Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 12.00 pm today in association with NZ Mint.
As always, we welcome your additions in the comments below or via email tobernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.
See all previous Top 10s here.
My must watch video today is #8 from BBC's Paul Mason on what the Golden Dawn is up to in Greece. Disturbing.
1. But does it make us happier? - The debate about targeting economic growth or happiness is an old one.
But it's making a comeback now that growth is so hard to find and the world butts up against various restraints and distributional problems.
Robert Skidelsky has written a nice piece at Project Syndicate revisiting this issue.
He points to some research showing that rising economic growth doesn't actually boost happiness.
He also makes a nice distinction between median income and average income.
Another finding has also started to influence the current debate on growth: poor people within a country are less happy than rich people. In other words, above a low level of sufficiency, people's happiness levels are determined much less by their absolute income than by their income relative to some reference group. We constantly compare our lot with that of others, feeling either superior or inferior, whatever our income level; well-being depends more on how the fruits of growth are distributed than on their absolute amount.
Put another way, what matters for life satisfaction is the growth not of mean income but of median income – the income of the typical person. Consider a population of 10 people (say, a factory) in which the managing director earns $150,000 (£93,000) a year and the other nine, all workers, earn $10,000 each. The mean average of their incomes is $25,000, but 90% earn $10,000. With this kind of income distribution, it would be surprising if growth increased the typical person's sense of well-being.
That is not an idle example. In rich societies over the last three decades, mean incomes have been rising steadily, but typical incomes have been stagnating or even falling. In other words, a minority – a very small minority in countries like the US and Britain – has captured most of the gains of growth. In such cases, it is not more growth that we want, but more equality.
Skidelsky ends with a good point and a great quote.
More equality would not only produce the contentment that flows from more security and better health, but also the satisfaction that flows from having more leisure, more time with family and friends, more respect from one's fellows, and more lifestyle choices. Great inequality makes us hungrier for goods than we would otherwise be, by constantly reminding us that we have less than the next person. We live in a pushy society with turbo-charged fathers and "tiger" mothers, constantly goading themselves and their children to "get ahead".
The 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill had a more civilised view:
"I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think … that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind … The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back, by the efforts of others to push themselves forward."
2. 'I've run out of ammo' - The Telegraph reports Bank of England Governor Mervyn King as saying there's not much more the central bank can do to boost the economy until banks recapitalise properly.
Warning that the next generation may have to live with the consequences of past excesses “for a long time to come”, he said Britain’s banks needed to drop the “pretence” that their debts will be repaid.
“I am not sure advanced economies in general will find it easy to get out of their current predicament without creditors acknowledging further likely losses, a significant writing down of asset values, and recapitalisation of their financial systems,” he said.
“Only then will it be possible to return to a more normal provision of the vital banking services so crucial to an economic recovery... Just as in 2008, there is a deep reluctance to admit the extent of the undercapitalisation of the banking system in parts of the industrialised world.”
He compared the situation to the “pretence that debts could be repaid” in the 1930s and added: “We must not repeat that mistake.”
4. The lost generations - Jeffrey Sachs has written an excellent piece at Project Syndicate arguing America should invest more in educating its young and points out its war on drugs is a disaster.
A remarkable new documentary film, The House I Live In, shows that America’s story is even sadder and crueler than that, owing to disastrous policies. Starting around 40 years ago, America’s politicians declared a “war on drugs,” ostensibly to fight the use of addictive drugs like cocaine. As the film clearly shows, however, the war on drugs became a war on the poor, especially on poor minority groups.
In fact, the war on drugs led to mass incarceration of poor, minority young men. The US now imprisons around 2.3 million people at any time, a substantial number of whom are poor people who are arrested for selling drugs to support their own addiction. As a result, the US has ended up with the world’s highest incarceration rate – a shocking 743 people per 100,000!
The film depicts a nightmarish world in which poverty in one generation is passed on to the next, with the cruel, costly, and inefficient “war on drugs” facilitating the process. Poor people, often African-Americans, cannot find jobs or have returned from military service without skills or employment contacts. They fall into poverty and turn to drugs.
Instead of receiving social and medical assistance, they are arrested and turned into felons. From that point on, they are in and out of the prison system, and have little chance of ever getting a legal job that enables them to escape poverty. Their children grow up without a parent at home – and without hope and support. The children of drug users often become drug users themselves; they, too, frequently end up in jail or suffer violence or early death.
What is crazy about this is that the US has missed the obvious point – and has missed it for 40 years. To break the cycle of poverty, a country needs to invest in its children’s future, not in the imprisonment of 2.3 million people a year, many for non-violent crimes that are symptoms of poverty.
6. 'A dove in hawk's feathers' - FT.com reports ECB President Mario Draghi appeared before Germany's parliament overnight to argue that his Big Bazooka would not put a rocket under inflation.
One German parliamentarian described him as a 'dove in hawk's feathers', while another said he was a 'Prussian from Southern Europe.'
7. A laundromat for red hot rubles - Jeff Randall writes in The Telegraph from the unheralded Euro-zone member that is almost bankrupt -- Cyprus. He points to a growing Russian influence and a bunch of new Chinese immigrants. Russia and Cyprus share a religion and a liking for cash transactions.
The number of Russians visiting Cyprus has tripled in three years to more than 400,000 and many do not intend to go back. The official estimate of Russian residents here is about 50,000 but double that seems nearer the mark. Aside from the appeal of an agreeable climate and a low tax rate, the Russians' penchant for cash transactions prompts widespread suspicion that the island is becoming a giant laundromat for red-hot rubles. Cypriot authorities deny this.
The Russians' location of choice is Limassol, a 45-minute drive from Paphos, where there is a Russian-language newspaper, a Russian-language radio station, two Russian-language schools and enough prostitutes from former USSR states to keep the Red Army tied down, as it were, until Christmas. And the Chinese are keen too.
The Russians, quite correctly, view Cyprus as a convenient backdoor to the European Union – and they are not alone. The Chinese have also started arriving, encouraged by what they regard as an incredibly low bar to immigration. Forget all those tricky visa forms, for anyone prepared to spend €300,000 on a property in Cyprus there is the bonus of eligibility for permanent residency. Once this is achieved, the owner is entitled to move anywhere within the EU. For the price of a shoebox in Shanghai, Cyprus is offering a gold-card travel pass and much more besides.
8. Greece's Golden Dawn and a new Kristallnacht - Paul Mason does a great job at BBC's Newsnight reporting on the rise and rise of Greece's neo-fascist Golden Dawn party as Greece's Depression is deepened by its umpteenth austerity drive. HT BusinessInsider
Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panagiotaros allegedly led an attack on a Greek theater where an Albanian was directing a play last week. Golden Dawn supporters clashed with riot police and hurled bricks while the actors and guests were trapped inside – unsure of whether help was on the way.
Panagiotaros told Mason that he estimates 50-60 percent of the Greek police force supports Golden Dawn, and "every day it is growing," – which means they don't get involved when Golden Dawn is doing damage. Some Greeks claim terrible mistreatment at the hands of police who openly boast their allegiance to Golden Dawn as well.
9. The scale of the Auckland task - Bernard Orsman at NZHerald and Jenny Keown at Stuff report from the Property Counci's conference on residential property development on the scale of the task facing Auckland's Council and property developers. The Auckland Plan states they will have to build 400,000 houses over the next 30 years, most of which are supposed to be inside the urban limits in medium to high density forms.
The obvious is now dawning on everyone. To build that many houses so close together will require a massive increase (and reform) in the construction sector, and a whole lot of change of the look and feel of Auckland, including the height and density of the cityscape. That's a whole lot of unhappy home owners in that sentence. NIMBY will be a massive force to overcome.
Former McConnell Property CEO Martin Udale tells Orsman that 50,000 to 80,000 houses would have to be demolished in Auckland to create the space needed to build 300,000 of those 400,000 homes in higher density developments within the city boundaries.
Mr Udale, who now heads Essentia Consulting Group, said one of the biggest risks for the unitary plan was holding political leaders' feet to the fire. "We can't allow the politicians to hide behind community nimbyism and the cave dwellers," he said. The unitary plan had to make widespread infill development easy with provision for height - "this town has a phobia about height".
"We want innovation welcomed, pushing the envelope to be the norm. It's how better things get done."
Stuff reports Todd Property's Strategic Planning Manager Neil Donnelly as saying he doubted Auckland could build the 10,000 houses a year it needed.
Todd Property, owned by Wellington-based Todd Corporation, manages the development of major subdivisions in Auckland, including the Long Bay community on the North Shore, Stonefields at the base of Mt Wellington and Ormiston in South Auckland.
He told a Property Council conference that these projects had orders for 5,000 houses within the next eight to 10 years, which represented just five per cent of the council's projected required housing supply.
''This is despite us being one of the largest providers. The matter of scale is the biggest issue facing Auckland,'' said Donnelly.
The housing development industry needed to shift from its cottage size to something larger in scale, he said. ''We need to roll out a significant number of types of developments for people. Providing 10,000 dwellings is going to have to be provided by large entities - and an industry with a balance sheet.''
He questioned whether developers should trust Auckland Council to deliver infrastructure for large scale housing developments, given the council's failure in this area.
10. Totally Jon Stewart with a summary of the end of the Presidential Campaign
34 Comments
@9
10 million New Zealanders by 2062?
Increasing New Zealand’s population to 10 million people, under a comprehensive 50 year Population Policy to build the economy, is just one of the ideas being discussed in an immigration conference at Massey University’s Albany campus from October 24–26.
//
“New Zealand has gone from having a very ‘white’ immigration policy in the 60s to being super-diverse in 2012. This is a significant shift and has occurred with minimal conflict,” he says. “Immigration has been really important – in part to replace people emigrating and to dampen the effects of population aging. We rely on immigrants for their skills and entrepreneurialism.”
Professor Spoonley is delighted that some of the world’s global specialists in migration from Oxford University, the National University of Singapore and the OECD are coming to Albany to share their research.
JESSICA – Let’s talk a little bit about that population spread. Why are so many people moving to Auckland?
PAUL – Well, Auckland – *there’s an agglomeration effect,* so the bigger Auckland becomes, the more attractive it becomes. It becomes more attractive economically, but it* also becomes more attractive as a place to live.* And so we’re seeing the sort of perimeters of New Zealand, the regions, beginning to flat-line, so they’re not growing, and we’re now beginning to see the first of regions beginning to decline.
Q + A TV3
So the quality of life will be improved? As for agglomeration, when you remove activity in building houses and infrastructure what other activities can we expect to be growing?
Professor Spoonley would have the answer to all that no doubt he is the go to for the snooze media.
That would be something to look forward too. Ten million people and probably 10 million dairy cows. 10% Pure would optimistic.
If the Aussie Productivity Commission said
"The case for higher immigration as a driver for economic growth is far from proven, as is the notion that more immigrants can counter the negative effects of population ageing" -what is the point? Growth for growth's sake.
I struggle to see any benefits but lots of negatives to Auckland becoming bigger. Love the city as it is especially the beaches and parks. Don't want to share them with another million people and their waste. Who's agenda is at play here or is it just mindlessness.
A few years ago the very enlightened Warren Cooper was asked when would you know that development in Queenstown had gone far enough. His answer; when the tourists stopped coming. Dunno but I think that's too late
Have you got B.O. again , Bernard ..... it's been an hour and a half , and no one wants to join you on the Thursday Top 10 ...
...... and it's quite a decent blend this Top 10 ... some funny and entertaining stuff , along with the usual gloomsterising ...
Gummie's here for you , buddy !
Re #9 - of course a scale-up means more factory/flat-pack housing methods. Good QC is possible, one can wheel in the robots instead of relying on the tender mercies of the imperfectly-drug-tested denizens of the 'building industry', and a standard BOM with competitive tendering for the parts, will see unit costs cut to the bone.
What's not to like??
Oh, the nimby's, who will undoubtedly use such devices as 'urban design panels' or some other elitist rort, to protect their views and property values.
Should be a fascinating fight, in a bear-baiting sort of a way (if'n yer like That sort of thing).
Right on ctnz
"There's also the persistent rumour among critics of some high-density developments that the Christchurch City Council is a soft touch for developers. Gordon does feel that it's "easier" here than in Auckland -- the City Plan is simpler to understand, he says, and with a smaller council you tend to deal with the same people each time and build-up relationships -- but "I've never seen them bend any rules, change any rules or say, that will be all right".
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/christchurch-life/mainlander/293579
Re #1 Robert Skidelsky seems to be saying that unhappiness is caused, to some degree, by people being envious of those who are doing better than themsleves. If this is so, there are two ways of curing this problem, one is by levelling incomes, the other is by curing envy. But I am not sure on the information given that these solutions really get to the heart of the matter.
It would have been useful if the analysis had gone further in pinpointing why there was unhappiness where there is great income disparity. My guess would be that when people see the rich getting phenomally richer (like the 1% in the USA), that they smell a rat, that somewhere there must be corruption. Maybe they are fully aware that there is corruption, in which case it might have been more useful to see if there was a correlation between happiness and the perceived fairness of the earnings and taxation environment.
The kind of cause and effect analysis that these social "scientists" get into often seem a waste of time. Sometimes they try to analyse the obvious eg they have found most accidents are caused by young men aged 18-24, which has been observed for centuries. Other times they note simultaneous trends and infer that there is causation. People are complicated and so this kind of analysis regarding happiness is fraught with problems, the conclusions not being worth much more than my guess.
If this is so, there are two ways of curing this problem, one is by levelling incomes, the other is by curing envy.
You've got a cure for tall poppy syndrome now? This ought to be good, go on we are listening.
Its an odd example to bring up the US, I don't remember even once hearing that the USA has tall poppy syndrome, though I remember hearing the phrase 'American exceptionalism' on quite a number of occasions.
This Auckland growth issue is turning into a nightmare. 80,000 demolitions? How high would land and existing home values become for demolition and reconstruction on this scale to be justified/economic?
A more sensible option would be to encourage development and employment elsewhere. Auckland is at a tipping point in terms of geographic size and as a proportion of the country's total population. More and more cost and complexity for less real return economically and in quality of life measures. Don't feed the beast.
Good point KD. Seems to me the Christchurch redevelopment could be a win win. Spending $20 billion? on ChCh will I'm sure make it a pretty good place to live when done and dusted, even if the process of getting there has Hugh Pavletich losing whatever hair he has left.
So there could end up being a decent city in the south, Auckland here; everyone gladly letting Wellington having all the civil servants and pollies; a couple of other university quasi rural towns, and some holiday/retirement villages.
All good, albeit needing some planning to that effect on housing, transport and immigration; and not a plan that noone is likely to buy into, nor has much chance of ever happening even if they did.
From our Medical File : Scientists at the University of Queensland and the Garvan Institute of Medical Research ( Sydney ) have sequenced the genome for 100 types of pancreatic cancer ....
....... although being only the fourth most frequent cancer type , pancreatic cancer has the highest mortality rate , with 95 % of diagnosed patients being dead within 5 years ..
Along with the KRAS tumour type , which 90 % of patients suffer from , the researchers identified 2000 other variants of the tumours' genetic material ...
...... the next step is to utilise these findings to develop cures for pancreatic cancer ...
As a percentage of the total population of a country , can anyone think of another city as large as Auckland- I'm struggling - If I exclude City States - I not sure of any place where one city is so amazingly dominate in population terms. London is miles off, No city in Asia or the US comes close. Maybe Copenhagen, but that is a way off. And Auckland is really spread out as well. It is something else that is for sure. Is it a good thing? The Super City is the product of a dangerous mind.
Auckland building 10,000 houses per year for the next umpteen years ???
Don't make us laugh....Council incompentence and pollies stupidities (all colours by the way) will make sure this will never happen.
Len still wants to play with his train set while everybody will soon be living in caves !!!
Kin - there was a lot of similar denial/blameshift on the 'English/housing' thread yesterday, too.
This is all about maths. Geometry, spatial displacement, vertical displacement, exponential numbers, dwindling resource availavility, declining resource quality, reduced options, greater demand.
Some enlightened Pollies understand where we have to go, but that it will be political suicide to say so/why. Hence advocating rail, without actually saying why it will be so sorely needed, so soon.
The cave comment is disingenuous, and has oft been used here before. Bit hackneyed, besides being horseshit. There is a distinct difference between warning, and advocating. Caves is where it'll end if we attempt the continued growth thing.
You'll get there.
#5. As an aside to the war on drugs - that we are having whilst all the evidence suggests we shouldn't be having it ..
.. the corrolory of course is the war on alcohol we are not having whilst all the evidence suggests we should be having it.
I have pondered this in NZ with the recent alcohol "non-reforms". I do not think that the alcohol lobby has directly bought our Government via campaign/political party funding. So what on earth could have incentivised Key and Cabinet to employ their do-nothing type tinkering excuse for "reform" in this regard?
I'm guessing the alcohol lobby has threatened (behind closed doors, of course) to pull all of its sport and charity sponsorships.
Given the police said 50% of all their work is alcohol related - we should compare what 50% of the police budget + the courts budget to deal with the crimes processed and prosecuted - with what 100% of the money provided by the alcohol industry by way of sponsorship and charities. Because I'll bet the Cabinet didn't do the numbers.
The Chinese are already here.
Add their hot money and the fact they are limited to two properties in China plus their need for a bolt hole when China goes sour and that screws Auckland completely.
Auckland will no longer be as attractive as it is currently portrayed.
Just hope and pray they do not find Tauranga.
Re: Auckland housing - one thing which would really help is reducing immigration significantly. The planners need to question what Auckland's optimum future population will be.
And they need to get real on intensification. Their expectations far exceed reality. I agree with comments on here about the poor quality of medium density delveopment. The problem is you lift the quality significantly then you don't get development, other than in the most high value locations, because the prices at which the homes must sell at exceed the ablity of buyers to pay.
Keep the current population targets and they need to reset the target of 60-70% of new housing located in the existing urban area to 50% maximum (with the balance in greenfields). Reduce the population target (through reduced immigration) by say 20%, and you might at a stretch be able to get 55-60% of housing in the existing urban area.
Do I expect any of there realities to dawn on the Auckland planners? No, not one bit!
9. Auckland housing. If the Govt thought a little, I know fat chance, and gave big tax reductions to Companies who moved out of Auckland to relocate to other specified parts of New Zealand much of Auckland's housing problems would be resolved. No city in New Zealand should be allowed to grow the way Auckland has. It is an administrative nightmare there.
Big tax reductions.....
Paid for by spending cuts Where?
New taxes When?
New borrowing from Whom?
Having given this contribution to the Great Housing debate it's fair 3 seconds worth of thought, I can offer an observation:
I see a stable door swinging idly in the breeze.
Turing mine eyes towards the hills, I descry a horse's ass, disappearing into the sunset.
Apropos of nothing else in this 'ere thread, but logical given my own feelings and some good predictions by writers in the early 90's, here's a thought-provoking piece from VDH.
City-states were the norm for a coupla millenia. We just might be seeing more of them.
As long as the city states aren't giant vampire squids.
The new chief number one hot stuff brilliant leader.. how to win friends and influence others...http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/9630509/North-Korean-army-minister-executed-with-mortar-round.html
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