Dear Mr English, I don't want a tax cut

[davereid]

Substitute oil for food in your argument .

Easy. Once food was the commodity. Currently oil holds that position, or at least fossil fuels (of which NZ is rich) dominate. But just as the industrial revolution ended food shortages for the industrialised nations, the energy revolution will do the same with oil.

No one can predict what will be the turning point. Right now, my money is on the super-conductor. Get the super conductor right, and we have viable nuclear fusion. End of the oil age. The super conductor will also give us the super capacitor. Bogan's electric motorcycle is suddenly useable. My V8 is history, and the balance has changed.

[davereid]

... And the means of production is the corporations and businesses we all work for.... the majority of New Zealanders they are destined to work for foreignors who own the profits from the businesses we used to own in NZ....And on that note, I am sick of computer screens and beer is calling my name. Good debate BTW, I enjoyed your posts.

Hehe.. good on ya, go and enjoy that beer..

But, here's one for you. I think its great when foreign companies take dividends home.

Dave's analogy time again...

I have a gorse covered paddock. Its a pain, I run a few goats, and that's it.

Then an investor shows up. He sends me a tractor, gorse spray and seed potatoes. I do the work. I plant them in my gorse free newly, ploughed paddocks. They grow, and I harvest 1000 kg of potatoes which I sell for a profit. I pay myself, my workers, the tractor repair man, the man who took the spuds to market, and man who sold them. 50% of my gross profit goes in tax. And the man who invested takes his share back to England.

The key is, that it's new wealth. It didn't exist until we grew the spuds.

Even though the investor took his profit, we were all better off.

[shrub]

Only problem is the guy buys the paddock, pays you minimum wage, trashes the paddock by poor management, fills the stream with waste and then buggers off once the paddock stops producing potatoes.

And the paddock was in pretty good order and was producing some damn fine goats (perfect in a curry), but now you don't have a paddock, you don't have any goats and shortly the nice man from across the creek will head off and leave you unemployed.

I don't have a problem with overseas investment creating wealth and opportunities where there were none, but I do have a problem with good businesses, or businesses that could be improved being sold to overseas investors who don't necessarily do a good job with them, asset strip and run. The banks are a great example, as is Air NZ and the railways.

[Winston001]

And do you know who Bob is in this analogy? the NZ government (past and present). And Joe is Australia, China, the US and anyone else that has bought our assets.

The only significant silver I can remember being sold was the Post Office P&T (Telecom), Government Print, BNZ, and New Zealand Rail. The result was a vastly improved telephone network, connection within days rather than 6 weeks. Huge numbers of Kiwis and superannuation funds held shares and enjoyed the dividends.

Of the above, GP was the only mistake. It proved to be a winner for Rank Group. NZ Rail and the BNZ were disasters and certainly couldn't be considered valuable assets. Its been replaced anyway by Kiwibank.

The reality is that NZ has sold very little silver. Most of our stuff is still ours - Financial Accounts of the NZ Government as at June 2009 - link here http://www.treasury.govt.nz/governme.../yearend/jun09

Its a PDF and worth downloading. To find the assets and entities owned by us, go to page 178. The last 4 pages have the data including their equity.

[Winston001]

Shrub - Only problem is the guy buys the paddock, pays you minimum wage, trashes the paddock by poor management, fills the stream with waste and then buggers off once the paddock stops producing potatoes.

And the paddock was in pretty good order and was producing some damn fine goats (perfect in a curry), but now you don't have a paddock, you don't have any goats and shortly the nice man from across the creek will head off and leave you unemployed

Only it doesn't happen that way. To get a competent farmer to farm the land the investor is forced to pay a high wage. If he deliberately trashes the land (and I'm not sure how) then he's destroyed the value in his investment. Loss all around.

Again how the investor fills the stream with waste in this day and age of nosey neighbours and Environment Councils is hard to conceive. But lets say he does, he'll face fines, and the stream and the land will recover.

Its simply bad business to destroy the primary asset - and investors do not deliberately do that.

I'll give you an example: Saudi investors have established a huge market garden in an Ethiopian valley and the produce is shipped to Saudi Arabia. This provides work and the opportunity to learn new skills for the Ethiopians who are among the poorest people in the world.

[mashman]

Only it doesn't happen that way. To get a competent farmer to farm the land the investor is forced to pay a high wage. If he deliberately trashes the land (and I'm not sure how) then he's destroyed the value in his investment. Loss all around.

Again how the investor fills the stream with waste in this day and age of nosey neighbours and Environment Councils is hard to conceive. But lets say he does, he'll face fines, and the stream and the land will recover.

Its simply bad business to destroy the primary asset - and investors do not deliberately do that.

I'll give you an example: Saudi investors have established a huge market garden in an Ethiopian valley and the produce is shipped to Saudi Arabia. This provides work and the opportunity to learn new skills for the Ethiopians who are among the poorest people in the world.

There is such a thing as ignorance though (even amongst the high paid know alls that don't actually know anywhere near as much as they think)... whilst the CURRENT farmer may well be good at what he does, there will have, ok may have been phosphate fertilizers used on the land by previous, unknowing farmers... Perhaps it wasn't known that the phosphate could find their way into the waterways back in the day? However, if the current owner was to blame (and it could be proven), i bet there'd be plenty of fines being handed out and clear up projects under way (if the money was available)... It's another can of worms that noone wants to open... primarily because it would COST someone to clean it up...

Its simply bad business to destroy the primary asset - and investors do not deliberately do that.

Perhaps you might like to tell that to the corporations and world leaders... ya know, that they're fucking up the primary asset... You have looked around recently haven't you? The world is run by bad investors, who give neither a shit about their people or their environment...