What Happened To Japan

Karl FitzgeraldInternationalLeave a Comment

Investor’s Business Daily Feb 27, 1998 reports:

“Asia’s largest economy is in trouble

A long-awaited stimulus package announced last Friday (Feb 20) showed once again why Japan’s model of government-business collusion cannot thrive in a free market.

The package did not cut taxes or try to ease the burden of regulations on the Japanese. Instead, the govt proposes letting Japanese financial institutions package bad loans and sell them as securities. The govt might then buy them up in a bid to stimulate the economy…

A January estimate pegged the amount of bad loans at Japanese banks as worth about 15% of GDP…”

The Danish Experience

Karl FitzgeraldInternationalLeave a Comment

by Knud Tholstrup, University of Bergen 1974

Sensational practical experience in taxation of land values was gained in Denmark in the years 1957-60 when the Danish Justice Party, promulgating land value taxation, free trade and equal rights, formed a so-called ‘land tax’ government, together with the Social Democrats (Labour) and the Radicals (Liberals). The three parties made an agreement based on the following:

1. Collection of land rent
2. Liberalisation of trade: including closing the Department of Supply and Import Control
3. A tax freeze

Although the Justice Party was the only member of the triumvirate of parties forming government to have agitated and worked for the introduction of land value taxation, the election programs of all three parties did include a land tax on the growth in land values.

Answers for Indonesia

Karl FitzgeraldInternational1 Comment

by Bryan Kavanagh, Director, Land Values Research Group

President Suharto has been poorly counseled by the International Monetary Fund. Its economic prescriptions are pointless and wrong. He needs to take independent economic action if he is to avoid the social chaos erupting out of Indonesia’s financial turmoil. He could do worse than immerse himself in the history of his own ‘Spice Islands’, the wealth of which centuries ago attracted the Portuguese and the Dutch to the great chain stretching between Malaya and New Guinea.

The Indonesian financial crisis is the result of a phenomenal land boom that was a re-run of the West’s late-1980s boom period. It is little remembered that a very similar financial collapse was experienced by the ‘Dutch East Indies’ in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, and that an amazing Englishman employed a successful technique to overcome it.

Cartoons

Karl FitzgeraldCommentaryLeave a Comment

 

cart1.jpg  

 

 This is why the rich get
richer and the poor get poorer. The rich own 80% of the board!

 

Carbon Capping

Karl FitzgeraldCommentary, True Cost EconomicsLeave a Comment

Carbon Capping – A Citizen’s Guide

Leading Author Peter Barnes has summarised the carbon capping system in 22 easy to read pages. Essential reading on one of our most important and eloquent thinker, the guide describes three different ways to cap carbon: cap-and-giveaway, cap-and-auction, and cap-and-rebate. It explains how, “if done right, a descending economy-wide carbon cap is the single best tool to fight climate change.” But it warns that, “if done wrong, a cap won’t reduce emissions sufficiently and will transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from families to corporate polluters.”

Read the full report here

The guide has been released with a Creative Commons license, which means it can be freely reproduced and circulated.