THE COST OF OWNING A HOME

by Jeremy Lee
Politicians have suddenly awoken to the fact that the cost of buying a home is beyond the reach of a growing number of Australians. Those able to score an overdraft are faced with a lifetime of mortgage repayments, tempered only by the hope of capital gains, which seem feasible in the current climate, but which can disappear overnight if the housing bubble bursts. Added to this risk is the always possible eventuality of 'down-sizing' – the disappearance of a job which was all-important in the borrowing programme.

Sid Marris (The Australian Financial Review, 5/8/03) wrote:
"... The Housing Industry Association has a stark example for the Productivity Commission of the cavalcade of taxes and double-dipping that has helped drive the first home out of the reach of many young families. In Western Sydney, a house and land package worth $507,000 can carry up to $130,000 in fees and taxes. Land costs of $330,000 are made up of $130,000 purchase cost for the developer, $50,000 development costs and $70,000 in State and local infrastructure fees, $32,000 margin and $18,000 in stamp duty.
The house with a building cost of $156,000, then attracts $5,000 in state and local fees. The GST of $16,000 to be paid is then calculated after the state and local fees are added on to the base cost of the house.
Buying the package, the family would then pay another $18,000 in stamp duty calculated on top of the GST...." Hence the inquiry.

But long before any findings are made, the Prime Minister has told us it won't change anything. Mr. Howard believes he can use housing affordability as an election issue without ever having to do anything about it. Alan Wood (The Australian, 5/8/03) made the point:
"Of course, the Productivity Commission inquiry into housing affordability is a political ploy. So is the blame game between Peter Costello and the states over the impact of stamp duties and the GST on house prices. But because the commission's inquiry smacks of a political stunt, that doesn't mean no good can come of it. Although the Treasurer referred to it as an inquiry into first home ownership, a look at its terms of reference shows the Commission can range as widely as it likes. Among other things, it is asked to 'identify and analyse all components of the cost and price of housing' and 'the operation of the total housing market'."

All of which sounds laudable, but it is hard to see how taxes, fees, stamp duty, plus racketeering in land and housing development, built up over many years into an institution, are going to be solved by an 'inquiry'. No other civilization I am aware of has turned the task of providing a house for a family into such a rort. Even in the meanest Third World country a simple hut is within reach of all. Some, like those built by the Zulu people, are beautiful. There is no lifetime mortgage hanging over them. The cost of building is labour and materials. If that was the case in Australia, luxurious three or four bedroom homes would cost $100,000 or less. So we can expect a slanging match between Peter Costello and the States as to whether it is stamp duty or the GST that is to blame. The truth is that both are iniquitous.

Another heated exchange about effects, without ever dealing with causes. Australia is now one of the most indebted countries in the world. Household debt is approaching 130 per cent of income. It has never been anything like this before. For those lucky enough to have high-paying jobs, life is a stressful race to keep enough income applied to debt service to have hopes of a financially secure future. For the married couple where only one is working, all hope of home ownership disappears – unless they are lucky enough to score a legacy. The GST now grinds in $32 billion a year. Every plank, nail and screw in a home has its GST component. Stamp duty applied by the States brings in approximately $8 billion a year – a quarter of the GST total. The higher the cost of homes, the more the States collect.
They are hardly likely to favour any reduction. There will be a lot of huffing and puffing – but no action.

In the meantime, Australia's money supply has expanded during the last 12 months by 12 per cent, or over $50 billion. This figure is greater than the GST and States' Stamp duty combined. It came into existence through a costless operation called "credit-creation". The trading banks which operate in the mortgage area create the credit out of nothing – and then charge borrowers debt and interest repayments for the rest of their lives.

Let us suppose that Australia made a decision that new additions to the money supply should be credited to the community instead of debited as interest-bearing loans. The first year it happened, the new money was used to abolish the GST, and remove stamp duty on property and houses. It is not hard to see that costs of home ownership would fall dramatically. So would overall home debt. The Royal Commission into Banking in 1937 made it clear that the Government has the power to take such a step. But it would mean taking on the private money-lenders, who like to believe they have the right not only to lend but to create the nation's money.

The same frightening levels of debt are common to all industrialized nations. As a result, the levels of stress and compulsion are slowly ratcheted up from year to year. A few years ago we were shocked to talk of debt in $billions. Now it is $trillions – a figure that the human mind is incapable of envisaging.

Although neither Costello nor Howard would concede it, there is a close relationship between the debt system we operate and the social breakdown stalking the land. Suicides, drugs, marriage breakdown etc are escalated by financial crisis to a greater extent than many may believe. Until we can get populations into the land of credit, human crisis will increase. This includes reducing taxes to sane levels.

It is remarkable that all this is happening at one of the most incredible technological periods in human history. We have invented every type of gadget or process to make production faster and easier. This includes building. One result is an ever-decreasing requirement for full employment. But the debt system has stopped the benefits flowing to the ordinary people. The result is human misery.

C.H. Douglas, who predicted so accurately the results of operating our money systems in this way, also stressed that the vested interests in keeping the debt monopoly were so entrenched that there was no countervailing force capable of changing things. It seemed inevitable to him, and seems even more so now, that the degeneration would finally results in a point of crisis in which the very foundations of society would be shaken, tottering towards collapse. At such a point it might be possible to insert a lever into human thinking which would result in changes seemingly impossible at the moment.

Meanwhile, the stage-play goes on – first Costello, that the State premiers centre stage, thumping their chests with dramatic speeches to "fill the ears of the groundlings". What a shock if the Commission extended its terms of reference to the money system itself – and came out with some genuine proposals for improvement. It is doubtful if their report would ever see the light of day!

AUSTRALIA'S OWN UNDERCOVER 'HOUSEWIFE' AGENT

by Betty Luks
Older League supporters will remember either hearing personally (the lady spoke on a number of League platforms) or reading stories of Mrs. Anne Neill. As a 52-year-old Adelaide housewife, she spent seven years as a member of the Communist Party whilst carrying out doing undercover work for the Australian Security. Mrs. Neill's story was published in the Sunday Mail, 16/12/61. Australia had her own "clergymen who then walked serenely and happily through the anti-God museums, the politicians who claimed that no system of society could possibly be more equitable and just, lawyers who admired Soviet justice, and economists who praised the Soviet economy...." thus, the public release of the story of Anne Neill must have come as quite a shock to the 1950-60s Communists in Adelaide, Australia.

As a worker in 20 different Communist-influenced groups, she reported regularly to Australian Security about their activities. This was surely one loyal Australian lady who could have told us more about the Communist use of 'fronts' and well understood Babette Gross' directive: "You do not endorse Stalin. You do not call yourself a Communist. You do not call upon people to support the Soviets. Never. You claim to be an independent minded idealist. You don't really understand politics but you claim the little guy is getting a lousy break."

Called upon to take on role
When Mrs. Neill was asked to take on the role of security agent, she wondered what were her qualifications for such an onerous task; "..in my family we had grown up with a tradition of service... accustomed to accept responsibility. My father was respected as a good neighbour... This for me was a path of duty."
She spoke of the starry-eyed comrades who attended the 1950s "Congress of the Peoples for Peace" at the Konzerthaus in Vienna. Here in the great hall, "representatives from all over the world had gathered to discuss 'peaceful co-existence' – and to proclaim the Communist doctrine... The Red Dean of Canterbury, Dr. Hewlitt Johnson, was there", as was "...the Rev. Allan Brand," from Australia.

Anne Neill's report reveals the rot had well and truly set in and was eating away at the foundations of our Society including the Christian Church more than fifty years ago. Yes, "by attacking the social fabric, the feminists inflicted more damage to Western society than Communists ever dreamed possible..." But, this may not have happened had the faithful not been blind to 'the enemy within', an enemy who managed to penetrate to the very heart of our Faith and Culture.

THE GODS OF THE 20th-21st CENTURY

by Betty Luks
Westerners are perplexed and worried in these uncertain times. Where did things go wrong? Why is it no matter where we look, human affairs are in such disarray? The Rev'd Janice Hughes (On Target 4/8/03) focussed her attention on John Howard's 'economic rationalist' policies and the disastrous results of those policies – and the philosophy from which they stem.
"Economic Rationalism, places money (mammon...ed) at the head of all considerations ..." she writes. "There is no place for God and certainly no place for our neighbour...Economic rationalism is 'a false god."
And, as we noted in the article, a man's god is the power in whom he trusts.

But the rot, the disease, is much deeper and goes back much further than the "economic rationalists" of the late 20th century. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put his finger on a source of our troubles when he asserted, "Men have forgotten God." As a late convert to the Christian faith, Malcolm Muggeridge, observed first-hand the appalling intellectual conceit of the early 20th-century intelligentsia, approvingly swanning around Moscow during those 'heady days' of the Communist regime. He wrote in "The Great Liberal Death Wish": "...Western Man, as it were, (went) sleep-walking into his own ruin... the extraordinary performance of the liberal intelligentsia, who, in those days, flocked to Moscow like pilgrims to Mecca. And they were one and all utterly delighted and excited by what they saw there. Clergymen walked serenely and happily through the anti-God museums, politicians claimed that no system of society could possibly be more equitable and just, lawyers admired Soviet justice, and economists praised the Soviet economy...."
Mr. Muggeridge indicated how and why this happened – men had elevated themselves to the centre of the Universe.

That is a very old temptation
"And the devil said, "Ye shall be as a god."
Sadly, many of these people have never acknowledged they were, and are, in error. Their disciples are entrenched in our halls of learning and are infecting our young with their conceited beliefs. They rejected God, Natural Law and the lessons of history.

THE CANCEROUS GROWTH IN THE TEMPLE OF FAITH

But what of the money-changers' cancerous growth in the Temple of the Christian Faith?
The money-changers entered the temple further back than Charles I, and were firmly entrenched, having finally usurped the prerogative of the King to mint and issue the nation's money, when the Bank of England was established in 1694.
Further reading: "The Enemy Within the Empire" by Eric D. Butler; "History of Monetary Crimes" by Alexander del Mar.

Geoffrey Dobbs wrote of the problem forty years ago
"It is not the technics or the economics but the faith and morals of the matter which urgently require the attention of Christian people. The fundamental fact, from the Christian point of view, about the modern money system is that it denies the redemption of debt; and therefore denies deliverance from that temptation which debt brings to bear upon debtors. Money nowadays is virtually synonymous with financial credit, which comes into existence only as a debt repayable to the issuers, so that by its very nature such debt is irredeemable and must increase and accumulate power in the hands of the creditors; although of course, in each particular case, the debtor may free himself by transferring the burden to others.
This terrible moral strain permeates all that part of life into which monetary considerations enter."

The problem of the constitution, i.e., the nature of the money which is demanded
Whilst the questions of the purpose of taxes and consent to the taxes must be taken into account, the nature of the stuff demanded is also of great importance. The old tithes (ten percent of the increase), paid in kind, provide a good example of a tax essentially just in constitution. Assuming it was agreed that the priest/clergy should be freed from physical production, their task being to point men to God, there was nothing intrinsically unjust in the payment of a portion of the increase of the produce of the land for their maintenance. As the tithe was payable in kind and on the increase, in times of good or bad harvests, debts would not accumulate. Just as a farmer cannot produce this year's crop with next year's rain, so he would not have to pay this year's tithe with next year's harvest!
In other words, in the natural world, he does not have to mortgage his future in order to live now. The husbandman of the soil would either consume a little less of his produce, or work a little harder, in order to support the priest/clergy.

This is in accordance with Natural Law; the soil, rightly cared for, with the necessary effort, will produce enough for all. The same argument can be applied to the maintenance of a properly constituted civil government. In which case, Caesar will get his limited portion and then there will be more than enough left over, pressed down and over flowing, for God.

ORIGINS OF MAMMON

In time payment in kind became impracticable and an accounting system was devised – it is called money. Money is not a thing created by God, nor is it produced or obtainable by the taxpayer from Nature. It is created and controlled by a very restricted group of men – the modern centralised banking system.

The conditions under which this medium, indispensable to taxpayers and all other debtors, can only be obtained from those who bring it into existence. Having created the figures out of nothing, they claim the 'money' as their own, and insist it is to be repaid to them on terms of interest (in other words, usury).

The real nature of the created world
If the money system reflected, as closely as the mental ability of man can devise, the real nature of the created world and its potentialities, whatever is naturally possible will also be financially possible. A tithe (tax) which is payable in produce will be no greater burden in money – as well as being more convenient. It is not only the John Howard-Liberals who need to understand these truths, but also the leaders of the Christian churches. Who knows, a modern Stephen Langton might yet arise from within the Church to lead his people out of the present and future chaos.

Again we remind you gentle reader: You need to do some serious reading. You need to be 'deprogrammed'. The League Book Services carry a range of books explaining how the 'money changers' (mammon) usurped the powers of government and now lord it over us all.

Must reading
"The Just Tax" by Geoffrey Dobbs; "The ABC of Social Credit" by Elizabeth Holter; "Australia 2000 – How Bright the Vision" by Jeremy Lee; "The Truth About Social Credit" by Eric D. Butler; "The Money Trick" by Institute of Economic Democracy; "The Breakdown of the Employment System" & "The Use of Money" by C.H. Douglas.

For the beginner the "Introducing Social Credit" series.

Details and prices for all books are available on request from all League Book Services. Look us up on this webpage!

BETTY FRIEDAN: 'MOMMY' WAS A COMMIE

by Henry Makow, PhD
"Comrades, you will remember the ancient tale of the capture of Troy ... The attacking army was unable to achieve victory until, with the aid of the famous Trojan Horse, it managed to penetrate to the very heart of the enemy camp."
George Dimitrov, Comintern General Secretary, August, 1935.

Betty Friedan, the "founder of modern feminism" pretended to be a typical 1950's American mother who had a "revelation" that women like her were exploited and should seek independence and self-fulfillment in career. What Friedan (nee: Betty Naomi Goldstein) didn't say is that she had been a Communist propagandist since her student days at Smith College (1938-1942) and that the destruction of the family has always been central to the Communist plan for world government.
See "The Communist Manifesto" (1848). https://www.fathersforlife.org/cm.htm

Friedan dropped out of grad school to become a reporter for a Communist news service. From 1946-1952 she worked for the newspaper of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, (UE) "the largest Communist-led institution of any kind in the United States". In 1947, Congress targeted the UE as a Communist front and its membership began a steady decline. Daniel Horowitz, a History Professor at Smith with impeccable Liberal and Feminist credentials, documents all this in his book, Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War and Modern Feminism (University of Massachusetts Press 1999).

Horowitz cites a union member who described how a Communist minority "seized control of the UE national office, the executive board, the paid-staff, the union newspaper and some district councils and locals". Betty Frieden doesn't want anyone to know her radical antecedents. Throughout her career, she said she had no interest in the condition of women before her "revelation". She refused to co-operate with Professor Horowitz and accused him of "Red-baiting". Why? Because her book "The Feminist Mystique" (1963) would not have sold over five million copies if her subversive background were known.

Communists operate by subterfuge – pretending to be just like us. This is the "Popular Front" strategy that consisted of starting idealistic movements in order to ensnare well-meaning people, usually students, workers, women, artists or intellectuals. The membership was ignorant that their organization was funded and controlled by people with a totally different agenda. This is also the principle behind freemasonry, Zionism and Communism itself. Essentially the adherents are dupes.

Willi Munzenberg, an early confidante of Lenin, organized the Popular Fronts in the 1920's and 1930's and referred to them as "my innocents' clubs". He pioneered the protest march, the demonstration, the radical bookstore and publication, the arts festival, and the recruitment of naïve celebrities ("fellow travellers"). In the words of historian Stephen Koch, Munzenberg "was amazingly successful at mobilizing the intelligentsia of the West on behalf of a moralistic set of political attitudes responsive to Soviet needs. In the process, he organized and defined the 'enlightened' moral agenda of his era." (Double Lives: Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War of Ideas Against the West, New York, 1994, p.14.)

In a 1989 interview, Babette Gross, the wife of Willy Munstenberg, described the Popular Front modus operandi: "You do not endorse Stalin. You do not call yourself a Communist. You do not call upon people to support the Soviets. Never. You claim to be an independent minded idealist. You don't really understand politics but you claim the little guy is getting a lousy break." (Koch, P. 220) Friedan observed this principle when she helped start second-wave feminism, which is a classic "Popular Front".

The very name "the woman's movement" and claim to be for "equality" are but a smoke screen for a diabolical crusade to destroy the institution of the family. For example, feminist professor Alison Jagger calls the nuclear family "a cornerstone of woman's oppression: it enforces women's dependence on men, it enforces heterosexuality and it imposes the prevailing masculine and feminine character structures on the next generation" ("Feminist Politics and Human Nature", 1988)

The "Congress of American Women", a Popular Front organization founded in 1946, reached a membership of 250,000. It was disbanded in 1950 after being required to register as a "foreign agent" by the US Government. Feminist historian Ruth Rosen writes that the "CAW's agenda prefigured much of the modern women's movement that emerged in the sixties." (Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America, New York, 2000, p.28.)

The FBI kept tabs on the "Women's movement" but found no direct connection with Soviet subversion. Ruth Rosen, herself a veteran, finds this ironic. "Ironically, the FBI searched for signs of subversion in the Women's movement but couldn't recognize what was truly dangerous. While they looked for Communists and bombs, the women's movement was shattering traditional ideas about work, customs, education, sexuality, and the family. Ultimately the movement would prove far more revolutionary than the FBI could ever imagine. Feminism would leave a legacy of disorientation, debate and disagreement, create cultural chaos and social change for millions of men and women, and, in the process, help ignite the culture wars that would polarize American society. But at the time these ideas were not what the FBI considered subversive." By attacking the social fabric, feminists inflicted more damage to Western society than Communists ever dreamed possible..."

BASIC FUND

SOUTH AUSTRALIAN STATE WEEKEND

SYDNEY CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUB

August 28th is the Annual General Meeting, followed by two brief talks. To celebrate the 30th year of the SCSC, Roy Gustard will present a short history of the Club followed by Maurice Shaya on Afghanistan.

SYDNEY FORUM

For those interested in attending the 2003 Sydney Forum (convened by the Inverell Forum) contact our NSW Book Services for further details.

UNITED SETTLERS ASSOCIATION (UKSA)