EJ,

I believe that you are trying to spout some version of Marxist doctrine. Having watched every marxist country descend into tyranny and poverty, have you not thought of revising your opinions?

Shadow,

Allocation of wealth enables more wealth to be created. But generally it would be more efficient if less of the wealth produced went to those doing the allocation and more to the actual production (or better still, passed on to the customers).

Karl Marx did indeed make a similar point, but it is logically impossible for the other stuff Marx said, let alone the stupid stuff that some countries have done in his name, to affect whether or not the point is true.

If physicists had the intellectual standards of economists, a lot of them would still be arguing (despite the evidence) that Einstein was wrong!

Marx didn't go far enough. He didn't explode the myth that acquisition/allocation creates wealth. He and the Communists did not take into account and forestall the creation in the chaos of 1917 Russia of a central political bureaucracy - a class whose architects quickly grasped and gamed the evolving post revolutionary authoritarian system of government to burst the anti-popular tyranny on the people. This class soon had control of all walks of life in the new republic and hasn't entirely lost that control today.

In the West today this hostile class (which includes pollies) shares power with other classes such as the acquisition/allocation leaners (who purchase the political parties and much of officialdom), and the class of wealth creators.

The chaos of the Trump election offers prospects to press for progress towards the following measures:

1. Introduce "Make-up tariffs" on imported goods to counteract the price advantage of slave conditions in crap countries like China.

2. Introduce a tax system which restores the wartime dichotomy of general income tax rates for producers vs very steep "unearned income" rates for such sources as rent collection, dividends, share and real estate trading gains, currency speculation profits, spivmanship in general.

3. Impose a 1% Tobin tax on all conversions between currencies. This would have a small and easily compensable effect on transactions for personal purposes while stopping the international currency market dead in its tracks.

4. Expose officialdom (the central political and administrative bureaucracy) to much greater transparency and vulnerability to the requirements of an informed public

EJ,

With regards your "Brilliant" ideas which have mostly all been tried and failed:

1 A make up tax on China would be reciprocated on our exports creating poverty in Aus and china, or would be largely bypassed by importing via a 3rd country.

2 High taxes on rent would cause rental properties to disappear and become more expensive hurting those that can't buy houses even more. Similarly taxes on dividends would crash the investment and strangle investment for local businesses. etc, etc, and bring on another depression.

3 The Torbin tax would simply move currency trading off shore, and would be paid only by personal transactions.

Any more bright ideas.

Dunno what SM meant by ideas having been tried and failed. If he's referring to the wartime spiv surcharge in taxation rates then winning the war is hardly evidence of failure. Other items, with his numbering:

1. There would be no scope for retaliatory Make-up tariffs by China. We haven't had LNP governments in place long enough to reduce us to what the Chinese would recognise as slave conditions relative to their own to invite such tariffs.

2. A return to socially owned housing would correct SM's No. 2 for the same reason that many British people are living in Council houses at affordable rents. Investment by governments needs to replace investment by non-wealth-creating predators.

3. The Tobin tax would be a tax imposed in Australia on Australian dollars being changed to foreign currencies. First casualty would be the artificial delays now imposed on personal bank to bank transfers within Australia, imposed in order to maintain a cash pool for playing the currency market - a racket that is destined to be ended soon even without a Tobin tax.

Of course these reforms are not suggested as a sudden revolutionary sea change. They are reforms that need to be sought on a ratchet basis - incremental changes to be nailed down and defended once in place. The ultimate goal is the disempowerment and dispossession of the predatory leaners.

PS: It is probably not necessary to impose Make-up tariffs on a country by country basis. The worst goods sources like that death trap clothing factory in Bangla Desh could be hit with a Make-up tariff for a start without targeting Bangla Desh as a whole. Same with the worst of the factories in other debased ASEAN countries. The effect of a slave factory on Australian employment would also need to be taken into account.