Posts by BenWilson
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Speaker: The Brexlection, in reply to Tom Semmens,
For all the Fascism of the Daily Mail, the pro-Europe Chardonay socialists of the remainer chattering middle classes
...are just nihilists! I mean say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, dude. At least it's an ethos...
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Hard News: Local journeys on the cusp of…, in reply to Gerrit,
How many knew that?
I did, after I read the road code for cyclists, about 10 years ago. It's a good idea to read it, and hook turns are a very handy solution to some intersections. Crossing to the right lane in the middle of traffic is often difficult/dangerous. Also, it can be a good way to turn right at a no-right turn without breaking the law, holding up traffic, or putting yourself at risk.
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Hard News: Local journeys on the cusp of…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Yeah, walking my bike across a motorway off-ramp... that's something I'll be doing in a hurry to show what a top law abiding bloke I am. When hell freezes over! I'm scared to walk them as a pedestrian.
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Hard News: Local journeys on the cusp of…, in reply to Gerrit,
It's the law, sure. But also common sense seems fair at times. If the traffic has stopped for me, it's to no one's advantage that i take 4 times longer to cross.
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Hard News: Local journeys on the cusp of…, in reply to Russell Brown,
And let’s be fair: the paths at both ends of Waterview are shaping up pretty well, especially the south end.
To give a different angle of attack, coming from the West along Gt North Rd and passing through that area, I've seen not one sausage of improvement. The cycling infrastructure is essentially completely unchanged for me, except that during the construction it was made less available and more dangerous.
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Limiting ownership to residents might help or it might not. Whether you are a resident or not you still need somewhere to live, so the presence of large numbers of people is going to drive up prices whether they can own property or not. Property becomes even more compelling as an investment when you can extract higher rents.
That said I'm not against trying many of the things Mikaere says. I just don't expect the results to be seen rapidly. This problem is enormous and multifaceted. It's not just about whether people can afford to own property, it's gone on to whether they can even have a roof at all, at which point seriously perverse effects of all sorts of options have to be weighed up. You probably don't want to move people out of garages if the other option is the street. Putting up LVRs seemed like such a good idea, but it locked pretty much only less wealthy people out of the market.
The movement of interest rates influences, as Matthew says above, 77% of the economy's capital, so it's no wonder they basically just don't. It would be too big a call for any bureaucrat to go making a settings change that stuffed around with billions of dollars.
I don't think our political system can cope with this problem, TBH. I expect it to get worse and worse. Our way of running things is incremental and is thus incapable of systematic and major change involving several steps at once. So it's spiralling in on this very poor situation.
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Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to llew40,
With our tax and investment systems so ridiculously geared towards property as an asset class, for those who could it has simply been the most sensible way to save for their retirement.
Pretty much. It's an asset that's easy to understand, over which you have a lot of control, and isn't really that much work to look after. With the tax structures how they are, it's almost foolish not to be in it, if you have the capital. If the other option is stocks and shares, or a small business, it's no wonder that people who have spent their life in some kind of salaried non-speculative job aren't really that keen on a more risky (and possibly more productive) option.
It's not their fault the system is fucked. Nor are they under an obligation to get screwed by it because others are being screwed by it.
It's a huge and complicated problem. Not surprising when it's almost all of our capital. The annoying simplicity of the Herald's approach is not effectively countered by more oversimplifications.
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Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to bob daktari,
these articles do buy into the narrative that if you forgo smashed avo and work hard you too can own a home
Of course. But only people who aren’t actually trying to do it can even possibly buy into that narrative.
It also works on those parents too selfish or feckless to lend/give their kids that crucial two-or-three-hundred-thousand
I’d think that’s the more likely target audience. Also people who want to feel that their investment portfolio is righteous thing that doesn’t exclude those who really try hard enough. I’m under no illusions that my own investment property is not a contributor to anything genuinely positive in the NZ economy.
These articles are also putting expectations on parents …. we’ve saved and budgetted to put our kids thru Uni, and out the other end with no debt, trying to give them the same start in life we had.
Yup, in fact, in my case, I saved and budgetted myself through Uni, twice now*. Having a place that I can literally put my kids in when they grow up is a big motivator. My retirement savings? I don’t expect to retire.
*ETA: With massive parental help. But also by basically being a total tightwad and working really fucking hard, both times.
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Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
I doubt the people writing the articles are actually stupid. The true detail is usually in the article anyway. Which leaves me scratching around for their real motives. It's obviously not aimed at Millenials themselves because they don't even read Granny. Presumably it's all about the clickbait and the heightened Google pageranks from all the outraged in-links to give their property advertisers better scores in whatever mysterious way the internet of things actually works. Hell if I know because I have never bought a damned thing from an internet ad. But I can't account for such things as overall branding.
Bottom line is: I don't think this is even vaguely attempting to be journalism.
At some point I will go through with my self promise to just stop reading the Herald at all.
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Hard News: YouTube and the programmatic…, in reply to Scott G,
Every device I have has ad blocker and tracker blockers installed. I just never see this stuff.
I used to do that. But then I stopped bothering and found that I never see it anyway. I pretty much look away, do something else, mute the sound, whenever advertising presents. Turns out it was not as onerous as I'd thought before when I used to obsess about keeping impure content out of my mind. It's essentially invisible to me.