Posts by Kumara Republic
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OnPoint: Don't put words in our mouths, Rob, in reply to Moz,
Yes, but the choice is not purely between “vote National” and “vote Labour”, so it’s entirely possible (and reasonable under MMP) to write them both off as hopeless.
As it stands right now, the least worst solution would probably be a boosted Greens vote in 2017, so that they're in a bigger position to 'keep Labour honest'.
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OnPoint: Don't put words in our mouths, Rob, in reply to LI_politico,
This whole episode is making me wonder if the left (major parties) courts the minority vote because they think it’s low hanging fruit or they are actually committed to equality in a multicultural society. I won’t be the only person thinking that and trying to de-legitimize views by pitting minorities against each other is fairly unsavory.
There are those, ranging from Fox News Republicans (trigger warning: NY Post) to Left commentators (trigger warning: Chris Trotter), who claim that Scandinavian-style social democracy is incompatible with multiculturalism. The Fabians sensibly describe combining the two as a modern-day challenge, but not impossible.
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Bernard Hickey goes mixed-metaphor-happy on the controversy.
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Well, if you don’t consider:
- reinforcement of inequality by enriching those who got in early (or get out early) at the expense of the rest of the population
- enrichment of those with the good sense to inherit wealth at the expense of wage earners
- damage to the productive sector because real businesses are unable to compete with the returns from leveraged land speculation
- losses to those left with negative equity after the bubble bursts
- potential loss of banking services if a crash undermines the banking system
- cost to taxpayers of bailing out banking sector (remember, this is the alleged reason for austerity in Europe)
- loss of tax income as taxable earnings are replaced by tax-free capital gains
- damage to the environment from urban sprawl justified by a semi-imaginary need for more housing landNot to mention:
- damage to the economy of other countries (China, in particular) by the diversion of productive investment into offshore speculation
It's gotten to the point where a politico-economic cataclysm is the most likely thing to break the existing orthodoxy. It brings to mind how major tragedies can unexpectedly be a catalyst for meaningful change. Such as how the Chernobyl meltdown was the knockout blow for the Soviet Union, because it was far too big for the Politburo to cover up.
If there's only one good thing to come from an Auckland housing bubble burst, it'd be the potential discrediting of the Shock Doctrine dogma - so long as NZ takes the Icelandic approach if it did happen.
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Speaker: Identification strategy: Now…, in reply to tussock,
Labour’s the next biggest political party to the government, and I can now count neither of them who don’t indulge in casual race-baiting. It’s really horrible when Winston does it, it’s really pitiful when ACT does it, but it’s really fucking scary when Labour are refusing to walk away from this horrible shit and having their media people come out and defend it instead.
Blaming minority groups for significant government problems, when they’re in opposition and can just blame the fucking government! Yes this gets more press, and that is a very, very bad thing.
Frank Macskasy (who sometimes writes for The Daily Blog) summed it up best in the opening of his latest post:
Why Labour should NEVER play the race card … because National doesn’t like the competition.
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OnPoint: My last name sounds Chinese, in reply to Jeff Weir,
Ah. The housing market doesn’t exist because some people don’t/can’t participate in it or don’t view it as a market. Might as well add the rental market, car market, and flea-market to the list of dumb phrases that should be outlawed, by that logic.
If the ‘housing market’ really is a genuine market – and it’s a stretch to even call it one – then at best it’s a cornered market. Maybe 'housing fiefdom', more like it?
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to Russell Brown,
I’m pretty much down with Liam Dann’s column today.
TLDR: there is an issue of historic proportions looming with respect to Chinese capital outflows, but don’t make it about people or their ethnicity.
If foreign speculators can't be barred from buying up houses, do FTAs still allow them to be taxed instead? Or would it still count as a 'trade barrier' as much as a tariff or import quota would?
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to Ewan Morris,
I’m not trying to paint Labour into a corner – I’d love to see Rob say that they are still thinking about options for a CGT or other ways of dealing with property speculation that deal with the issue comprehensively rather than just focusing on overseas-based speculators.
Once again, it comes back to the fact that housing speculators have effectively become NZ's self-appointed House of Lords. How unique is NZ in having a NIMBY brigade being blue-rinse housing bubble profiteers rather than greenies? And again, I present the hypocrisy of such people.
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to Rob Salmond,
Onshore property speculation has the same lack of productivity gain, but the gains accrue within the NZ economy. So onshore speculation is better for the NZ economy than offshore speculation
You can also add the fact that onshore speculators have the equivalent power of an upper house.
Sadly, when economic globalisation benefits only an elite few, and the political mainstream willingly let it happen, it leaves a void that ugly nativists are only too happy to fill. Think UKIP, Le Front National and Golden Dawn among others.
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OnPoint: My last name sounds Chinese, in reply to BenWilson,
It’s pretty hard to know whether the same level of bitterness would be felt if the buyers were foreign but not Chinese. My gut feeling is that it would be much the same. If Germans were buying 40% of the houses for sale in Auckland and prices were skyrocketing beyond even the reaches of well paid young NZers, I expect there would be plenty of anti-German racism here.
It goes to show that nativism, irrespective of which ethnicity is being targeted, fills a void left by economic globalisation when it only benefits an elite few. If I haven't mentioned it already, Amy Chua wrote about the very phenomenon in her book "World on Fire".
And the latest Mediawatch is up, and it's on the housing issue.