Sacred Economics Money Gift and Society in the Age of transition by Charles Eisenstein. You can see more details and download chapters of the book here

Polarization of wealth is inevitable when people are allowed to profit from merely owning a thing, without producing anything or contributing to society. These profits, known as economic rents, accrue to the holders of land, the electromagnetic spectrum, mineral rights, oil reserves, patents, and many other forms of property. Because these forms of property either were prior to any human being or are the collective product of human culture, they should not belong to any private individual who does not use them for the benefit of the public and the planet.
In addition, today it is possible to profit by depleting aspects of the commonwealth such as biodiversity, aquifers, soil, ocean fisheries, and so on. These properly belong to all of us, and their depletion should only happen by common agreement and for the common good.
Transition and policy: Some states and nations already levy land-value taxes, and others have nationalized oil and minerals. The country of Bolivia and the state of Alaska, for example, assert public ownership over oil rights, so that oil companies earn money only for their services in extracting the oil, and not from owning the oil. Shifting the tax burden away from labor and toward property will become more and more attractive as wage earners’ situations become desperate. Finally, as intractable regulatory battles over water rights show, building resource conservation directly into the money system is an idea whose time is coming.
Measures such as Georgist land-value taxes, leasing of mineral rights, and the use of the subjects of economic rent as a currency backing as described in this book are ways to return economic rents to the people, so that private interests can only profit by using property well, not by merely owning it. Anything that comes from the commons should be subject to fees or taxes. Intellectual property can be returned to the commons by shortening the terms of copyrights and patents, thereby acknowledging the cultural matrix from which ideas arise. We must also keep new sources of wealth, such as the genome, the electromagnetic spectrum, and the new “commons” of the internet, in the public domain, allocating their use only to those who use it to benefit society and the planet.
Effect on economic life: With a shift of taxation onto property and resources, sales and income taxes will be reduced or eliminated, and a strong economic incentive for conservation created. Since economic rents enrich those who already own, eliminating them will foster a more equitable distribution of wealth. In the realm of intellectual property, the widening of the public domain will encourage cultural creations that are not geared toward profit, as the “raw materials” of artistic and intellectual creation will be less subject to royalties and the limitations of private property.

Certain sectors of the economy are crying out for stimulus. In particular there is a housing crisis. The shortage of housing, particularly affordable housing is acute. Debate rages as to how to get house-building started. One of the largest voices is blaming planning restrictions and calling for relaxation of regulations but will that be enough?

The National Trust and CPRE have claimed that there is already around 300,000 sites available with planning permission sitting in “land banks”. Why are they not being put to use? The problem is that the main priority of the large firms that own this land is not building houses but making a profit. If they started to build and increased the supply house prices would start to drop. But it would not just be house prices but the value of their land banks that would drop. The decrease in the value of the companies’ assets would affect their profitability.

What is needed is a stimulus that makes it more profitable for them to use the land than hold onto it. A simple solution that could be practically implemented over a short time scale would be to extend business rates to include unoccupied land. The previous extension of NNDR to cover unoccupied buildings was effective in bringing more existing buildings into use. If un-occupied commercial land, which would include the land banks, was subject to business rates the cost of holding it out of land would making it uneconomical not to use it. Once houses were complete and occupied they would no longer be subject to the business rate. Not only would this measure stimulate house-building but it the extra jobs and trading would simultaneously increase Government Revenue. There would be knock-on effects. Banks would have something worthwhile to lend against. A drop in house prices caused by the increase in supply has beneficial effects. They become more affordable,  particularly to first time buyers and as housing costs decrease there is more disposable income to be spent on other things.

In the absence of any meaningful pronouncement from the higher members of the church’s clergy this sermon form Paul Nicholson delivered on the steps of the cathedral on Sunday afternoon is worth showing here:

My sermon is directed at the Bishop of London and the Dean of St Paul’s because I don’t think they understand the enormity, the magnitude of the economic injustice that has happened and is happening now,  or the hurt it causes, and  about which we protest robustly but non-violently and peacefully. My understanding of our faith is that we love everyone and put our impoverished, our sick and our old fellow citizens first. We believe that love should inspire the use of power, which should be exercised in the interests of justice.

The British Parliament lost sight of those principles when it deregulated lending while copying the government of the United States in the 1980s. The next governments in both nations continued to allow the City of London and Wall Street recklessly to exploit that lack of regulation for private gain and to allow landlords to profit from the consequent rise of land prices and rents;  so housing benefit rose to £22 billion a year in the UK. Parliament never put the lid on it. It all blew up in 2008.

To deal with the inevitable financial crisis the present government is taking £18 billion out of the welfare paid to the poorest citizens and capping their housing benefit.  They have not hit the landlords in any direct way who profited from that £22 billion in 2010 and many more billions each year before that. Parliament is hitting the poorest hard.  Parliament is not hitting the wealthy in any effective way.  That stands on its head the Christian principle of love inspiring power and justice which put the poorest citizens first.

Dear Bishop and Dear Dean the inconvenience of a few tents on your doorstep is nothing when compared to the anguish of several million tenants threatened with debt, eviction and the bailiffs because they cannot pay the rent in this country through no fault of their own, or the increasing poverty of many millions in many parts of the world because of the reckless, uncontrolled and disorderly behaviour in the City of London and Wall Street. You have lost your sense of proportion. Our peaceful but determined outrage should have your Christian support without threatening the use of the coercive and punitive powers of the State .

The Corporation of the City of London has begun legal proceedings against you. The Corporation’s moral and democratic authority to do that should be challenged. It is a democratic anomaly. Its members are businessmen who have to be resident in the UK, Europe or the Commonwealth. The majority of the Corporation’s electorate do not live in the City and can vote for their own local authority elections as well as the City’s. The Corporation is very wealthy and wields power fare greater than any other group of UK citizens with immediate access to 10 Downing Street. Its failure to regulate its constituency has diminished, if not negated, any moral authority they might have had in a debate about the economic catastrophe which they allowed to happen, and continue to happen, let alone to set the police onto peaceful campers with a fully justifiable anger.

I will finish with a prayer for peace which was first used in 1986 when Pope John Paul invited all the faiths to Assisi to pray for peace.  Remember when we say “peace” it means not only the absence of conflict or violence but also the presence of wellbeing and good will—– and justice.

Heavenly Father, in your word you have given us a vision of that holy city

to which the nations of the world bring their glory.

Behold and visit, we pray, the cities of the earth.

Renew the ties of mutual regard that form our civic life.

Send us honest and able leaders.

Enable us to eliminate poverty, prejudice and oppression,

that peace may prevail with righteousness,

and justice with order.

That men and women from different cultures

and with differing talents may find in one another

the fulfilment of their humanity.

Amen

Rev Paul Nicolson

Chair, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust

The Inter-generational Foundation recently published their report on the intergenerational crisis in the housing market, entitled: Hoarding of Housing. It highlights the way that many houses are under-occupied by the older generation effectively crowding out the younger generation from the housing market. It also points out the way the housing situation is forcing a huge transfer of earned wealth from the younger to the older generation. For many it will be uncomfortable reading. Amongst the policy recommendations are shifts in the tax system so that property wealth is taxed in preference to earned income; this includes advocating lad value tax as a much fairer and progressive than the present regressive council tax.

Here is the executive summary:

1 The current system is unsustainable. It is undemocratic and unjust. We need alternatives; this is where we work towards them.

2 We are of all ethnicities, backgrounds, genders, generations, sexualities dis/abilities and faiths. We stand together with occupations all over the world.

3 We refuse to pay for the banks’ crisis.

4 We do not accept the cuts as either necessary or inevitable. We demand an end to global tax injustice and our democracy representing corporations instead of the people.

5 We want regulators to be genuinely independent of the industries they regulate.

6 We support the strike on the 30^th November and the student action on the 9^th November, and actions to defend our health services, welfare, education and employment, and to stop wars and arms dealing.

7 We want structural change towards authentic global equality. The world’s resources must go towards caring for people and the planet, not the military, corporate profits or the rich.

8 We stand in solidarity with the global oppressed and we call for an end to the actions of our government and others in causing this oppression.

9 This is what democracy looks like. Come and join us!

The remedy? If there was a tax on land values then there would effectively be a penalty for not using land. If applied at the right level it would make it more profitable for house-builders to build houses rather than not build houses to the advantage of the rest of the economy.