The 2017 Election Thread

[Swoop]

People are actually surprised by the labour lie of "affordable homes"?

A bit dim of them to think land prices, development costs and the meddling of retards in council would result in lower costs and eventually lower house pricing.

Then there is the absurdity of the selection process to get one of these "bargains". Phil Twatford, you are an idiot of the first order.

Criticism over new KiwiBuild buyers' suitability, housing minister says homes not for low-income families.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/...ectid=12150921

[husaberg]

People are actually surprised by the labour lie of "affordable homes"?

A bit dim of them to think land prices, development costs and the meddling of retards in council would result in lower costs and eventually lower house pricing.

Then there is the absurdity of the selection process to get one of these "bargains". Phil Twatford, you are an idiot of the first order.

Criticism over new KiwiBuild buyers' suitability, housing minister says homes not for low-income families.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/...ectid=12150921

The National approach of pretending it wasnt a problem and selling off thousands of state houses must have been far better. well it was if you werent a tax payer or you were Aucklands largest private real estate companyreal estate or owned a motel chain and just happened to be big national campaign donors.

Large donations to National came from rich-listers including venture capitalist and founder of vodka company 42 Below Grant Baker, property investors and developers Adrian Burr, Garth Barfoot and Mark Wyborn, members of the wealthy Huljich family, founder of the National Business Review Barry Colman, Mainfreight founder Bruce Plested, Chinese businessman Zhao Wu Shen and hotelier Earl Hagaman.

Hagaman bought two Chinese National MPs worth for the 100k.

[TheDemonLord]

People are actually surprised by the labour lie of "affordable homes"?

A bit dim of them to think land prices, development costs and the meddling of retards in council would result in lower costs and eventually lower house pricing.

Then there is the absurdity of the selection process to get one of these "bargains". Phil Twatford, you are an idiot of the first order.

Criticism over new KiwiBuild buyers' suitability, housing minister says homes not for low-income families.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/...ectid=12150921

It's almost like the salary threshold is targeted at the 25-35 Middle class bracket, who are now the die-hard Socialists that make up Labour voters. Because lets not worry about the actual poor...

[Voltaire]

People are actually surprised by the labour lie of "affordable homes"?

A bit dim of them to think land prices, development costs and the meddling of retards in council would result in lower costs and eventually lower house pricing.

Then there is the absurdity of the selection process to get one of these "bargains". Phil Twatford, you are an idiot of the first order.

Criticism over new KiwiBuild buyers' suitability, housing minister says homes not for low-income families.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/...ectid=12150921

After the last 10 years of runaway property prices and poor wage growth it must be a challenge, rather them than me. If working for the

Council/Govt is anything like working for a Multinational there must be a lot of people at the top there only because the good ones have

buggered off and the day is taken up with pointless paperwork and audits.

[Ocean1]

It's almost like the salary threshold is targeted at the 25-35 Middle class bracket, who are now the die-hard Socialists that make up Labour voters. Because lets not worry about the actual poor...

... or the whole concept of actually paying for your own shit.

[Ocean1]

So, what is the ethical basis on which tax, in general is levied?

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/ind...digital-giants

Only, the tax working group (TM), like every government "advisory" group before it have said fuck all about the ethical right to demand tax of any given entity. Nor, apparently is that their brief.

To be fair I don't think the govt has offered any guidelines for their consideration regarding that either. They're to consider only who, and how much more they should pay. Never "Why".

[Swoop]

The National approach of ... selling off thousands of state houses must have been far better.

Done wisely it is a far better approach to sell off unproductive assets and replace them with productive ones. Having a small state house on a large section of land (not uncommon) that gets sold off and then replaced with 2/3/4 houses on the equivalent area of land makes a lot of sense, especially if a genuine approach to "housing people" is taken.

If working for the Council/Govt is anything like working for a Multinational there must be a lot of people at the top there only because the good ones have buggered off ...

Absolutely.
You are familiar with the "septic tank theory" I presume?

Never "Why".

"To fund their elaborate social-engineering scheme"...

[husaberg]

Done wisely it is a far better approach to sell off unproductive assets and replace them with productive ones. Having a small state house on a large section of land (not uncommon) that gets sold off and then replaced with 2/3/4 houses on the equivalent area of land makes a lot of sense, especially if a genuine approach to "housing people" is taken.

Only they never did that, they sold off plenty but built far less.
93-99 it shrunk by 10,000 dwellings National
99-2008 it grew by 8,000 Labour
2008-2017-Srunk by 8,500 under National

They Then spent the money renting out motels. plus doing extensive decontamination that were never required on others
Kind of odd maths.
But it worked out great if you owned real estate companies or Motel Chains like National parties big donors.
Sep 2017

Housing NZ's latest quarterly report reveals the agency's portfolio of 63,276 houses had shrunk by 3922 since 2015, including by 1132 properties in the past year.
As the number of Housing NZ properties decreases, social housing waiting lists continue to grow, with 1476 more applications in 2017 than the previous year.
A Housing NZ spokesman said, despite having fewer homes, the agency had replaced outdated properties with new houses.
"During 2016/17 Housing NZ delivered a total of 1524 homes, including 1421 social, emergency and transitional homes, and 103 market and affordable homes."
The number of empty state houses had decreased, with 1592 vacant nationally in June, compared with 2486 a year earlier.
We've also committed $354 million for emergency housing the first time permanent funding has been committed, which will provided 8600 emergency places each year."

[sidecar bob]

Only they never did that, they sold off plenty but built far less.
93-99 it shrunk by 10,000 dwellings National
99-2008 it grew by 8,000 Labour
2008-2017-Srunk by 8,500 under National

But as a result of being sold, these houses continued to exist, bought by the private sector & often rented out to the same people, while private landlords shoulders all the costs for upkeep, insurance & rates, while the govt pocketed the cash for the property's.
Surely the govt came out the winner?
How do I qualify for a state house? It would free up a pile of cash.

[husaberg]

But as a result of being sold, these houses continued to exist, bought by the private sector & often rented out to the same people, while private landlords shoulders all the costs for upkeep, insurance & rates, while the govt pocketed the cash for the property's.
Surely the govt came out the winner?
How do I qualify for a state house? It would free up a pile of cash.

Only that wasnt what i was replying to
I was repling to the post that attempted to say National sold some higher priced off Houses to build more houses .
This never occured. they old off houses and built far less.
The population growth was higher than the rate at which anyone built houses.
If the the state house stock had been kept the same or incresed to match the high rate of net immigration there would not be a housing crisis.
The govt spent the money from the state house sales on decontamination that was not needed plus hundreds of millions on emergencey housing in motels this is not a winner unless you own barfeoot and thompson or scenic circle motels.

As for you last flippant response you could just like Bill English did.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/poli...sing-allowance

Mr English has come under fire over allowances he claimed for living in his $1.2 million Karori house, but has failed to shut down the controversy since it was revealed by The Dominion Post in July.
He said yesterday he had paid back $32,000 and pledged not to claim any more taxpayer cash for housing.
At the time, ministers who owned their own homes in Wellington (rather than renting) were restricted to the MPs' allowance of $24,000 a year - but English had declared he had no financial interest in the house because he was not a beneficiary of the family trust that owned it.
Under the rules of the time, that meant Ministerial Services rented the house from his family trust at market rates of about $900 a week. English could also claim for other costs, such as a cleaner.
The allowance was claimed on the grounds his "primary residence" was his Dipton home, although his family had long been based in Wellington and returned to Dipton largely for holidays or constituency reasons as Clutha-Southland MP.

[Banditbandit]

So, what is the ethical basis on which tax, in general is levied?

It's not hard to build the argument ...

Nothing is free. In out societies someone needs to be paid for what they produce.

If you participate on society then you are relying on the labor of others to provide things like:

Police
Armed forces
Roads
Water supply
Sewage

Education and Health are debatable - in our society significant portion of the costs are paid by the state.

You are therefore ethically obliged to contribute to the costs of these things that you use.

One mechanism by which your contribution is collected is by taxes.

There are other mechanisms. The cost of collecting through these other mechanisms is higher than the cost of collecting taxes. Therefore, on a cost basis, taxes are the most ethical way to collect your contribution to society.

Now you can ask about taxes as wealth redistribution and argue the ethics of that. There are some ethical systems, such as Ayn Rand's Virtue of Selfishness that would not support taxes as wealth redistribution - the reality is that Rand died in poverty, dependent on the state she railed against all her life. She did not have the intestinal fortitude to live by her ethics ... I have no respect for her or her ethics.

Bu generally, this is largely where the debate about taxes really lies - in the wealth redistribution system.

The ethical approach that supports this is one of equity and fairness, of looking after each other.

Not everyone buys into that ethics ..

[jasonu]

How do I qualify for a state house? It would free up a pile of cash.

Being on a benefit and or being brown helps.

[Viking01]

At least some news organisations are not totally focused just on the Royal visit

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA181...ecember-30.htm

[sidecar bob]

Only that wasnt what i was replying to
I was repling to the post that attempted to say National sold some higher priced off Houses to build more houses .
This never occured. they old off houses and built far less.
The population growth was higher than the rate at which anyone built houses.
If the the state house stock had been kept the same or incresed to match the high rate of net immigration there would not be a housing crisis.
The govt spent the money from the state house sales on decontamination that was not needed plus hundreds of millions on emergencey housing in motels this is not a winner unless you own barfeoot and thompson or scenic circle motels.

As for you last flippant response you could just like Bill English did.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/poli...sing-allowance

Well why don't these losers just save up & buy a house like normal people?

[husaberg]

Well why don't these losers just save up & buy a house like normal people?

They i would suggest either try to or are losers.
But remember its pretty hard to save up to buy a house when you are a single parent or are not clever or educated enough to get a decent job or when due to a housing shortage house prices go up far faster than wages.
Are the rents you charge lower than the morgage rates based on 30 year mortgage at current valuations.
Or how long would it take you to save a 10% deposit on an Auckland house on the min wage.
Not everyone is lucky to be born smart to decent parents who encourage education and savings or work ethics.