đź“š View in PSE Archive
Summary
Phil’s postcard from Pondok Indah, Jakarta. He uses Indonesia’s new President Prabowo as an example of how populist promises (higher wages, 15 million houses, free school lunches for all children = 14% of Indonesia’s budget) inevitably fail without understanding land economics. Free school meals are costing 14% of the budget; new housing will eat into farmland. The answer — to every government’s fiscal challenges, including Trump’s trade war — is to tax idle land. No government does this because land has been written out of economics.
Key Claims
- Indonesia’s free school meals program costs 14% of the national budget. — confidence: high
- New housing development in Indonesia risks consuming 20 million hectares of farmland and forest. — confidence: high
- Taxing idle land into use is the universal solution to low wages, housing shortages, and government revenue gaps. — confidence: high
- Trump’s trade war revenue solution (tariffs) misidentifies the problem — land value capture is the real answer. — confidence: high