IR Reform: Banks and P.A.Y.E.

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IR Reform: Let Banks Collect P.A.Y.E. Tax

The Howard government’s industrial relations agenda attacks the wages and conditions of workers as if this were the only way to reduce the cost of hiring. What about the administrative costs imposed by government? For example:

* If you become an employer, you must also become a tax collector and tax agent, deducting and remitting pay-as-you-earn income tax from employees, and issuing group certificates.

* If you become an employer, you must also become a superannuation agent, paying 9 percent of your employees’ wages into personal superannuation funds. You may even have to give a choice of funds — just like the independent brokers, except that you don’t get any commission!

Infrastructure: Free Riders On The Tollway

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The Mitcham-Frankston tollway, also known as EastLink, will reduce commuting times in suburbs serviced by the tollway and in suburbs serviced by alternative routes, such as the untolled Springvale and Stud roads, whose congestion levels will be reduced by EastLink. The market value of this benefit (net of tolls) will be manifested as uplifts in land values in the lucky suburbs (because you have to live or work in those suburbs to get the benefit). So owners of property in those suburbs will benefit from EastLink even if they don’t use it and don’t pay the toll on it. But people who live in rental accommodation and who commute via EastLink will pay for it twice — they’ll pay the toll and their rents will go up. How equitable is that?

Henry George In New England

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In May, 1890, Henry George delivered three public lectures in northern New South Wales, Australia. Reports of two of these lectures were recently discovered in the Dixson Library of the University of New England and re-published in the History of Economics Review (M.L Threadgold and J.M. Pullen, pp. 83-95) No. 23, 1996

Glen Innes Examiner, June 3, 1890
The Armidale Lecture
Henry George in New England
– by X.L.

Monday, the 26th inst., was announced as the date of the great social reformer’s visit to Armidale, but somehow his managers had contrived to make the least possible use of the occasion by neglecting to give publicity to the event by the ordinary means of advertisement throughout the district. Although the visit of Mr Henry George was intended to serve as his personal introduction to the New England district – including Glen Innes, Walcha and Uralla; yet, so far as we know, no advertisement outside of Armidale was inserted in any other newspaper circulating in New England.

The Victorian Baptist

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Melbourne, April 1890

The motive of Mr Henry George’s mission to the colonies is one which all philanthropic minds must approve. His purpose is to better the condition of that large mass of mankind, who, whilst a smaller section of their fellows is revelling in superfluity, are condemned to what he calls the “hell of poverty”. His fundamental position is that the Great Father has given in the land an ample estate for all, and that the few who claim it for themselves to the exclusion of others are guilty of injustice.

Addressing quite lately the Baptist Ministers’ Meeting at Philadelphia, he contended:- “The want that festers in our centres is not the fault of God. The fault is with men; it is in our institutions. We are animals; we are land animals. It is only from the land that men can live. Man is a maker; he is the only animal that brings things forth. He cannot create; God alone creates. The first human being who came here was a naked man. In his powers lay the potentiality of all that has since been produced. Land is the passive factor in production, as man is the active factor. Now, suppose the land is made the property of a part of the people. We will have wealth on one side and poverty on the other. Give me the land; and I am the master, and men are my slaves. Slavery claimed the right to make one man work for another, without giving him an equivalent. This is what the landlord does. When I am forced to give my labour for that which God has created, that is robbery. In England, Scotland and Ireland, you find good men, God-fearing men, slaving away all their days for the merest necessaries and other creatures living in luxury on their work, proud neither they nor their fathers have ever done anything. This is worse than negro slavery: hunger is more cruel than the lash or the bloodhound. We have not abolished slavery; the more insidious form remains.”

Henry George, Dr. Edward McGlynn, and Pope Leo XIII

Casey JenkinsHistory2 Comments

Prof. Mason Gaffney

A paper delivered to International Conference on Henry George, November 1, 1997, at Cooper Union, New York; Professor Edward O’Donnell, Chair

Revised, November 22, 1997

1. Turbulent times

It was a different time, but often the same place (Cooper Union) in American life. No, it wasn’t radio, but the age of orators. One of the most spellbinding was Dr. Edward McGlynn; another good one was Henry George, who also wrote great books. They came together in 1886 to roil the waters of American politics and ideology. Through the Irish and Vatican connections, they also roiled world politics and ideology.