Posts by Rob Stowell
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Speaker: The Voyage: On Interpreting and…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
the rapid backdown on class sizes shows they have had to listen when voters’ genuine outrage reaches critical mass and boils over.
Does anyone else get the feeling policy turns are dictated by the PR team?
C-T: John, we just can’t sell this class-size thing
JK: Ok, what about asset sales?
C-T: The focus groups are telling us you have 18 months-
J K: Ok, U-turn on A, full-speed ahead on B. Now what’s the current favourability of beneficiaries? -
I wish I could see past my narrow self-interest on this one :)
We are classically ‘asset-rich, cash poor’. Not because we sank loads of money into property: it’s a family property, and it was bought way-back when land prices- for marginal farming land- were very low.
Due to the boom in real-estate prices over the last 15-odd years, particularly coastal land- which bears little to no relation to productivity, and which I seriously wish had not happened- even a 0.5% land tax could force us off our home.
That might leave us well off. If our first life-priority were to always look for the best way to rationalise our finances, we’d have sold up, cashed in, years ago.
But we happen to love it, feel connected with it, and to have put a lot of ourselves into it, in ways which may not be in our ‘rational self-interest’ but which have been rewarding- enriching.
Previously it was mob-stocked for about 3 months of the year (by the current Minister of Ag, as it happens), and otherwise left as a real-estate investment. It’s steep, erosion-prone, with some good soil, but some poor soil too. Also very prone to drought.
We’ve planted more than 25,000 exotic/timber trees (ok, contracters did a lot of it) and 12,000 natives (much lower survival rate, though). We’ve built fences and tracks and sheds and a house; put in troughs and tanks and pipes. We’ve seen korimako and kereru return- an explosion of bird numbers.
We’ve put a fair swag of our single income into the place (it’s the opposite of profitable) and we still feel lucky. We are.
I very selfishly can’t see past the part of a land tax that would force us to sell it to someone much richer. Probably a ‘developer’ who would twist the council’s arm, and offer them parks and roads and other delights, til he/she could carve it up into dinky little bits and make gazzilions! of lovely $$$$$$$$$$$$
But- I also don’t believe Land Tax is the right model for land-ownership, or taxation. I want us to be able to value land for more than its ‘productive’ ($$$) return. I still want NZ to be a place where most people own their own home.
House-prices in the last 15 years have killed that. We have to stop the nonsense of borrowing billions from overseas to bid up each others house/land prices. Shifting those billions out of our house-mortgages and into ‘productive investment’ isn’t easy or painless, but it needs to be done. I don’t have a lot of ideas about how to best do this- but am convinced a broad CGT is the first step.
Wringing more and ever more out of the land? Not the way forward. -
Speaker: The Voyage: Dutch Disease –…, in reply to Sam M,
In my view a modest but broad land tax would fund sufficient revenue to provide for a meaningful reduction in income taxes and allow an attempt at a ‘different way’ of chasing economic prosperity (as a nation) than the path we are currently on.
How so?
To me it just shifts land-owning even more in the direction of the wealthy, and forces all land to become economically active- with no regard to environmental values, family/iwi values, or aesthetic values (and that’s a big part of tourism.)
I seem to remember it being touted by National- and thinking it another case of ‘nothing of value that isn’t a source of $’.
How is a land-tax better than a CGT? (I am genuinely puzzled!) -
Speaker: The Voyage: Dutch Disease –…, in reply to Sam M,
a land tax would be rated depending on the value of the land so highly productive land would be worth more
As opposed to a lovely native forest with beautiful views over a lake, say? Not highly productive, but highly desirable to a developer. Land value is dependent on a range of things, productivity is only one.
I tend to agree ‘the current systems winners’ are the wealthy. I don’t believe forcing anyone who is not wealthy off land they cannot crowbar into constant dollar-making would be the way to change this :) -
A land tax also has down-sides. Eg do you tax all land? Equally?
It’s not all equally productive. Much of NZ is marginal for farming at best.
Should every inch of land that’s not being used ‘productively’ be forced to become productive? Clearing scrub, taking out native gullies, pushing the sheep up steep slip-prone slopes?
Should land only be valued for its economic productivity? Might that not force landowners into some bad short-term decisions?
What about long-term vs short-term production? Forestry, for example, produces no return for at least 20 years (and often more). That’s a lot of tax to pay in advance.
I think a CGT is vastly better- a tax on real profit, at a time (payment) when there is money to pay it. Land tax is, imho, another way of commodifying what we stand on, and forcing every inch of our countryside into the productive economy- or the hands of the super-wealthy, who can afford to pay tax on unproductive properties- at a time when much production is already environmentally unsustainable.
(Disclaimer: I am not a disinterested party. I own some marginally productive land) -
Yesterday was another story...
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Warm here today :)
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Hard News: The Editorial Image, in reply to Rob Stowell,
But I don’t feel comfortable with targeting beneficiaries in such a nakedly mean-eyed way.
By which I mean (blushing at having fallen into Mr Key's elegantly distancing lingo) it makes me livid.
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Hard News: The Editorial Image, in reply to Lilith __,
Oh yeah. And the forms on offer are indicative- we know it's not so much about choice, as they are all medium/long-term options (injection, et al) with (for me) the sideways-nasty implication ‘you probably wouldn’t be able to sort this out for yourself’ and ‘every baby this person doesn’t have is another loser we won’t have to support’.
I bet they’ve run the $ on this, and someone said something like ‘for every $ we spend on contraception for these folks, we save a sack of gold!’
I’m not against free contraception. But I don’t feel comfortable with targeting beneficiaries in such a nakedly mean-eyed way. -
Posy Parker has finally done something right. Or is that left?
Whatever, it's the first sign of life I've noticed in a while- even felt a twinge of optimism, and Spring so far off :)
