"Redistribution".

A recent letter attacking "collectivism" framed publicly financing societal goods as "redistribution."

Popular governments that come to power democratically (e.g. Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru) always move to socialize – that is, share the cost equitably across the entire population and administer publicly on a not-for-profit basis – three fundamental necessities of life: housing, healthcare, and education, all of which are too expensive for individuals to purchase for themselves.

Leaving "capitalism" and "communism" aside, certain free-market fundamentalists seize on precisely these three necessities of life to privatize, commoditize, and exploit to extract economic rent from the productive economy.

Economic rent is income acquired without contributing to production and is obtained by owning assets such as housing, land, monopolies, or speculative financial instruments.

In contrast to profit, which is earned by producing goods or services, economic rent is paid to landlords, bankers, and monopolists for access to land or for controlling essential resources.

Modern macroeconomic thinking centers on the concept of a "mixed" economy: a commercial sector that is driven by market forces, and a public sector whose purpose is to minimize the prices of necessities of life.

There is a reason to organize economies this way, and we can see right here in Victoria how out-of-control housing prices yield the exact opposite results.

Keeping housing, healthcare, and education prices low improves the efficiency, profitability, and competitiveness of private enterprises because wages, and thus prices, in a mixed economy do not need to chase ridiculously inflated housing, healthcare, and education prices.

This keeps prices of locally produced goods traded in global markets competitive, thus strengthening a nation's current account and currency; and it makes more of the surplus created by the productive economy available for investment in public infrastructure, additional productive economic activity (growth), and essential services such as childcare, eldercare, healthcare, education, and mental health and addiction treatment.