Posts by Paul Williams
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to BenWilson,
Yes, I think a CGT is definitely needed. It won't be anywhere near as disastrous to property values as people think, especially if homes are excluded. The only think it discourages is speculation.
Agreed. As is the case in Australia.
-
OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Stephen Judd,
Quiggin is an Australian, and I'm afraid New Zealand features as a cautionary tale in many places. Not without justification, either.
I've not yet read it yet but follow his blog closely and admire his work.
NZ also has a population the size of Australia's largest city, making for rather different market dynamics. It makes for some serious challenges in trying to establish a competitive market for things like electrons with which there is no scope for product differentiation and it's prohibitively expensive to create divergent delivery streams.
Good points Matthew, I admit I'd strayed from the specifics to the theory a little.
-
Stephen, Matthew, I understand your views and largely agree them but I confess I'm less certain about all this than I used to be.
I've been somewhat convinced that the benefits of ownership might be overstated by some of the applied behavioural economics thinking/writing of several groups in Australia, percapita being the main one. My take on their arguments is that it is possible to design markets that deliver long term public good thus alleviating the need for governments to necessarily own or directly provide.
This rhetoric/thinking is pretty influential in Australia, at least in so far as it's clearly identifiable in many of the PMs speeches and in various Commonwealth-led reforms. Gillard said, pre-election:
As far as I am concerned, there is no inherent superiority in a public sector or a private sector provider - certainly not on ideological grounds. The challenge is not whether to combine public and private resources in these essential sectors, but how best to do it.
For instance, in my own area, vocational education, there's a good number of private and not-for-profit providers that can be just as effective, efficient and sustainable as the public provider so long as regulatory and funding policy permits them to be.
-
Stephen said:
This relates to my earlier comment about private ownership and the corporate model making it hard for state operations to implement policy goals. To me, it is the extent to which state ownership enables policy that justifies that ownership. When we neuter the state's ability to direct the governance of an operation, why then sure, what's the point of the state owning it?
I largely agree with this although there are arguments that ownership isn't the only way in which you can achieve public policy goals, regulation and incentives are others. Ownership is just more direct. Interestingly, in the UK new Community Interest Companies have been established for "social enterprises". They're intended to strike the balance between benefits enjoyed by trading corporations without requiring organisations to be as restricted as charities are. I don't know much more than this sadly... perhaps the PA community includes UK residents who can tell us how they're going?
-
Hard News: Only what we would expect a…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
I've said consistently that "No asset sales in our first term" was just code for "We'll strip-mine the asset ledger in the second term", and Key has proved that I was correct.
I'm catching up a little in this discussion, but thought National were reasonably clear that they'd not sell assets in any first term but made clear they'd consider asset sales if they were elected to a second term. If that's broadly correct, then Key's reasonably signalling his plans well ahead of the election which is fair enough. I'm not making a statement about the policy per se, just about the process which I think is reasonable.
I'd much rather have the money off my mortgage here, which would provide me with a guaranteed 7% tax-free return every year, which would in turn lower my cost of life, pay my mortgage off quicker, and shield me from the random disaster that is provisional tax.
Sure. Understood. Though the clear downside of compulsory super is that, if you were still here, you'd have no access to it anyway.
Edit: Not that I think super schemes are a bad idea, mind. I think they're a very good idea, and could well be a large part of what is behind Australia's prosperity, and the success of their stockmarket - they have very high levels of local investment, which helps them a great deal.
Edit: Too right! I can't help but think NZ is still paying for the idiocy of Muldoon and his decision to scrap the 3rd Labour Government's compulsory pension savings' scheme.
-
Hard News: Only what we would expect a…, in reply to BenWilson,
As a side note, he mentioned that people with money in Kiwisaver have nowhere to invest it, except Australia. That should have been slammed immediately. Kiwisaver is *savings*. It's a superannuation plan. It's not intended to be something we sink into the stockmarket, without the slightest clue (for most people) about what we're doing, it's a plan to encourage saving through tax cuts to savings.
But Ben, don't most super plans include a balance of investments including in stocks? Also, I must confess I know little about my (Australian compulsory) super. In my defence, I have little influence over it beyond choosing a provider and a scheme (every provider must offer at least three schemes) and checking the benchmarked performance - it's this that might be behind Key's comments? That the average rate of domestic investment returns generate off the NZX is low by comparison with those on the ASX?
-
Starbucks also failed miserably and memorably in Australia. Australian professor of economics Nick Wailes observed thus at the time
There's no doubt that Australia has a well developed cafe culture, particularly in Melbourne IMO, but I don't think the coffee here is nearly as consistent as it is in NZ. I speculate, but don't know, that it is because there's fewer roasters who're roasting larger quantities of beans for a larger market. As a matter of personal preference, I buy from cafes in Sydney that serve either Di Stefano or Newtown's Campos.
-
Hard News: Only what we would expect a…, in reply to Sacha,
The sports show "A game of two halves" had both Devlin and Veitch as hosts and consistently promoted a rude, boorish 'lads' culture with a nostalgic disrespect for diversity that saw itself as "anti-pc".
Fair points though I still think Devlin's offence and subsequent behaviour ought to be differentiated from Veitch's (Henry's too, he's a twatcock but he's not physically assaulted anyone).
-
Hard News: Only what we would expect a…, in reply to Kumara Republic,
And to those who are aware of Devlin, isn't he considered one of the "good ole boys" that Paul Henry, Paul Holmes and Tony Veitch also claim membership to?
I'd not thought him in that group but it's been a while since I've been in the country. Certainly his actions are incomparable with Vetich's (and his acceptance of blame too differentiates him further).
-
Muse: The High Aesthetic Line, in reply to Ngaire BookieMonster,
Heh. Until you see Star Wars meets The Muppets.
Cool. I used to love Pigs in Space but my favourite segment remains the Swedish Chef (who, I'm told by a Swedish friend, is known as the Finnish Chef in Sweden).