutually beneficial.
• Co-operate with all other communities to keep the value of the new shared currency stable. We envisage a network of inflation control teams based in every community working together for this purpose.

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We do not agree that central government will impose their tax laws on trades in our currency or interfere with the formation or operation of our Community Land Trust. We do not agree to any interference from the Reserve Bank of NZ regarding the legitimacy of our new currency or the way we control its stability.

Why Climate Change is such a Difficult Political Issue

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TOPSHOTS-PHILIPPINES-WEATHER-TYPHOONIt has finally struck me, albeit in the middle of the night. I have been pondering why, in the face of all the evidence and despite a growing willingness on the part of all nations to address the issue, efforts to reverse climate change are so insipid. Climate change is still in the too-hard basket. Conference after annual conference never fails to disappoint us and Warsaw 2013 wasn’t much different. A Guardian commentator called Warsaw “more like a shuffling of feet”.

OK what is this Road to Damascus discovery? It is to do with affordability. We are trying to add an extra tax, a carbon tax in a context of deflation, where the affordability of everything is declining. Prices are going up relative to disposable income. We are losing our purchasing power (well apart from the 1% I suppose). So it is no surprise the climate change issue is too hard for politicians. Given the choice of putting up petrol and electricity costs when their constituents are already suffering, politicians will kick for touch and argue they need a ‘balance’. Disappointment is inevitable.

Well then how do you solve this political problem? The answer is by addressing the affordability issue head on.

So let’s look at what is reducing the purchasing power of people on this planet? Why, it is the same old two culprits – the bank issued money system and the illogical tax system.

What do I mean? Well if money is issued as interest bearing debt, then interest is built into the price of all goods. How? Every car comes out of a factory whose owners borrowed money at interest from banks. Every piece of furniture, clothing and kitchen goods is manufactured where the owner borrowed money from a bank at interest to do so. Every potato, every steak, every drop of milk and every orange came from a farm whose owners were mired in debt to a bank. The cost of the bank interest is built into the price of all goods. So if we issue money without debt the price of goods relative to wages will drop. Purchasing power will increase. Affordability will improve.

Then there is the incredibly silly tax system. When we tax labour, every manufacturer or primary industry producer has to build the tax in to the price of their goods. Take off income tax and your purchasing power increases. It is the same as GST and company tax and a range of other illogical taxes.

So part of the price of all primary produce and manufactured good is the burdensome tax and the totally unnecessary interest charged when issuing money. Solve those two problems and our purchasing power rises.

Our solution of having a parallel national currency spent into existence without interest and unburdened by these deadweight taxes will dramatically give more purchasing power. Affordability will improve. See this slideshow or read this site for more on this.

So when we change the tax system away from taxing labour and sales and towards charging rents on the right to use the commons, including the biosphere, it will be politically more possible to do something significant about climate change. After all, in proposing a carbon tax, climate change activists are only asking for a regular rental on the right to use the biosphere to get rid of their greenhouse gases.

If a currency flows freely through the economy and only meets opposition when it comes up against the constraints of the commons, it will stimulate innovation in producing and manufacturing clean liquid fuels and give impetus to the whole post fossil fuel economy. The term “green growth” will transform from rhetoric to reality and innovation will thrive.

Purchasing power, poverty and tax systems

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Who would have thought New Zealand children go hungry?

With child poverty a major political embarrassment it is time to examine causes and propose solutions. Not only are there 146,000 people out of work in New Zealand but the working poor are really feeling the pinch. Many part-time workers want full time work.

So it isn’t any surprise that even the National Government has realised that it is important to make some effort to feed hungry school children. Schools are the perfect indicator of the state of household wellbeing in this country.

No measure proposed so far will get at the root cause.  Nurses in schools won’t give families sufficient purchasing power to feed and clothe their children. Raising tax rates of those on high incomes won’t do it either. Nor will legislating for a minimum income.

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The problem is there is not enough money to buy essentials

So let’s look at the family budget spelt out in the Dominion Post Sat 1 June.
The family was a real Porirua family with three school aged children. The income was two benefits plus accommodation supplement plus family tax credit, which brought in a total of $685.29. The itemised expenditure tallied $752.69, leaving a weekly shortfall of $67.40.  There was no tobacco, alcohol or gambling listed in their expenses.

Expenditure was $180 for food, $300 for rent. There was also a weekly payment of $80 for a car loan, and presumably this was for both capital and interest repayment.

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GST, income tax are reducing purchasing power.

Now let’s analyse the family’s expenditure in terms of taxes and interest.  For decades we have lived with income tax and assumed it is fair and normal to tax income. Since Roger Douglas introduced it we have also taxed spending in the form of GST, now at 15%. I don’t know how long we have taxed enterprise but our company tax is projected to bring in $10 billion in the 2014 year. So income tax, GST and company tax now comprise over 79% of our Government revenue.

Yet we completely fail to tax the use of the commons for private purposes – “the commons” being defined as that which is given to us by Nature.  Such resource rentals should include all private land and all commercial operations requiring the use of part of a natural resource e.g. aquifers, forests, fisheries. It includes minerals, oil, coal, gas, waveband spectrums and of course the 49% of Mighty River Power which is now in private hands and the proportion of any port or airport which has been sold off. The potential for gathering resource rent is significant.

images-3This means taxing us for the use of residential land, valued by various reports at approximately $300 billion. Numerous tax reviews have recommended taxing land, but no government has adopted their recommendations, largely because the banks have sewn up all possible security on land. Since land will always be there (give or take an earthquake and a subsidence or two), banks want it as their security on their loans. And so government has to have the second best security – the labour of the people. Banks oppose any proposal to tax land.

98% of our money supply is created when banks issue loans. With most of the population blithely unaware, we allow private banks to create our money as interest bearing debt. When a farmer or a manufacturer has to borrow from a bank at interest, that interest is inevitably built into the cost of every item they sell.

Secondly when a bank creates a loan, it creates the principal but not the interest. So everyone has to compete to earn enough interest to pay the bank. Because there is never enough money in the system to pay back all the loans with interest at the same time, someone has to go back for further loans. The Porirua family is a case in point. If their budget remains the same, they will have to borrow $67 every week to keep afloat, and pay interest on that. Unless WINZ issues them with another loan, the loans sharks with their exhorbitant interest rates will be circling.

So where is this all coming through in prices? Well the landlord is paying interest on his or her mortgage and paying tax on income derived from rent, as well as GST on all landlord related expenses. If he or she buys a heat pump, carpet or curtains, GST is in the price. When the landlord employs a painter the wages have to be large enough to allow for income tax.

imagesThe Porirua family’s meagre food bill includes 15% GST. The electricity, petrol, vehicle maintenance, vehicle registration and clothing bills all contain GST. Each of these items also contain a labour input. The mechanic had to pay income tax so calculates the charge-out rate to allow for this. Each of the items listed also contains an interest input. For example, the clothing factory may have borrowed from a bank for capital and the selling price of clothes allows for the interest the firm has to pay the bank.

We are talking here about purchasing power. My granddaughter says she can easily live on $90 a week in Mexico because prices are low. It is wages relative to prices that is important for purchasing power. According to Matt McCarten (on Q&A 2 June), real wages in the last 20 years have gone down 30%.  It doesn’t matter how cheap an item is if you have only a few cents to use as payment. Purchasing power is a better indicator of wellbeing than inflation

What this means is that until we change our tax system and return the money-creating privilege back to the people where it belongs we will continue to scratch our heads about hungry children and the growing number of people who can’t make ends meet no matter how hard they try. As you can see, both reforms will have to go together, because no government is going to tax land while the banks have this monopoly on land. While we live with the private creation of money, we won’t be able to tax land rather than labour, sales and enterprise.

I am not suggesting the sum of resource rentals should raise all government revenue required. We would still need excise taxes and a Financial Transaction Tax. It’s just that once we face the money issue we can then face the tax issue and liberate purchasing power of the nation so that all may have enough to feed their children while labour is encouraged and enterprise is unleashed.