On the Budget 2011-12

Dear Mr. Minister,

It is a widely known fact that in countries where home ownership outnumbers house renters, the negatives in society such as crime and addicted behavior are sharply reduced. In these countries communities thrive, neighborhoods glisten and the people live secure with their families and their neighbors. Drug blocks and gang dens cannot spring up, and if they do they do not last because the home owners will neither accept nor tolerate it in their communities. Sadly in our country the opposite occurs, and we are ending up with a large peasant class beholding to landlords for their living space.  As it stands the people of this nation are disenfranchised due to the sheer impossibility of the average person to own a home, and because of this families break, neighborhoods collapse and the society as a whole fails to thrive. Where vibrant communities made up of generations that have grown together over the years should be standing we have ended up with ghettoes and squatter communities, broken families and children with no understanding of their rich history or their culture.

All of this has been wrought on the people by either unsophisticated or uncaring governments in the past, but the fruits of those failed policies have led us to where we find ourselves as a nation today. Mr. Minister, few Ministries have the capacity to effect dramatic social change for all manner of people like yours can, and the instrument of the budget to lead social reform through proper legislation and taxation is the central pillar of a functional capitalist democracy as you are no doubt well aware. They say that some men are born great while others have greatness thrust upon them, and regardless of how you come to find yourself where you are at this moment in history, I implore you to seize the opportunity to make this blessed nation the paradise on earth it was meant to be for all of its citizens. The burden now falls to you to wrench the momentum from its current course and redirect the ship of state to calmer and steadier seas.

Our intention must be to make it easy for people to acquire their own homes, and I would like to suggest the following.

We need to:

• Abolish the Stamp Duty on houses under one million dollars for first time buyers.
• Offer 'simple' mortgages based on 'principal plus ten per cent' over twenty years for first time home owners for houses under one million dollars. (In other words, someone borrowing one million would only have to pay back one point one million over the life of the loan)
• Offer zero deposit down on first time home owners for houses under one million dollars.

These three acts alone could propel current renters into home ownership in quick time as it would immediately become cheaper and easier to buy than to rent. This would cause a boom in the real estate and construction sectors for houses in the target range, and people who currently cannot qualify to own homes will suddenly become kings of their castles, raising many from barely making ends meet to people of means.

We live on a rather small island and there is no escaping the fact that land is a scarce resource. To ensure this plan could become a reality we also need to guarantee that there are houses available to be purchased and that idle housing land is put to the use for which it was intended. This needs addressing and can be re-engineered utilizing the property tax system.

To discourage real estate being used as investment (which drives the prices up due to supply and demand) I would like to propose that taxes on first homes be minimal if at all, but taxes on second homes be set at a rate that makes real estate speculation less attractive and taxes on third and fourth homes burdensome. Idle housing lands also need to be addressed, and all idle land not developed for more than three years should be reclaimed by the State and auctioned. While the very rich may be tempted to see this as a tax on their success, nothing could be further from the truth as what I am suggesting here is the removal of idle capital stored in a manner that is having a negative effect on the society as a whole and redirecting it elsewhere. Perhaps as a counter balance to this measure incentives could be offered for agricultural and entrepreneurial financing, government guarantees and tax breaks so as to create a new industry in the place of the one being removed.

Mr. Minister, should you see the benefits of these suggestions and act on them, you would be single handedly transforming many of the people of this country from handout seeking drones into forward looking, family-oriented, progressive middle classed people, reduce crime and develop our nation for the better. A richer legacy you would be hard pressed to find, and you would be forever remembered for having re-engineered a failed State into a vibrant, evolved and civil society dedicated to the advancement of all its citizens and not just a privileged few.