OnPoint: It's real
87 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 Newer→ Last
-
giovanni tiso, in reply to
Yes, see, I think a lot of people reckon that he argues dishonestly. I don't. I think he just doesn't grasp concepts of moderate difficulty and above.
-
Goff gave a very good interview this morning, can't see it posted in this thread, so it's here.
Gio, I'm with Sacha on this, I don't think David's stupid, I do think he's spinning (I also think Labour's wedged the government nicely on this).
-
Rik, in reply to
For one thing, the biggest benefit going is national super
Right - let's do away with it then!
Do Australia have an equivalent to national super? Or do they just have a compulsory retirement savings scheme?
-
Rik, currently Australians pay 9 percent compulsory superannuation on salary and wages.
-
Rik, one could see the Cullen fund and Kiwisaver as laying the groundwork for a transition to a more Australian-type regime. That is, compulsory contribution out of earnings, and means-tested social security for those who haven't saved enough.
However, I imagine that if Labour were to join those particular dots, history would repeat itself.
-
Islander, in reply to
There many things that cause me to damn the Muldoon government, but the destruction of the super fund still looms largest. Even bigger than the ridiculous 'Thing Big' wastage...
trust rightwingers? Never in a million years. -
Money for nothing...
Now that Hone is drawing a salary while not under oath, perhaps we should look at a Capital Games Tax for our big Parliamentary earners... -
Keith Ng, in reply to
I/S: no, government is not all about redistribution. It's main function is to provide public goods that otherwise wouldn't be provided, to look after the interests of the community in a scale and in a timeframe in which individuals can't.
Redistribution is a part of that, but certainly not all of it. And this obsession with handing out money for private consumption is throttling the ability of governments to do use it's resources to do stuff for the long-term public good.
-
Andre, in reply to
Thanks for pointing out that the whole lending ratio between business and property is currently developed on purely commercial lending terms associated with risk.
Imagine if banks were made to follow the US doctrine whereby mortagees unable to continue servicing their debt are able to walk away leaving the banks holding the whole can rather than being able to bankrupt the debtor to chase them for any loss made? Aussie-owned banks make $4 billion a year in NZ. With no current downside. Let's legislate to allow kiwis to walk out of a mortgage with no debt while we're at it. That would encourage a higher deposit rate (5% deposits would become an urban legend) and make business lending more interesting. -
Kumara Republic, in reply to
There many things that cause me to damn the Muldoon government, but the destruction of the super fund still looms largest. Even bigger than the ridiculous 'Thing Big' wastage...
trust rightwingers? Never in a million years.Nigel Lawson did the same with Britain's North Sea wealth. The Norwegians, on the other hand...
-
DexterX, in reply to
The statment easier than you think doesn't cut it - Can you tell me how it is going to happen?
-
DexterX, in reply to
How does the Fred the plumber scenario you have laid out provide for growth in the productive base of the economy - Fred is still doing what he was doing before he borrowed the $20,000 – but he has a better work wagon which he can depreciate and perhaps a wider screen TV than he had before- reference to Michael Cullen.
One of the other illustrations you make is:
US found out recently, when homeowners go belly up they tend to do it in droves,
The NZ downturn and the extent of the subprime-lending crisis in the USA although related to a degree are not the same. I note that the USA having a CGT didn't stop the GFC - they are not related.
You previous post, although quite oblique, reads to my minds towards favouring wider diversification across stock and financial markets.
The Labour party conferece this year was about a CGT driving investment to the productive and innovative sector of the economy.
The “free market economy” was never a device that efficiently distributed resources; anyone who believed this never had a grip on reality.
“A capital gains tax was considered to be a vital part of the mix. Too many are doing business for a capital gain rather than development of technology. And change has to occur.”
I found this a bit naive. Who are the “Too many that are doing business for capital gain” and what is the proof? What “technology” did the people at the Labour Party conference and those blogging in Public Address forums in support of CGT want “developed” and what risks were they going to take on to do “it” – whatever “it” was that they considered needed doing?
-
Craig Ranapia, in reply to
I’d be more inclined to agree if …
You didn’t agree with Ganesh Nana and think David Farrar is a partisan hack who’s never seen a stat he can’t bad touch into gibberish? And sorry for being harsh here, Russell, but how exactly does a low-quality post on Farrar’s blog balance out, mitigate or give a pass to Nine to Noon failing to properly disclose a bleeding obvious COI?
-
Islander, in reply to
No comment on Muldoon & the stifling of the Labour-initiated National Superannuation eh Craig?
THAT is where the rot began in our economy, best as I/amateur can see- -
Sacha, in reply to
Does Ganesh Nana regularly do work for Labour and is he used by them to seed their comms?
-
Sacha, in reply to
The NZ downturn and the extent of the subprime-lending crisis in the USA although related to a degree are not the same. I note that the USA having a CGT didn't stop the GFC - they are not related.
Someone said that 50% of our most recent NZ residential bubble would have been removed by a CGT. Can't remember where, but recent.
-
Russell Brown, in reply to
You didn’t agree with Ganesh Nana and think David Farrar is a partisan hack who’s never seen a stat he can’t bad touch into gibberish? And sorry for being harsh here, Russell, but how exactly does a low-quality post on Farrar’s blog balance out, mitigate or give a pass to Nine to Noon failing to properly disclose a bleeding obvious COI?
Jolly good. Radio New Zealand, who are not controlled by the Labour Party, didn't note that Nana's company had done some of the modelling for Labour's policy. They ought have done so, I quite agree, even though Nana is a fairly frequent commentator on RNZ.
But did Nana give misleading information? Was he partisan? No. Did David Farrar, whose own interests with National were not acknowledged either, do those things? I think he quite clearly did.
I'm not outraged by him being tapped as a commentator, but I'm quite shocked by how disingenuous his commentary was. And I think a comparison with Nana is, in this case, quite insulting to Nana.
-
BenWilson, in reply to
What “technology” did the people at the Labour Party conference and those blogging in Public Address forums in support of CGT want “developed” and what risks were they going to take on to do “it” – whatever “it” was that they considered needed doing?
Ooo, ooo, I can answer that, being one of those people on PAS arguing for it. The kind of technology could be exemplified what I was doing at the same time as arguing with you - writing a software product to sell in a mass export market. It was a very, very hard grind, because it takes years to do it right, and how the hell do you pay yourself in the meantime? If, however, I could leverage the way you can with property, I could quite possibly have got it to market in a tenth of the time, by hiring some staff using money borrowed from the bank. However, no bank would ever lend me hundreds of thousands of dollars on a speculative venture like that. They were, however, happy to lend me hundreds of thousands just to buy a house, which actually lost value during that period.
-
Ian Dalziel, in reply to
The Norwegians, on the other hand…
Won't anyone think of the cods?
-
Islander, in reply to
O fuck yes!
Now, let's see - my batter recipe? The dried version? The complex & varied soused et al platter?
I'm sure I could find/make up political analogies/metaphors.Thing is, Norway -smallish, has done so much better than we have - and it's done it
-partially- by having a very good social welfare system. (Mind you, it's also done it by having an homogenous population (aside from northern Sami...) -
Also by having metric fuckloads of juicy, juicy oil and gas.
plus cod liver oil... Perhaps not such a plus that.
-
DexterX, in reply to
That is in part my point faced with a choice "you" prefer the house over creating the brave new frontier.
-
Someone said that 50% of our most recent NZ residential bubble would have been removed by a CGT. Can't remember where, but recent.
Can you point to me where you get this from.
Having regard to REINZ figures from 2008 through to early 2011 - the movement has been "mostly" up with the biggest increases taking place when comparing the later parts of the years 2008 and 2009.
-
BenWilson, in reply to
That is in part my point faced with a choice "you" prefer the house over creating the brave new frontier.
I hope you can see that that is not the case. I choose to own property because it has been one of the soundest investment classes for decades in NZ, but in terms of actually making money I spent most of my time thinking about my day job, which does actually bring in money from overseas. Probably I should have put a lot more thought into the property, done it differently, followed in the footsteps of my grandfather who built a number of the shopping centers around Auckland. Trouble is, my natural bent is to do what I actually do do, to write software. I'm good at that, it pays well, and that's about all the excuses I've got for not having considerably more net worth than I do. I don't basically think like a capitalist, I think and act like someone who is, always was, and quite probably always will be, middle class. It's always been my view that a pervasive middle class is about the closest capitalism can ever get to socialism. It offers the best chance for people to work in, and live lives that aren't all about the money.
-
BenWilson, in reply to
And to that end, I think that economic stagnation is a fairly inevitable consequence of socialist policy. I just don't think that's so bad. It's a curious leveling process, which is actually making the world a better place, that it means once nations get a basic level of economic stability, they will converge on the wealthier nations, and international inequality will decrease. It's a chaotic method, but it's also happening all by itself.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.