In this time of recession, as many home owners are struggling trying to collect enough rent to cover their multiple mortgages, it is high time the government starts looking at ways it might help reduce the burden on this significant voting demographic I like to dub “shelter creators”.

If it were not for these people’s tireless housing investments over the last decades, most – if not all – of the rental properties that provide shelter for our younger generations simply would not exist. But what thanks do these property owners get? Mortgage rises, governments threatening to end negative gearing, legal mandates to remove mould and fix collapsing, long delapidated properties. The hardship never ends.

And so, I am proposing we implement a new levee on all taxpayers who leach off other people’s hard earned housing, a “renters tax” if you will – to help offset any future interest rate rises for mortgage holders.

Now of course we could never tax people just for renting, that would be ludicrous. Plenty of businesses and non-profits rent, and we wouldn’t want to increase their burden at this time of mere billion dollar profits. Instead I propose a much more ethical system of taxation – a tax on breathing.

This will be implemented to capture some of the value gained by renters who are living for free off of the oxygen contained within their landlord’s homes. Previously landlords have been forced to give this air away for nothing, with no say in whether their tenants are breathing or not, and quite frankly I am amazed this country has allowed this to continue on for so long.

The beauty of this system is that it will ensure houses with multiple sources of income, such as a sharehouse of 8 young working adults, will see every individual taxed for their profligate breathing, and that wealth will then be handed back to the struggling landlord providing the roof over their head – in the form of a rebate. This system I call “negative breathing”.

This will hopefully go some way towards restoring a bit of balance in this otherwise exploitative system which sees the landlord forced to give up their second, third, or forth home in order to accept a mere one third of these ungrateful tennants weekly income.

Further, and perhaps most importantly, this system will create significant new economic growth, as the government slowly sells off ‘breathing rights’ throughout our cities and public spaces. This will allow corporations to provide the public with air in these spaces for a small fee, or perhaps a subscription, where previously this much sought after resource was simply left woefully unmanaged.

Lastly, we must also consider that each generation is larger than the last, and thus breathes more air. Therefore I propose that the breathing tax only apply to those under the age of 50, with the largest tax bracket applying to those under 30, who seem to be growing increasingly entitled about being able to breathe air for free, as if oxygen is exhaled by trees.

I hope we can all agree that this new innovative system of selling the air to our most weathly so that they can fairly distribute it to the masses, is the next great leap forward in our social system. Admittedly there is the small risk some future generation might be left unable to afford to breathe after all the air has been bought up, but I’m sure the government will be ready to spring into swift action to resolve any such issue. Goodness knows what kind of monsters would just let a whole generation go without an essential item, without lifting a finger to fix things.

That would be unthinkable.

The Chaser