Posts by mark taslov
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I don’t think it’s that simple. Yeah there will be a small number of people who actually would have lost significant wealth to the CGT but far far fewer than the number of voters who turned away from Labour this year again. The farmers may well have uniformly opposed the CGT for purely financial reasons but again it’s a lower number than explains the massive failure in the Labour vote.
I'll explain my thinking here, and sorry again for yesterday Bart, I was out of my mind. I'm not talking about a small number of people, I'm talking about the majority of middle class New Zealanders, not particularly wealthy, just with a willingness to live the New Zealand dream, either by buying a bach, or a rental property. The CGT meant if they ever had to sell that second property then 15% of the sale price went to the government. I think this may be difficult to grasp for anyone living in Auckland with it's inflated house prices, but say someone lives in, I don't know, Gisborne, where people can still afford a house for less than $150,000, then the possibility of one day owning a second property isn't that far fetched. Perhaps after 10-15 years they pay off their mortgage, staying safe, they may want to buy a rental somewhere with population growth like Napier, where something like that will have $200p/w income.
As for the baches. Well there's a fair few on the market lately, In a place like Mahia where there are a lot of would be vendors right now, people are looking for about $300,000 for their baches, and if Labour had won last night, they'd have just lost $45,000 to the Government. No one with 2 properties is going to vote away a percentage of the value of that property to the Government, and no one with a dream or realisable ambition is going to forgo that dream.
It's not wealthy people and farmers who have these kinds of dreams, it's middle class New Zealanders, It's not about 70 pages of policy, it's about having the best policy. And just because a million New Zealanders live in Auckland doesn't mean the rest don't, that's the maths of it. These are the reasons why I was against this on the CGT thread.
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to mark taslov,
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Cool story bro
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
The only plausible thing I can think of is given mum and dad Kiwis’ love of property investment, the CGT was either too big a pill to swallow or it wasn’t fully understood.
Having a little income from a rental to help tide things over is (though not mentioned here) a part of the real New Zealand dream, which is great for the older generations who’ve been able to exploit others’ need for accommodation but for younger generations faced with daunting house prices, well, that’s one of the problems in New Zealand.
Meaning it was National’s lack of policy that won them the election and actually having some kind of policy that lost it for Labour and the Greens.
For me, one issue I grappled with this election were these promises to build new homes, when there are 1,651,542 unoccupied dwellings in New Zealand. Mightent it be better to actually settle the country.
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OnPoint: "Project SPEARGUN underway", in reply to krothville,
BeyondGrave
15 September 2014 3:17pm
Recommend
0One of the important parts Snowden left out, is that he was spying on the communications of New Zealanders just before he decided to leave the NSA.
A New Zealander, whose communications Snowden intercepted (and whose personal thoughts Snowden violated) became the person to convince Snowden to walk out of the NSA.
The person who inspired Snowden to escape his place of employment, was, in brief, a New Zealander.
This is how it happened (loosely)...
A person in New Zealand, who Snowden spired on, became aware of Snowden's intrusions and used the opportunity to "talk back". The person convinced Snowden to leave the NSA and even offered suggestions on how he should do it (including suggestions for Snowden to collect evidence in the form of whatever files he could, and to disperse such evidence among journalists).
The person warned Snowden that Wikileaks was a known drop-off point and, if not an actual entrapment programme in itself, was at least heavily monitored. Whether Snowden bothered to check this advice with NSA resources at his disposal at the time is now unknown because Snowden has forgotten.
Was this person an anomolous single incident, or are more New Zealanders of the sort at large? Doubtless a question any remaining staff within the NSA and associated units of Telepathic Interception are eager to answer...
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OnPoint: "Project SPEARGUN underway", in reply to Steve Barnes,
Hooray for Holyrood
Hey, at least this spectacle made up for the 2014 $300M+ TV dinner. It’s up with the best writing the industry has produced in a decade.
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Joe Wylie,
So with MMP you can candidate vote Labour while crossing your fingers behind your back and party voting National. Not many appear to do it the other way around though
Stranger things have happened. You’d imagine there’s a point where the rubber band of plausibility just snaps, but no.
Look Joe at the end of the day Kiwis are honest hardworking people and when some foreign political types come here and try to tell us about our Government then of course there’s going to be a backlash, I want to leave New Zealand in better shape than I found it. I know the job of prime minister is not forever and I’m going to do the best I can every day to make that difference. I dare you to show me one example where I haven’t discharged my responsibility seriously, professionally and appropriately. In the end Kiwi’s are a trusting people so they should rightly trust me.
Quite clearly the number of rich people in New Zealand has skyrocketed since the last election. But what are you going to do, break the 9 year cycle?
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OnPoint: "Project SPEARGUN underway", in reply to Steve Barnes,
And we are ruled by a wunch of bankers…
That's the Hampden. From the day the music died.
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to mark taslov,
LOL and reading back again just now I see Andin. you didn’t call me an asshole either, So no one called me an asshole, which is always a good day, and I’ve just attacked both you Andin and Bart over 2 lengthy vitriolic posts for calling me an asshole. That’s unfortunate.
An incredible blunder on my part and I’ve no idea how I’m going to rectify this, but please note, my points stand with the regards to the ineffectiveness of our Government to influence this, but not in relation to you guys, who I admire and respect, and so on that note. I’m an asshole.
But not as much as Denis.
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干杯!