Posts by mark taslov
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to BenWilson,
Sorry ^that^ reply was meant for Alfie, but still, with regards to your ideas, which all make perfect sense and are needed for the CGT to work for the majority, I’d imagine that you’d lose about 1/4 of voters around about the point you reached the word ‘indexing’.
I’m a simple a fellow with this oft times genial disposition and occasional hankering for steak, but I know what I like, and I’m not going to bag members of the Labour Party or call for anyone’s resignation, or second guess the the campaign slogan. Rip-roaring effort guys!! but you may need to rethink a couple of the ideas even if just to reconsider how they may come across to the average kiwi whose only possessions are a Holden and a dream for the weekend.
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OnPoint: "Project SPEARGUN underway", in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Sweepstakes!
If Voting Could Change the System, It Would Be Against the Law
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to BenWilson,
Yeah, I think if they’d limited it to foreign sales, as NZF did very well with, then this may have been a triumph. Never overestimating the length of the voter’s attention span is a must. Thanks for those examples.
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Alfie,
Coming back to your example Alfie, I strongly agree that this is a problem and there need to be limits on foreign speculation, e.g in China, as you’d expect they are ruthless; if a foreigner wants to buy a property they must prove they are residing there (this may have changed). I’m not sure how to write policy for New Zealand, but there’s a sense that everyone get’s a bit nervy when people start debating this, someone inadvertently mentions the Chinese, someone calls someone a racist,, people return to their corners. David Cunliffe was good in the first debate when he explained very clearly that it’s about all foreigners and reeled of a list of countries, including Belgium coincidentally, but the problem was that the CGT wasn’t just for foreigners. If a policy specifically targeting foreign speculation were proposed, it would be an easy sell:
Non-residents who are not New Zealand citizens would be ineligible for home ownership except if a genuine need to do so can be demonstrated.
Anyway, just my opinion. Thanks for clearing up my misunderstanding of the CGT.
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Greg Dawson,
Still not convinced we can achieve that in a country where the “money people” with trusts overlaps entirely with the set of “elected people”.
I agree with that. If Labour had replaced their CGT with a policy of cutting GST and increasing the tax rate in the top bracket, they could have won this I believe. John Key mentioned “5 new taxes”. Never having been bothered to verify this, can anyone list these?
Basically, despite what the media may say about dirty politics, or Kim Dot Com, or left wing factions, At the end of the day I believe that the average kiwi voter, and maybe this applies everywhere, is always going to vote with one hand on their wallet. Any threat to the wallet, no matter how big or small, is a massive election risk.
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Greg Dawson,
Yep, comms, for sure, I've glanced over the policy, I've read articles on the policy and even still I thought that tax was on the full resale value of the property. With renters still their is that curtailment of the dream. But yeah, looking at the margin of victory in the election, outside the centers, after 2 election defeats, it does look to be a dead duck, at least under that name.
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Alfie,
But a better example might take a foreign investor
Foreign investors didn’t tick National for their party vote, I’m not really here to debate the merits of the policy as quite obviously my understanding is too vague =), but I’d imagine I’m not alone, I’d wager there were quite a few who couldn’t quite grasp it. And yes, definitely it is the big money people that should be targeted, but my reckoning is, the way to target big money people is to go after trusts almost exclusively.
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Alfie,
Well there we have it, I don’t understand the policy, But still, same thing applies, many baches have been in families for decades, I know my grandad bought my granny her bach there in the 1950s for less than $100,000 and most of the neighbours are the same. Regardless, more simply, if you’d owned a 300k holiday home or second property yesterday morning, would you have voted to reduce its value yesterday afternoon?
It’s not about the monetary figure, it’s simply about the principle. I’m not sure how many people own a bach or even access to one, it’s simply that it complicated the dreams and aspirations of too many people. It’s easy to say:
Get in the while the iron is hot, all stock must go, sale ends Saturday "you only pay” $15,000!!!
but that’s not a turn of phrase I’ve ever had the luxury of issuing let alone acting on.
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to andin,
Thanks Andin, I wikied him at the time but as is patently obvious I wasn't too much in the mood for reading yesterday so I'll have a watch of this after work.
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Greg Dawson,
I’ll put it this way Greg, if you’d owned a 300k holiday home yesterday morning, would you have voted up to $45,000 off it’s value yesterday afternoon?