Fresh Economic Thinking
Fresh Economic Thinking
FET #9: Do expensive houses make us all rich?
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FET #9: Do expensive houses make us all rich?

A new Credit Suisse report says so. We discuss the many issues with this analysis, including ignoring the value of free public services. Also, the barney over Queensland's new land tax changes.

We also take a deeper look at the issues with a new Credit Suisse report that is getting headlines claiming that Australians are the richest people in the world because of our expensive houses. One of the big issues with such reports is the way certain assets are counted by others are not.

In the barney of the week, we look at how New South Wales has refused to cooperate with Queensland’s new land tax laws. Note that the news today (after recording) is that the Queensland government has reversed these announced changes.

We also talk about effective marginal tax rates, a pet interest of mine.

Follow Cameron and Jonathan on Twitter.

Theme music: Happy Swing by Serge Quadrado Music under Creative Commons Licence CC BY-NC 4.0

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Discussion about this podcast

The Capital transfer system or Financial System is extraordinarily inefficient. By inefficient I mean the cost of moving ownership from one party to another costs a lot. For long term assets, like a house, the cost of moving ownership (capital) for most people is at least the cost of the house itself. We can do better. Here is one way using Community Capital with custodianship replacing ownership. In other words let us stop transferring ownership and transfer custodianship which has the same rights and responsibilities as ownership. https://kevin-34708.medium.com/permanent-housing-markets-a5d6e84e8619 - result "automatic" affordable housing as your housing costs change with your income.

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Excellent article Cameron.

You may wish to comment on

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362635231_AustralianHousePrices50Years

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Good episode!

Higher landlord costs won't lead to higher rents anymore than the 2 years of falling interest rates and falling landlord mortgage costs led to lower rents.

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Fresh Economic Thinking
Fresh Economic Thinking
Cameron Murray is famous for questioning sacred cows and conventional wisdoms of both left and right. We chat about Cameron's latest Twitter battle and then delve into a controversy. Wide-ranging analysis - no topic out of bounds - inequality, regulation, housing, superannuation, lockdowns, tax, war, the meaning of life.