Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: News from home ..., in reply to Marc C,
I could not believe it, and asked myself, what the hell has he and have Labour been doing the last few years, to ask such a stupid question?
Presuming they knew the answer when they didn't.
Of course, there has to be a first one, but it would be a bit odd ditching an orthodox policy like CGT because it was too strange and challenging for voters but then adopting UBI.
It is indeed radical when taken in an extreme. But it can be trialed on an extremely modest level, unlike CGT, which changes the way that hundreds of billions of dollars in profits would be taxed.
Also, it's pretty much the exact opposite of a tax. Selling it wouldn't be down to asking people to tighten their belts, it would be about weathering the endless attacks on how "fiscally irresponsible" it would be, coming from a government that has been racking up debt like they're in the finance business themselves. CGT isn't a policy that would probably even cross the minds of people well below the line of ever being able to afford property as something that would change their lives for the better - quite possibly they'd just be afraid of being taxed out of their inheritance later on. But money given right now is something that people right on the poverty line might actually bother to vote for. Especially if it's money that doesn't have the hubris of them being a bludger, because even John Key would be getting it.
But maybe you're right, and the country would freak out about the idea. I'm yet to hear an idea that wouldn't be the case for, really.
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Hard News: Housing, hope and ideology, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
It’s a very well held theory with lots of real world evidence.
And a whole lot of counterexamples. It's so useless for any practical purpose that it's only used in theoretical arguments.
but demand for housing is moderately predictable at the lower end.
Then predict away.
State housing competes with the bottom 10-20% of income levels
Because only poor people ever buy cheap houses? It's like landlords never even existed.
I’ll get my research team right on that.
So actually it's rather a complicated thing then? But surely there's "lots of real world evidence". Surely making predictions about how much prices will be affected is child's play? Tell me, even in the broadest sweeping strokes, how you would go about putting a number on it?
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Hard News: Housing, hope and ideology, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
That doesn’t change the fact that increasing supply leads to price falling.
That's not a fact, it's a theory with a whole lot of caveats and disclaimers about the conditions under which it holds. Even the claim you made has the wildly unrealistic caveat of "holding demand constant". It's also a theory that makes no attempt to quantify how much pressure that it puts on prices. In fact, the concept of the quantity of this pressure doesn't even seem to have a unit at all, although please correct me if I'm wrong about that. It's not even possible to quantify it, from what I can tell.
If we’re talking about the government building state houses – basic solid houses in unspectacular areas. Given that they won’t be sold, the demand for them is only people who need housing
Everyone needs housing.
They’ll clean out a lot of the demand for that lower end of the market – the entry level – and help keep prices lower than they would be otherwise.
How much demand is that? How many people rent a house a the lower end of the market? How many people are you talking about? How much will it keep prices lower by? How much are they going up by anyway? How much will they cost? How many are being built anyway? How will it affect the quantity of the ones that are being built? How many people will the population be by the time they're finished being built? How much effect does building of new houses actually have on population?
The housing price truck that you’re trying to stop includes all the mid and high level houses – $800K, $1.5 million, $3 million. Which the government won’t try and influence through state housing so aren’t really relevant.
I'm lost. You want to talk only about the effect of building state housing on the price of the 750,000 houses that are valued below the median? All right, then, what effect do you think adding 10,000 houses to that stock would have? I'm not asking whether there's a vague downwards pressure here, I'm asking whether you sincerely think that could do a damned thing to drive down the prices of property that is rising by 5% per annum already anyway? In particularly, I'm not asking about a hypothetical situation in which a number of economic factors get magically held in balance. I'm talking about the real property and rental market that real people have to really rent a property tin.
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Hard News: News from home ..., in reply to Bart Janssen,
Cunliffe purportedly had exactly the same backing of the unions and the party. Yet under his leadership Labour lost the party vote in safe Labour electorates and turned in a pathetic election result.
I don't think there is an Anyone But Little party, though. It would seem that Cunliffe had serious personal antagonism issues with a great deal of the leadership. This isn't Cunliffe 2.0 yet. For starters, the guy has 3 years to do his business. But unlike Shearer in the same position, he looks good to go, rather than someone direly in need of media training, pronto.
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Hard News: News from home ..., in reply to Sacha,
That is by far the best interview I've heard a Labour politician do in 7 years. He's clearly got a brain on him, and a lot of experience, and seems like a very good fast talker. I feel pretty stoked really. If he goes through with 70% of what he's talking about there, I might even switch back to voting Labour, and if you'd asked me that yesterday I'd have said that was impossible.
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Wow, he's talking UBI. Now I officially actually like him.
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Hard News: News from home ..., in reply to Sacha,
Andrew Little talking about what he proposes, to Kathryn Ryan this morning (30 mins, audio options)
The more I hear him the more I like him, already.
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Hard News: News from home ..., in reply to Andrew Geddis,
This makes me deeply uncomfortable and causes me to wonder where I’ve gone wrong :->
I find you all being in agreement with Bomber the scariest part.
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Hard News: News from home ..., in reply to BenWilson,
I’d probably feel that those who feel strongly should carry the day.
And, of course, those are their rules anyway, so how I felt wouldn't change anything. But I'm saying that the process doesn't seem broken to me. This seems like the best election I've seen Labour go through in the last 3 years and I feel more optimistic than at any time in the last 8 years that there is a chance of holding National to 3 terms.
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Hard News: News from home ..., in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I vote we give him a chance to settle in, take stock and start implementing his vision before prematurely pronouncing the death of Labour
That's got my vote too. As a leader he's untried, but aren't they all, until they try? He does have long credentials as an organizer, and at least I'm not left wondering whether he actually cares about poor people.
Also, despite that I'd personally probably very slightly lean toward Gracinda if I were voting, I'm not voting, nor am I likely to vote for them at the election (but I'll wait to see what the new guy comes up with). So under the circumstances it looks like they chose a good compromise for their likely constituency, something that their process was designed to do.
Sure he didn't get an outright majority in the third round amongst the caucus and the party, but he didn't get a big no-confidence either. They leaned toward Gracinda, but the other group in there, the oldest and most traditional core of support for their party overwhelmingly preferred Little. Under those circumstances, were I in caucus or the party, I'd probably feel that those who feel strongly should carry the day.
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