Posts by Kumara Republic
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Hard News: How the years flew by ..., in reply to David Hood,
I just want to go on record I grow increasingly of the opinion it is primarily a financial bubble not a population pressure issue.
While it is true (I assume) that Auckland needs to build 75000 extra homes to have the same kind of people per household as the rest of the country, it is also true that Auckland needs to build about zero extra homes to have the same kind of people per household as Auckland did in 2001 (approximately zero, there are a few small changes in household composition over the period). For decades the provinces have been getting older and emptying out, so comparing the household sizes of the places people are moving from as the reference point does not give the whole picture.
Looking at it as a financial bubble, the issues become things like who has access to what financial resources and how attractive tulip bulbs are as a store of money.
Yep, in any case, fiscal bubbles are a common symptom of rentierisation or market-cornering.
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Hard News: How the years flew by ..., in reply to Tom Semmens,
So we are fucked, because the government won't do anything until the political cost of doing nothing is higher than the political cost of doing something, by which time the subsequent crash will be a economic disaster.
It seems the housing bubble is an ongoing game of chicken. Whoever's in charge if/when the bubble bursts will probably find themselves out of power for a generation in the same vein as Herbert Hoover and Forbes-Coates. The same goes if whoever's in power deliberately pushes the fiscal nuke button, and is seen to be the second coming of Joe Stalin.
I suspect that in private, Key & Little are both hoping that it's the other one who's holding the housing crash bomb if/when it goes off.
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Hard News: How the years flew by ..., in reply to Andre,
I always enjoy the attacks I get from boomers when I mention inter-generational theft on PA. What else could you call the support by mainly older home owners for the immoral housing policy of John Key's government? It has been 8 years watching a slow fiscal train wreck occur. 8 years of listening to those benefiting financially saying "shit happens". There has been a breakdown in trust that may take a generation to mend.
There's already a name for them: Generation Rentier. It's more class-related than age-related, since boomers don't have a monopoly on rentierism - think Martin Shkreli.
Luke W: To fix the housing issue needs a multi-pronged approach. On top of what you suggest, there's also non-resident stamp duty, some form of regional development (but not a rerun of Think Big), and a big boost in investment for skills for those least able to retrain.
And I'm also head-desking about Generation Rentier's grip on the housing market. It came about from the accident of history that was the 1987 Crash which turned a lot of people off shares for life. It may take another accident of history to pop the housing bubble, because no one wants to be seen to poop the party by pointing out the real estate gold rush is a fool's gold rush.
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Polity: Geography and housing options, in reply to James Bremner,
In this age of skype etc, geography is less and less relevant, jobs don't have to be close together.
Telecommuting is good, but it's still slow to catch on in NZ, and it's generally not the employee's choice to do so. Once again, unless you're a company director who can afford to commute from the wop-wops, or have specialist skills that can be taken anywhere, most of us are still required to punch-clock.
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Polity: Lady luck smiles more than we think, in reply to llew40,
Do I blame those who have decided to invest in property? - to be honest, no, and the urge of some to call these people names such as 'generation rentier' doesn't help the debate one iota.
Do I think Auckland needs more intensification?, hell yes (and those who oppose it for self-interested reasons probably do deserve to be called names).
'Generation Rentier' is still a more laser-guided term than 'boomers', and the title has been justifiably earned by those who think they're free marketeers who suddenly become born-again statists when they sense any whiff of creative disruption to their rentier gains. Also, Martin Shkreli goes to show that rentierism isn't exclusively a boomer thing.
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Lazy thinking about their own life can lead people to embrace lemon-mouthed arguments that rich people are rich because they deserve it and for no other reason; sharing the fruits of success is immoral and should be stamped out; people who aren’t successful must therefore be lazy; and so on.
What you basically describe is a sub-branch of cherry picking known as 'survivorship bias'. It's a major driver of 'inspiration porn' which gets on my nerves, and if you haven't already read it, the late great Stella Young deconstructed it better than I ever could.
I'd call that fortunately wealthy and with strong social capital, rather than lucky. Lucky is striking the right agency or case manager or policy change for your needs at the right time.
I'm lucky enough to come from middle-class affluence, but I'm equally unlucky enough for my folks to misdiagnose my DSM-5-grade condition which took them 30 years to finally understand. Right now I find myself on the bottom rung of the job ladder with all the rungs in the middle missing, and I'm running out of ideas to career-change before the IOT eats my job.
Now they're retired, they're not in much of a position to put things right, with the exception of alleviating my living costs from time to time.
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Polity: Geography and housing options, in reply to Sacha,
Build seven bedroom multi million dollar mcmansions on quarter acre sections. Sell them. Blow up dam.
Missing second step: market to doltish easties as logical place to deposit their offspring.
If it's not within the budget, some old-fashioned FUD could do. Starting with this:
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Up Front: Cui bono?, in reply to mark taslov,
I'll tell you about my complicating factors. Bombed out of info-science major at university in the final year, thanks to finding the learning curve of advanced coding too steep. Subsequently went to polytech for an electrical pre-trade and instead got bumped up to electronics which went nowhere fast. The result is a big fat zero return on investment every time I've taken out a student loan, and my lifetime EFTS is probably running out. I know enough basic coding to come to the realisation that it doesn't strictly suit everyone, despite calls to teach it at primary school level.
More recently I've been diagnosed with an 'unspecified neuro-developmental disorder' as per the DSM-5, or PDD-NOS under the old DSM-4. In layperson speak, they both have overlap with the autistic spectrum, and I think in visual terms rather than words or numbers. My current job is highly amenable to my condition, but advances in technology are threatening to put the machines I work with in a museum.
I've pretty much concluded that there needs to be more investment in vocational training, especially for those at risk of technological unemployment, and those who aren't particularly suited to a traditional tertiary education approach. And I've said it before, but proposals for a digital apprenticeship system would have been an ice-breaker for the likes of myself, if it wasn't for the degree snobbery of the Tertiary Education Minister (who himself dropped out of uni).
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Up Front: Cui bono?, in reply to mark taslov,
With regards to unemployment figures and jobs, via the internet there are numerous opportunities now available, we are no longer limited to working for companies based within the country, we no longer require full physical mobility, the job market has changed irrevocably, so referrals to those kinds of phenomena (as have been bandied about) need no longer occupy the position of relevance they may have once enjoyed.
In other words, the 'gig economy'. Nice work when you can get it.
