Posts by Kumara Republic
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Mike Moore: A pretty ordinary…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Mike Moore was famous for long rambling speeches without any full stops. I heard one in the1990 election campaign. There was a full half hour which didn't seem to have any completed sentences. Lots of useful stuff I'm sure, perhaps even visionary, but I couldn't understand a lot of it. He was also very socially conservative and no supporter of feminism.
That, plus the fact that Moore was seen to be too close to Roger Douglas, was a big factor in the Alliance getting 18% of the vote in the 1993 election. But the anomalies of FPP meant the Alliance got just 2 seats, prompting the shift to MMP.
-
Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
... in Rotorua. He hasn't bought in Auckland.
It illustrates the trade-off between cheap houses and gainful employment in NZ. Unless of course, you're a farmer, or a company director who can afford to heli-commute. NZ Inc is still behind the 8-ball on telecommuting.
-
Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to Alfie,
By promoting the idea that there is no housing crisis, provided you're prepared to knuckle down to some hard work, self-sacrifice and (cough cough... have rich parents), the Herald's current batch of rich-to-richer tales really are pushing the ethical boundaries of what defines party political advertisements in an election year.
My inner Machiavellian wants the CIA or the FSB to unleash a Stuxnet on the Auckland housing bubble. That is, if a modern-day Robin Hood hasn't gotten there first.
I really hope that the aforementioned text won't put me on a state watchlist.
-
Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to Lynn Yum,
Isn't this kind of story the bread and butter of the right wing narrative "if you work hard enough you can be rich"? The implied corollary is "if you are poor it is because you are lazy". Never mind structural impediments like sexism, racism, or simply not having rich mom and dad.
The Herald championing right wing narrative? No way!
It's exactly the kind of just-world fallacy that's perverted the course of democracy, particularly in America and Britain. Dismayed as we all are by them, President Trump and the Brexit vote have exposed its diminishing returns.
-
Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to Katharine Moody,
-
Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to llew40,
And yet, and yet - we know it can be done. For all their faults, the 1984 Government took bold action to course-correct from the cul-de-sac of Muldoonism. We've seen our Government's make progressive law changes that reflect changing mores and modern contemporary social views. We've seen the emergence of young engaged politicians. So I'm hopeful things can change.
Regarding Muldoonism and Think Big, Muldoon's single biggest mistake was scrapping the Kirk Super Fund. One major thing that got thrown out with the bathwater by the Rogernomics reforms that followed, was the training programmes by the Ministry of Works and other defunct entities. The lack of such programmes has been cited as a partial enabler of Trump.
-
Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
And a crash *will* help. Prices will re-align with earnings as speculators are forced to bail. Hopefully, a government will be forced to implement radical policies to reboot the economy (e.g. building a bunch of high-density housing, a la Hong Kong). Either that or we'll get a Trump (one way to avoid that is to ensure National is in power when it all goes pear shaped).
Again, both sides of the House are playing chicken and secretly hoping it's not their side that's holding the bomb when it goes off.
On another note: can Auckland's housing bubble be described as stagflationary, particularly when it causes skill shortages because people can't afford to live where the jobs are?
-
Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to BenWilson,
I don't think our political system can cope with this problem, TBH. I expect it to get worse and worse. Our way of running things is incremental and is thus incapable of systematic and major change involving several steps at once. So it's spiralling in on this very poor situation.
Yep, landlords are powerful enough to basically be NZ's unelected upper house - a House of Landlords if you might put it. There's bound to be a weak spot somewhere, and it doesn't necessarily have to be a Great Depression-grade act of Murphy's Law.
-
Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
You ain't kidding. Nearly 77% of the national wealth is tied up in residential property (scroll down for the pretty horizontal bar graph titled "New Zealand Asset Classes").
Does anyone have similar stats for the rest of the OECD? Google seems to be a bit scattershot right now. In any case, the following quote is far too true for the NZ housing bubble: "If it's too big to fail, then it's too big to exist."
-
Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to Joe Wylie,
"He asked me the same thing about people from Penrith when he discovered that's where I'm from".
How does it compare to the Sutherland Shire, where the Cronulla riots happened a bit over a decade ago?