Posts by Keir Leslie
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Yes, but the analogy falls down because it is pretty well universally accepted that it is barbaric not to support the arts.
So you miss an important part of the nature of art in your analogy.
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No, I would have thought Key could have gone to his two support parties, (who are clearly on board with the National Party in a broad sense) and (a) laid out why it'd be a good idea, and (b) indulged in the ol' pork*.
I really doubt that the Maori Party are keen on a GST rise, for example. I'm pretty sure Key could have worked something out there. We know that Act & the Maori Party want to vote for this Budget, so it's not like trying to get the Greens onside or anything.
* clearly not something Key's averse to.
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I really would like to know how on earth Key doesn't have the numbers. A tax is a supply issue. Key has confidence and supply agreements with two parties, either of which would get him a majority.
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I can't see how Key doesn't have the numbers. National plus one of the Maori Party or Act would have got it through, and if Key can't buy off one of those two he's a lot less competent than I thought.
If National are worried they won't get important tax bills through the House, that's a bit embarrassing.
Key had the chance to show leadership & he didn't. He doesn't get to say: oh, it's too hard. He's the Prime Minister ffs.
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First actual fuck up I reckon. Up till now they've done if not the right thing at least the effective thing, but this was a bona fide fuck up.
Key could have pulled off a property-tax-type-thing and looked statesmanlike. Instead he looks like he can't make the tough decisions.
Also, that thing about finance? Every neo-liberal chancer of a government tries that one, and it never works. Turns out Zurich, New York, and London have finance sewn up pretty damn tight between them.
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So they don't need to set the cash on fire. They'll get it back from the insurance anyway.
Famously, property damaging fires are countercyclic.
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Identifying what the poor have, rather than what they do not have, focuses on their assets. This paper contributes to the extensive vulnerability/assets literature, by categorizing the assets of the urban poor in terms of an “asset vulnerability framework.” These include both tangible assets, such as labor and human capital, less familiar productive assets, such as housing, as well as intangible assets, such as household relations and social capital. Results from a recent urban study show that the poor are managers of complex asset portfolios, and illustrate how asset management affects household poverty and vulnerability. Translated into operational practice this framework facilitates interventions promoting opportunities, as well as removing obstacles, to ensure the urban poor use their assets productively.
My emphasis. In Caroline O. N. Moser, The asset vulnerability framework: Reassessing urban poverty reduction strategies, World Development, Volume 26, Issue 1, January 1998, Pages 1-19, ISSN 0305-750X, DOI: 10.1016/S0305-750X(97)10015-8.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VC6-3SX6Y97-1/2/75d03376c47ba8072334c6836a02481c)Sometimes housing is treated as separate from other productive assets, but that's primarily for accounting reasons, or because of dodgy economic ideas about assets (the Indian national accounts I think fall into this category, but I could be wrong.)
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Housing quite clearly produces a good[0]; when I rent a house, I am paying money to get something that I want and need, viz. shelter.
Now, I should note that I don't particularly care for the idea of consumption[1] here and didn't bring it up. But when you look at it, rent is really a bit like the gas bill, which you would certainly say is consumption. I don't want to get metaphysical, so I shan't argue about using up or whatever. I shall merely observe that it acts like things we call consumption.
[0] and even if one wants to get persnickety about when the good's produced, it's a matter of accounting exactly how that works.
[1] because of course the gas/shelter bill could be inputs to another process, in which case one mightn't want to call them consumption.
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Please clarify for me: are you saying that you consume shelter?
Sort of. You can model it as consumable for our intents here, I think.
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There's a surprising number of people involved in the maintenance of the nation's housing stock. But that is the most cack-handed definition of productive that I have ever in my life seen, and trust me, I have seen labour theory of value people try.
Other non-productive assets under your definition: a fruit-tree. A bee-hive. Etc. Etc.
(Think: a house is an asset which produces a good. It is a productive asset.)
(This is all by the way, given that the meaning of a house as a productive asset as opposed to say, gold, is pretty clear.)