Posts by BenWilson
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Armstrong's view. I like it, as usual.
Edit. Yet more evidence that Granny's not just National's Press Office. It's the uncredited editorials I find the most grief in recently. It's like what they're writing is so shamefully biased, that they can't put a name to it.
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I'm not sure that everyone needs access to Facebook etc to get the benefit from the spontaneous organization they provide. So long as someone you know does, and they keep you informed...
But having removed it, it can definitely look like too late, once word of mouth on the street is doing the same job.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Paul Campbell,
the govt would be on the hook for billions if the market crashed
Heh, yes, I didn't think of that. At least with provisional tax, the final reckoning is only at the end of every tax year and is a small rebate if you didn't get the growth the IRD insists that you should have, based on....er, I don't know what they base it on. They still get the same amount of total tax each year as a proportion of your real actual profits.
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Kate's is an ideological position that gets to the crux of the debt problem.
I definitely agree with her that easy debt fuels inflation. That's pretty much received wisdom since the GFC.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Steve Barnes,
It would very much depend how it's implemented. I really don't like the idea of a tax on unrealized gains. Because, for starters, they might never be realized. Just because property is going up doesn't mean any particular property is. Also, if you can't delay the tax by not selling, speculation is not discouraged.
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The CGT does not create a loss for you, or a cost that must be recaptured.
Most of the "Get rich using residential property" I read in Oz (which has CGT) suggested just holding. If you need money at some point, refinance. Never pay CGT until you die.
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So how do we build an internet that can't be so easily shut down?
I was thinking about that. It depends on your purpose, but a peer network would be a lot harder - you'd actually need to shut off electricity, and even then solar powered routers could keep cranking on for days, or indefinitely even.
They'd still be able to shut the international pipes down easily, but local internets could stay up and span cities quite easily.
There are many plans for such networks, but they've never really taken off, mainly because everyone wants "The Internet" not "An internet". I expect lots of private WANs have stayed up in Egypt, though.
The other problem with an attack-resilient internet is that even though the basic ability to deliver internet traffic can theoretically reroute through any connections that still exist, the services people want to use tend to reside in centralized locations, like server banks. Disconnect these and people are back to email. Take out the main domain name servers, and we're back to trying to go off raw IP addresses. Only IT geeks will be still connected.
Also, while the fully decentralized network ideas can work well in theory, they've never really been exposed to malicious attempts to take them down. I expect they could be killed with DOS attacks quite easily by infiltrators. Massively distributed WiFi could be drowned out by a powerful signal in the same bands that WiFi operates. I'm fairly sure dictators tend to have investigated these things, reputedly Pakistan's Musharraf is almost always in a cone of wireless white noise, to prevent assassination via remote triggering of IEDs.
Ultimately, whilst "The Internet" is theoretically decentralized, it never has been in reality.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Jim Cathcart,
So Kate's idea, stripped down from all the ragging, is that you can't make property more affordable, and shouldn't try. It is something that only rich people should have. This should be done by requiring very high deposits.
Newsflash, Kate, this already happened.
She doesn't, however, provide any argument against CGT, other than to say that it won't bring prices down. Which it hasn't in some examples. But the analysis is weak, it could well have had a dragging effect, slowing the inflation. And the reason for it is more to do with fairly taxing an unproductive economic activity that has made lots of people rich.
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I'd further note, that only a small part of the reason for thinking CGT is a good idea is a hope that it might put prices down. Mostly it's about closing another tax loophole that encourages a particularly unproductive behavior.
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There are a myriad of ways to avoid paying CGT – one that is pretty harsh on renters and involves a strategy where " a homeowner moves out of their primary residence, rents it out for a period of time, evict the renters, exchange for a new house, rent the new house out, evict the new renters, and then move into the new house thereby avoiding capital gains tax".
It's also harsh on the investor, and a good way to get busted for tax evasion.
Increase to taxes be it income tax, consumption taxes, capital taxes always migrate down to the working poor, the people with greater income/resources are always able to structure their affiars so that they avoid or pass on any tax increase.
If that is so, then why do rich people always scream blue murder when their tax goes up? Tell me it's because they feel sorry for the poor, I dare you. If it's so easy to just avoid, it shouldn't matter.
Your very argument is half the problem. The belief that you can just hike rents to keep returns flowing is part of what has led to this addiction to property. It's false - eventually people won't pay for your property. They won't be able to. The money just won't be there.
A CGT would slow down speculation, it's that simple. It won't stop it, because profit is still profit, even if it's taxed. It will still be sweet to own property. They'll just be paying fairly for something that is, in fact, income.
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