Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to Richard Grevers,
A couple of points about Australia’s CGT (from Wikipedia, rather than experience) – CPI indexing was abandoned after 5 years – presumably the extra complexity wasn’t worth it
Just finished listening to this Nine to Noon slot, and a PwC tax partner says that Aus gives a 50% discount on the sale value and then taxes the remainder at the seller's marginal rate. That's their solution to the inflation issue.
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to BenWilson,
Which is no choice at all, you realize?
Maybe not in manufacturer, but in term of price and luxury there's definitely a choice. I did pick those marques for a reason.
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to Islander,
it may be all they can afford…
True, especially when crap actually gets approved for construction. Overseas, because standards are high, crap just doesn't get built in any significant quantity. Here, we have the choice between crap, or high quality with a significant premium - priced like a choice between Lada or Rolls Royce. The choices ought to be quality or high quality, with pricing more like a choice between Toyota or Lexus.
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to DexterX,
Sub par housing is what people want – There is a real lack of wanting quality – people want cheap crap – that is the primary driver.
In part because there's not much experience of what quality housing is like. People don't know any better, so they accept cheap. If there was a widespread understanding of how much nicer it is to live in quality housing, the demand for crap would be significantly reduced.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Ross Mason,
Can someone find out how high up that decision came from?
I'd guess the national director of prosecutions, or whatever the role is called. Doubt it went any higher than that, if only because that's the decision that came back down. It's clearly one made with no cognisance of the political elements of the case.
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
That's not syndicalism, though, at which my comment was squarely aimed. Mondragon is still capitalist. It has to be, in order to trade in a capitalist world. That it's not a "traditional" ownership structure doesn't mean it's not capitalist. They sell goods outside their structure, they must be getting inputs from outside their structure, and those activities take place in the "real" capitalist world.
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
They’ll be back
Yes, but hopefully without some of the most toxic of today's baggage, including the associations with Act. Joyce, English, Williamson, they'll all be gone before National is next in power. Key's already made it abundantly clear that he's not prepared to be Leader of the Opposition. They're the ones most likely to support ignoring any ComCom recommendation to deny purchase approval of 2degrees - a decision that would have to be made over the top of public opposition, too, given the process that is followed by ComCom in assessing such a proposal.
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
A true cooperative (which is very different from a company where workers have minority, unequal shareholdings) enables ownership and control to be vested in those with an interest in the enterprise’s success.
Yeah, nice in theory, impossible in practice on a global scale. And when you're talking about things like telecommunications, where the hardware to supply service is expensive, high-tech, and cannot feasibly be produced in NZ without international contribution, doomed to fail in the absence of capitalist activities such as spending real money with offshore corporations.
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Well, NACT have already overruled CoCom in a few areas, like 10 year regulatory holidays. I’d say there’s every chance they could get a waiver for a telco merger, especially with a few hundred million in slush money behind them.
Yeah, but nah. It's pretty rare for the Minister to ignore a recommendation regarding the buy-out of a major company by a competitor. And by the time 2degrees gets to the point of being an attractive take-over target, we'll have turfed the current lot of numpties.
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to Angus Robertson,
What we should have done is introduce a CGT in 2000 before house prices went apeshit. Or we should do is wait until the market falls and get in at the bottom.
Or we should apply it retrospectively to any property purchased in the last 10 years, instead of just applying it going forward.