Posts by James Bremner
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Envirologue: Too Big to Fail – Why…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Bart, you are wrong that rich people will suffer if the policies recommended in the name of climate change are enacted. Rich people will always be okay, they have the resources to look after themselves don't they? It is the poor people in developing countries that will suffer, and they will suffer. Climate change policies will deny them the economic growth that will enable them to have better lives with improving food, shelter, healthcare and education. All the things that we in the developed world take for granted. And that is grossly immoral. Why do you think India and other developing nations are so hostile to global climate change treaty the UN is trying to foist on them?
Additionally the less well off in the developed world will also see their quality of life reduced as people in England and Germany are discovering with dramatically rising electricity prices over recent years, with more increases due in the coming years all to support questionable renewable energy mandates.
All in the name of a policy that is more of a world view and a belief system than a scientifically based policy, as the original article this thread shows. Now icky neo-liberalism is part of the evil mix that is going to ruin us all!!
You can argue until you are blue in the face, but the fact is that over the life of the AGW models, their projections have been significantly higher than the actual temperatures recorded. That is incontrovertible (see attached chart). If you are trying to project 100 years into the future, and your projections are off in the first 15 years of your projection period, what do you think that says about the likelihood that the remaining 85 years of predictions will be accurate? In the real world that says that the theory supporting the models has been falsified. Go back to square one and try again. But as AGW is a belief system and the most epic gravy train in history, shamefully that doesn't happen. -
This is worth a read, the second half in particular: http://bit.ly/1KUGkUM
Similarly to the Vox article linked to in a previous post, the article suggests that the tide has already turned on ISIS. Not surprising really, nut cases can’t seem to not overplay their hands and piss off too many people, which is what ISIS have done. And being on the wrong end of air power for an extended period of time is going to wear you down.
It may be that ISIS will be over and done with, in Iraq anyway, sooner than expected. So NZ's involvement seems unlikely to get NZ stuck in a situation that is deteriorating.
As for what happens in Syria, who knows how that will pan out.
But this is just one more chapter in the violent and brutal history of the expansionist political ideology that is Islam. Most likely there will be more. -
Hard News: Housing: the Feudal Model, in reply to Sacha,
I am all for some kind of tax on foreign non residents buying property. Pretty common in places like Hong Kong and Singapore.
LVRs seem to have backfired a bit, I think they should have been applied to purchases of existing houses only. That would work to direct demand to creating increased supply.
A CGT or financial transaction tax would only get added to the price of real estate, further screwing those who don't own property. There are plenty of cities with absurdly expensive real estate with CGTs, so it is very clear that CGTs don't work to restrain prices.
Again, if you want to un-plug NZ's real estate casino, which absolutely ought to be a critical national priority (without screwing things up), you have to change the factors that make real estate a one way bet. You cant blame people for behaving rationally. If you could sit down at a blackjack table, and you knew with 100% certainty, that you were going to win and make money, who wouldn't do that? So you can't blame people for jumping on the property bandwagon. You just have to make it less attractive going forward
And that gets back to supply. Things are so out of whack in Auckland's real estate market (and NZ in general) that I think you need an all of the above approach. Increasing density and more green field, I you have to have both. You have to change the risk calculus. If land bankers knew that someone could easily build a house on some new land for less than they think their land is worth, do you think that will change their behavior? You bet it would. Now they have downside risk, not a one way bet. You'd see a lot of land come onto the market, and fewer people wanting to buy land and sit on it. -
Hard News: Housing: the Feudal Model, in reply to Sacha,
What would you do to reduce demand? Stop new people coming to Auckland? How do you legally do that? Stop Aucklanders having children?
-
Hard News: Housing: the Feudal Model, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Bart,
So I am corrupt am I? Please.
How will more of the same that caused the problem, solve the problem?
Do you want to keep making property speculators and land bankers rich do you? Do you want to keep the one way property bet in place that screws the poor? I don't. Opening up land supply will change the risk calculation and induce many to sell, increasing supply.
So no more greenfield development anywhere ever? So your future for Aucklanders is a shoebox sized apartment that costs 20 times the median salary, while not far way there are wide open spaces. That doesn't make much sense does it?. NZ is only 1% built up, there is tonnes of room, we only need to free up a slice of it.
Developers build expensive homes because if it costs $500k to buy a section, you aren't going to put a $100k house on it are you? You are going to put a $400 or $500k house on it.
In the Kaizen quality improvement process, to get to the root of a problem, which first appear as a symptom, you have to ask "why" five times. If you ask "why" 5 times about most symptoms in the Auckland housing market you get back to land supply restrictions as the root of the problem. If MUDS can be used to bring more supply to market at lower upfront cost, that would be great news. -
Hard News: Housing: the Feudal Model, in reply to Sacha,
Where does the "endless acres of sprawl we are talking" come from? I haven't seen any plan that involves endless acres of sprawl. Now in Dallas you have a large city getting larger, but that doesn't mean that you need endless acres of sprawl to take a lot of the heat out of the Auckland market. For some time demand has exceed supply in Auck creating a one way bet that attracts speculators, land bankers and mom and pops investing their savings. To stop that you need the council to have a plan that clearly states that "the expected growth in required housing is x000 houses per year for the next so many years, we are aiming for a split of a:b between brown and green field, and that if we don't meet the infill targets, we will make sure, through expanding the UGB if necessary, that more land is made available so the total demand is met". That way you take the one way bet off the table and get a lot of hot money out of real estate, with a major beneficial impact on price inflation. Demand is reduced and supply is increased, exactly what needs to happen.
I would have thought that, given the desperate situation with extreme house prices in Auck (and NZ generally) that most people would be up for trying new ideas, such as MUDS. Why can't it be tried in an area for a few years to see how it works out?
The surprising aspect of this situation, is that it is the land use restriction policies generally favored by the left, that are absolutely f*&king the less well off, those that the left generally seem to think they care about the most, while delivering a windfall to the well off. And it is the left that is resisting any changes to the root cause of the supply problem that would actually have a positive impact on the situation.
One of the left's proposed solutions to this situation, a capital gains tax, doesn't begin to address the fundamental supply issue and would just further add to the price inflation, making the situation worse.
One would hope that in such a dreadful situation, that people could agree to try alternative solutions as the current policy settings so clearly aren't working. -
Here is a good read on rethinking urban planning, specifically "smart growth", with lots of links to other related articles.
When the price of housing is as out of whack as it is in NZ, with the tremendous harm that does to the less well off, it really is time for a rethink. What can't go on forever, wont. And in relation to housing bubbles, when the end eventually comes, as it must, it is a horrible mess and everyone gets badly hurt.
One of the points made worth noting in particular, is that one of the central tenants of smart growth, the belief that most workers work in the center of the city, thus driving the need for compact cites to reduce travel times etc. is not correct. In most cases, only a minority of workers work in the central core of cities, most work outside the core of the city, so a bit of growth on the fringes of a city to allow supply to meet demand isn't the problem it is purported to be. -
Hard News: Housing: the Feudal Model, in reply to Matthew Poole,
"Sprawl is hugely expensive"
As expensive as median houses at 7 or 8 times the median salary? How much is too much? Median houses at 10 times the median salary? -
The idea that there will be some kind of financial calamity due to a US government shutdown or a debt limit showdown is a load of old cobblers, despite how often that old chestnut gets so tediously rolled out.
While the debt limit may be hit, and no new borrowing is allowed, the Govt. will of course still keep collecting its normal levels of tax revenue through wage and salary deductions, and various other at source tax deductions (interest etc.) on a fortnightly or monthly basis (the Govt. get it sticky greedy wasteful hands out of your pocket? Unfortunately that will never happen, shutdown or no shutdown or debt limit fight or not).
At moment about 2/3rds to 3/4s of Govt. spending is funded through taxation, the rest through borrowing, so all that needs to happen is a prioritization of spending and there is many, many, many times the amount of tax revenue collected than the debt service requirement (even with $17 trillion of debt), so no default is remotely necessary. So RB, while there are many things to worry about in this world, the US defaulting is not one of them. Of course as English says, if the US did default that would be a big problem, but there is no need for that to happen. As things sit today, that is.
And the good news is that while the long term fiscal outlook for the US is not great, it is improving, reducing the possibility that the US will ever get to the stage where a default is a possibility. Since the Elephants, feral as some of them may be, took over the House in 2010 and began to try to restrain Mr.Obama’s wanton progressive profligacy on steroids approach to government spending (i.e. an $840 billion stimulus program that everyone agrees did not work, even Obama cracked joke about not being able to find any shovel ready projects!) Federal spending has dropped from 25% to 22% of GDP, and will continue to drop so long as the sequestration and other spending restraints remain in place (in other words as long as Nancy Pelosi doesn't get anywhere the Speaker’s gavel again, perish the thought!!). The deficit is down from well over a trillion to 6 or 7 hundred billion, despite Mr. Obama's overwhelming commitment and heroic desire to continue spending like a drunken progressive.
As a rule I now avoid and ignore government, politics and the media in the US as much as possible, as it is such a depressing and disappointing landscape over here at the moment. But I thought I would address the “catastrophic US default” issue as it is so often misunderstood and misreported, both in the US and NZ and around the world. -
Speaker: Generation Zero: Let's Grow Up, in reply to BenWilson,
Ben, yes the greater fool theory that all bubbles require to grow. People buy something solely based on the belief that someone else, a greater fool, will come along and buy what they just bought for a higher price. Dutch Tulip bulbs etc. Human nature doesn't change.
I think much of the Unitary plan is good, with the glaring exception of the urban land boundary. I don't agree that you either have intensification or more land, you need both.
I think councils should be legally required to look at projected demand for housing in their area and to proactively ensure supply is available through release of sufficient land and consenting of sufficient houses and apartments to meet demand to ensure housing prices remains stable.
Ben you are right about the importance of housing to the banking industry. I am not advocating a policy that would cause a price crash and resulting banking crisis, but one that would result in a modest decline early on and relative stability of housing process over time and as wages and salaries increased over time, the ratio of median house price to median salary would decline. I would target a ratio of median house to salary of 3 times as the goal of the policy. It might take 20 years to get there, but housing is so fundamental to life and family and social well-being, it can’t be left to policies (compact city fetishism, agenda 21 etc.) that have been a proven disaster and so are destructive for the less well off. These kind of polices are so often advocated by limousine liberals who will never have to suffer the consequences of the policies for which they advocate, i.e. Len Brown and his nice lifestyle block, & Al Gore and his energy hungry mansions and Gulfstream V etc.
Sasha, as part of consenting new developments, I would make developers build a portion of the development as attached housing and multi story apartments etc.Here is Tony Alexander of the BNZ from 2011 with his views on what needs to be done. http://bit.ly/12cN2Cp
And into today’s Stuff.co.nz the New Zealand Institute adds their 2 cents worth: http://bit.ly/12cPpFd
It really is not that complicated, Econ 101, demand and supply. Restrict supply with rising demand and price goes up. To stop prices rising, increase supply to match or exceed demand. Any plan, Unitary or otherwise that doesn't comply with Econ 101 is going to be a train wreck, and in this case the less well off are those will be hurt.
Ignoring Econ 101 in city planning is like designing a plane while ignoring the laws of physics, it is not going to be pretty, and you wouldn't to it unless you were either ignorant or subscribed to a cultish theory that was allowed to override reality.
