The recent strongly surging migrant inflow could increase house prices by around 7%, and increase the number of monthly building permits by around 150 next year, according to Reserve Bank analysis.
An analytical note "Migration and the housing market" by Chris McDonald features modelling that looks at monthly data between 1990 and this year to assess the impacts of migration on the housing market.
"With regards to the 2013 migrant inflow, house prices will almost certainly face upward pressure, some of which will probably already have been seen," McDonald said.
"...All in all, although there is uncertainty around the estimates, the recent migrant inflow could increase house prices by around 7%, and increase the number of monthly building permits by around 150 next year."
McDonald's analysis used a "small model" estimated on observed historic data for migration, house prices, residential building consents, the estimated output gap and mortgage interest rates. "Readers should keep in mind that migration is likely to be affected by many factors that have not been controlled for."
Recent migration statistics for October showed that in that month New Zealand had a seasonally-adjusted net inflow of 3000 migrants, which was the most in 10 years.
McDonald said that net migration changes are consistent with large housing effects.
"An additional net inflow that adds 1% to the population causes an 8% increase in house prices over the following three years and an additional house is built for around every six migrants. This is materially more than the existing number of people per household in New Zealand (around 2.5)."
He said that when net migration is split into arrivals and departures, arrivals appear to have had bigger house price effects than departures.
Also, the origin of foreign arrivals also appears to have mattered.
"A 1000-person increase in monthly European/UK arrivals raises real house prices by 8% after two years, whereas a 1000-person increase in monthly Asian arrivals raises real house prices by around 6%," McDonald said.
In explaining this, McDonald said that people who come to New Zealand can be diverse.
"People arriving from Asia (often from countries with much lower incomes than New Zealand) are likely to be quite different in terms of wealth and housing preferences to people coming from Europe.
"As such, they might have different effects on the housing market."
Biggest migration gains
In the year to October the biggest net migration gains came from the UK (5900), China (5500) and India (5200).
McDonald said a 1000-person increase in monthly European/UK arrivals, as well as the 8% rise in house prices after two years, results in over 200 new consents each month and raises the 2-year fixed mortgage rate by more than 50 basis points.
"A similar-sized increase in arrivals from Asia has more gradual effects. It typically increases house prices by around 6% over five years and building consents by 200 per month."
McDonald said the strong relationship between migration and the housing market was not necessarily the result of migration itself.
"Factors that are not included in the model may be causing house prices to increase at the same time as migration. The main thing missing from the models is international factors (for example, the performance of the Australian economy), which at times probably do affect both migration to/from New Zealand and local house prices.
Unexplained international factors
"As such, the strong association that is identified could be, as least in part, reflecting unexplained international factors. This strong relationship could also arise because migration shocks affect households’ expectations of future house prices.
"For example, after an inflow of migrants house prices might increase by, say, 1% or 2%. Home owners observe higher house prices, feel wealthier and decide to buy another property. Alternatively, other buyers might observe house price inflation and adjust their expectations of how much they are willing to pay.
"Either way, house prices could rise by more than the direct impact of migration on house prices. Whatever the reason, migration remains an exceptionally good indicator of future movements in the housing market."
The "unexpected" increase in net immigration in 2013 was "consistent with real house prices increasing by 10%", McDonald said.
"However, much of this increase in net migration was due to a fall in departures, and previous results have shown that departures are associated with smaller effects."
'Might not increase as much'
Once different migration effects were accounted for, house prices might not increase by as much.
"When splitting arrivals and departures, the peak house price effect is around 8% and when splitting net arrivals by citizenship the peak house price effect is around 7%."
McDonald said whether or not the strong relationship between migration and house prices was due to migration itself or through some other factor, the relationship was useful for forecasting.
"The increased 2013 migrant inflow will almost certainly put some upward pressure on both house prices and building activity over the next year or two.
"Based on past experiences, those effects could be smaller than otherwise because most of the [current] change in net migration is resulting from the choices of New Zealand citizens rather than from an additional inflow of foreign citizens."
204 Comments
Huh , I told you so.
Now just add building material opportunistic cost inflation of 3% by the oligopoly, ( who are protected from competition by import tarriffs on GIB for example) , and add contractors wage rate inflation of around 3 % to the price of a new build .
Then look at the picture and you can see that Auckland new build house prices will go up by about 10% next year .
And because new builds go up , the secondhand house prices trend upwards just behind the new builds .
Then we have migrants who are coming with cash or syndicated money or money borrowed offshore at 3% so they can outbid ordinary Kiwi working families for basic houses
And who can we blame for this mess ?
None by ourselves:
- We re-elected Len Brown and the same bunch of time-warped losers with no new ideas for Auckland .
- We have ODIP the Open Door Immigration Policy
- We allow powerful big business lobbies to get tarriff protection from importred buidling materials.
- We allow land banking by those who can afford the holding costs
Yes in the same situation in the 1970's as soon a demand came on, the price of materials shot up.
When you have an almost Monopoly situation, it is all about how to exract the maximum wealth.
Christchurch re-build is now out to 20 years.
Just keep believing what good for the large company is good for New Zealand.... or here is an idea...
Maybe we could set up a division of Government, we could call it the Housing Corporation for the want of a better loan, people could borrow from it at the interest rate available to the New Zealand Government say 3% They could capitalise Family Support Credits.... to get a deposit of 10%
What a novel concept...
O bother, I forgot!
That's how we used to get people into homes....
When will New Zealanders be given the chance to vote on how many people in NZ is too many ???
Right about when they outnumber us by 1or 2% Factboy, Auckland is now officialy 40% Asian extraction...think about that as a voting demographic then subtract the lazy apathetic locals who can't shift their ass to vote on any bloody thing because somebody else will prolly do it for them or they just feel what's on the telly that day is more important...now subtract that lot even as a guesstimate, and I'd say The Asian 40% is now the powerhouse voting block in Auckland.
P.S. don't leave Len Brown out of the equation on encouraging mass immigration from Asia.
Stupidity an greed by bureaucrats and Politicians is commonplace , our very laws draughted through Parliment are a fair reflection of shortsighted , smallminded self serving indivduals......no wonder they(the immigrant collective) think us stupid lazy easy marks.
@Christo, dont worry Len Brown is history . We now know he was corrupt , and thats a big no-no to our reputation as the least corrupt country in the world .
Its like one person trying to take the WILLIAM WEB ELLIS trophy away from us . He would get lynched
Len Brown can never survive what has come out in the EY report
We don't have the infrastructure - but building it will create employment.
We are ruining NZ with too much immigration - I completely disagree. Also, there isn't a person alive in NZ whose ancestors didn't arrive from somewhere else.
NZ needs to do things for the benefit of NZ and Kiwis - that is very selfish of you Factboy.
Like the Monorail on the Milford track Ralph.....it isn't about the track itself it's what comes beyond the point where commercialisation and money lust exceed the value of it just being there for those who appreciate it just being there. selfish...? money sets the bar for selfishness.
With respect for your opinion as always.
Incidentally please show me start up Asian operations from retail to industry that are equal opportunity employers and you will find they would be in a tiny minority.....trust me on this, one of my dearest friends and a neighbour is at least honest enought to admit this to me himself , it's a very much keep it in the family /community.
1. To take a 3% loan in a foreign currency to buy a house in NZD is to add thr exchange risk, which is just as likely to be no benefit at all.
2. I don't quite get your second reference, as I read the government web site it relates to interest you PAY (say your mortgage) not to interest your receive (say your deposit): http://www.ird.govt.nz/nrwt/approved-issuer-levy/
3. There are quite practical limits to the concept of transfer pricing. First, it has top be between companies and not personal holders of mortgages. Second, you must declare a commercially reasonable profit within NZ or the tax department can declare your venture non commerical. Third, every western government is currently cracking down on transfer pricing. Fourth, there are problems around claiming non-residency and living in NZ or owning a property personally here.
4. I don't know how to employ a NZ lawyer without paying GST, care to elaborate?
I see we are talking at somewhat cross purposes. I didn't quite get you were talking about direct foriegn investment and not immigration.
I am not at all sure in that context whether 'transfer pricing' is the correct term. I have only seen it used in a limited liability context referring to the transfer of profit potential from one tax regrime to another. It does make sense that if you are a foreigner, notwithstanding a lack of tax agreement between particular countries, you are subject largely to your local tax regrime rather than the regrime of the country in which you invest.
I suspect the circumstances of what you describe are quite narrow (very small number of cases). You can't be (or become) a NZ resident and keep this arranagement in place; so you can't spend too much time here or live in the house you own. You have no choice but to rent it out.
The exchange risk is not removed in the case you describe.
The IRD rules, of course, apply only to New Zealand tax residents.
Once its built then what? what do we do with all the migrants and their children? send them back?
aka the UK?
I think we are ruining it, we are letting in ppl we dont need and Im especially dubious on the skill sets, ie if you have money you must be successful, seems to be the main criteria.
If you had a first class seat on the titanic, or steerage, you still drowned.
I agree with Factboy, we need to look after NZers, we have 6% un-employment which we pay for via taxes we dont need more and we especially dont need more parasites at the "top end".
regards
Assuming we still have a democracy....then the so called billionaires will see their wealth vapourise and whats left taxed. After that, well that will be interesting.
The problem is they dont rreally contribute anything and in fact seem parasitic Their wealth is make believe 1s and 0s accumilated in a make believe la la word we constructed on never ending growth and they use hedge funds and expect at 20%+ return per year....that isnt constructive wealth generation...its pillaging by robber barons.
What we see above is a few who being slightly further up the food chain think with the scraps left over they are or are getting rich.
The problem is they dont want to get it. lets face it they are specialised workers who when the world changes have no useable skills any more...
What we will need is lots of farm labour, hence I call them carrot pullers.
If we have democracy still they will be voted out, what worries me is the [hard] left are no better, just as delusional if not more so and will be just as opressive, if not more so.
regards
Pointing out everyone here is desended from the same immigrant group you wish to shut out isn't advanced reasoning, it's obvious hypocrisy.
With all due respect to PDK he is motivated from a fear I don't have and in my experince fear is only rational within the artificial constructed reality.
America is the richest nation in the world and was built my millions and millions of immigrants. There are many reasons we may end up a poor nation, but immigration is not one of them.
No Ralph, you are wrong
There is so much more to the American dream than just immigration - not sure the north american indian would share your view - they haven't shared in that love - much of it was stolen from them at the point of a gun - and america had exploitable resources that supported and underpinned and underwrote the growth and wealth that it created, such that it was able to accomodate the immigration - something new zealand has never had - a point which PDK makes real clear
To coin a PDK phrase - what in your opinion will underwrite and support the inbound immigration you advocate
It's not about dreams, it's about immigration and it's affect.
Every country has exploitable resources and it is an historical truth that the nation with the most resources is not always the richest.
I would suggest almost no underwriting by any party of any kind is required to 'support' 10,000 immigrants a year.
NZ "lacks exploitable resources"?????
What NZ on what planet?
FFS, sometimes I wish the ChiComs would invade and take over NZ so we can get an eyeful of what resources we DO have; they'd soon be getting dug out and used.
I often comment on the fact that virtually everyone who wants resources left in the ground, is against spending money on a credible defence policy. Presumably these people are agents of an enemy power that wants the resources left there for when they invade one day.
It's not me who is a "war doom and gloomster", it is the resource doom and gloomsters who assure us that war over scarce resources is inevitable. They still don't want t defence force, though, and still don't want the resources dug up to make us rich NOW.
Rich as in buy more iphones? these are one time use resources, what will our children and grandchidren get to "dig up" if we have wasted it all on converting it to useless 1s and 0s?
Look at the UK, its dug itself all but empty so has 70million ppl and no real output....yeah great idea.
regards
The richest economies in the world actually import most of their resources, funny enough. But all these economies did start with what they had. I know of no economy in the world that has raised itself out of poverty having started from the principle that resources are to be left in the ground, land not farmed, rivers not dammed, roads not built, housing not built, etc etc.
The UK is actually about to have a gas boom right now. They have discovered they have lots and lots of it. It looks like the "leave it in the ground" nutters over there are not going to win, the people are fed up with being impoverished by the Eco-theocracy.
The UK's biggest "lack of output" problem is its urban growth containment system, which between 1947 and 1984, drove up the price of land per square foot by a factor of 325 (Cheshire and Mills, 1999). And it's got worse since then. Of course that drove offshore any industry that required any space at all, besides preventing new agglomerations from forming like Silicon Valley formed.
And you seem to have settled the question regarding yourself, that you like the idea of NZ's resources still being in the ground to be taken by the ChiComs when the great Resource Wars take place. Or are you in favour of a strong defence policy?
Thats correct they do, they have no choice and as that cost multiplies and has so their economy has faltered.
UK gas boom, not very likely, so much so a synth deisel plant over there is considering importing ngas as its feed stock. Even if they do some fracking and its not likely it will be economical let alone tolerated all it buys is some time....a few years and that too will be exhausted. Then all they have is debt and a wonky finance sector producing nothing.
NZ resources are for our children and their children, its not a case of not taking it, its a case of only taking whats really needed. Chicoms, again you dont see the EROEI to take and hold NZ and extract and send back. Not very likey however, most of NZ's best energy resources are renewables and not transportable. Now if we were a second Saudi arabia then yes, but really we'd have everyone wanting to "defend us"....something like Iraq....lots of troops holding the ground....yeah thats great for democracy...
What does a strong defence do about boat ppl? machine gun them in the water?
How would NZ hold off china? USA? 's military?
So, no im not for sending out our troops to die pointlessly so you can maybe enjoy a few more hours of "freedom".
regards
Conservative estimates postulate that the UK has well in excess of 200 trillion cubic feet of usable natural gas , all onshore !
.. .. I'd hardly say that the UK has depleted all it's resources .... The facts show that they're potentially one of the richest , most energy independent nations on the planet ...
.. provided they don't let the Malthusian Luddites ruin everything for them , as they are wont to do ... As they are doing in Germany ...
EROEI, the "cost" even when yo use money as a proxy is so significant that or economy cant afford to pay that cost of exteacting the frozen methane unless somewhere else is "cheaper" to afford it is a case of robbing peter to pay paul. So right now we seem to be attempting to drive down the lower and middle income earners earning ability which means they will have less disposable income to maintain our consumer economy....ergo our economy is going to relain in stagnation/recession as the norm from now on.
Solar isnt limitless, you can only get so many watts per sq metre and the cost to do that is huge. its also not a cheap and dense transport fuel like fossil fuels.
Desal plants....scale.
Access other planets? wow now you have been drinking?
regards
try reading this from ppl better than me then,
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/372/2006/20130179.full
Otherwsie, actually there are 3 limitations at play.
Technology, Im an engineer, I have a pretty good understanding of the fundimental laws behind engineering, ie thermodynamics, and enough maths to go with it.
Limitation 1. So in terms of "discovering" a technology, we have pretty much optimised/maximumised that for resource extraction ie oil. So no I dont agree here and frankly you are hoping someone will come along with a game changer...so you are praying....
Limitation 2. oil is finite, for conventional oil thats about 2.1 to 2.4 trillion barrels, the vast majority of it has been discovered. Now that number is mathematically derived so there is some slack there in whats actually yet to be discovered so it might creep to 2.5 trillion, it wont creep to 3+. Hvy fuel oil and tar comes under limitation 3.
Limitation 3 is economic, or the maximm price we can afford to pay as a world wide economy...a rough esitiamte of that is $120 to $150USD a barrel....and here we are running at $100~$110 with have the 2.4trillion used up. So teh cheap stff at $3 ~ $50 is gone, indeed the marginal cost of new fields is now apparantly in the $90 to $95 per barrel range. Much of that 2.2trillion convenation left will go past $120USD so no company will bother extracting it. Going with that is EROEI for our modern economy we need 8 to 1 or so. The above conventioanl, hvy and tar are all below 8 and tax and hvy in the 3 to 1 range, way to low.
You are living in la la land, not surprising many ppl are just like you no real understanding of whats involved. I explained to my son that he commands more energy/power as an individual than a Pharoh. The pyramids we could today build in something like 3 years and not 30 and do it with a fraction of the people. so really when you sit there counting the value of your property portfolio its meaningless as, it isnt underwritten, as scafie says its a ponzi scheme.
Thats reality not what's produced from what ever you are smoking.
regards
Well you are wrong, the above link is an academy of science, about the best scientific thinkers on the planet and here you are ignoring them becaus eit doesnt fit your (future) world view.
You are wrong on technical, utterly.... ian economist's outlook. The human species just passed a weigh point, a paradgym shift from always growing energy availability to less....
"one day" is a time, time we no longer have...then there is scale to deploy the One day maybe thing you are relying on to be invented that hasnt yet.
That is a really bad gamble and way against the odds.
regards
Steven is the biggest imaginable waste of time on an economics and finance forum. I suspect that even on dedicated Greenie sites like Frogblog, he is not welcome. I am constantly surprised that the owners of a finance and economics blog tolerate him.
If the "royal societies" and the like that Steven cites, actually got to run a modern economy, it would be the USSR all over again - they were into "engineering" and "expertise" and mistrust of human ingenuity and freedom of exchange and of entrepreneurship left to itself.
It is a pleasure to encounter someone like you on here, Zany; I have seen other good commenters come and go, and I am afraid the Mathusian trolls on here are a major cause of loss of quality commenters. It is possible that they are paid to do it by the vested interests in policies of "constraint".
I must be doing something right as you are whining a lot.
I'll keep up the good work.
The problem I have with the Green party is they are out to win votes at the cost of being green. So right now the infamous "watermelon" nick name for the NZ Green party at least is starting to look apt.
ZZ posts some good stuff until he switches on his vested property interest hat. His posts above show the typical first reaction when the message gets through; fear and denial and there must be alternatives..... That's because a) he's brighter than you and b) doesnt carry fundimentalist political blinkers unlike yourself. That's because the second you accept/realise that peak oil, AGW is true the entire economic basis (infinite growth) of your belief is removed, leaving you now obviously worthless.
If commentators had quality, consistancy, logic, breadth and depth of the subject(s) they would shine through, instead a few such as yourself have little or none and what's there is hog tied by extremist political blinkers.
I can see why whaleoil appeals to you, there is none obvious of any of the above on his blog. Maybe if I dug deeper....but yuck.
regards
IMHO New Zealand reeks of ideological fundamentalists. When I studied economics in the late 80s early 90s you got rewarded for joining the RaRa the free market can solve anything brigade -better grades etc. Then in nursing school the same thing but different ideologies -feminism, cultural awareness etc. It makes me very suspicious of ideologues. Give me a well informed pragmatist any day....
Totally agree.
I think when you are young you grow up under your parents and direct peers influences. I think being shown/taught awareness that there are different outlooks isnt a bad thing....within reason I add.
Ideolouges I avoid, as the saying goes there is no humanity in a fanatic.
regards
There is I think a difference between property investment ie a professional, a speculator out to make a quick buck, and a owner/renter. The First and last suffer because of the middle.
Peak oil isnt a delusion its a geological fact backed with math...just how that impacts someone's retirement, well if ignored I think you'll need a lot of luck to just get burned and not get incenerated.
regards
Zanyzane:
a migrant - not a natural born kiwi says "I have chosen to live in New Zealand and I want to be competitive on the global stage which means our interest rates must be competitive. Our NZD must be competitive for our export companies to thrive"
Competitive in what? Financial Engineering?
Your career has spanned a number of asian countries before arriving in new zealand
Your area of expertise appears to be financial advice to newcomers. You meet a lot of them
What was the defining quality that caused you to choose new zealand?
Having established your $5 million non-productive investment property portfolio is it not time for you to turn your attention to assisting new zealand in its productive endeavours? Arent you satisfied? not enough? You want more? why do you keep giving advice how it should be changed
Got them in Switzerland too. Hasn't turned that into a basket case.
I suggest we adopt the Swiss system in its entirety, not the Californian system in its entirety.
The Swiss system is entirely "bottom up". The Californian one is just a mess of conflicting powers at all levels.
This is very informative:
http://nzinitiative.org.nz/site/nzinitiative/A%20Global%20Perspective%20on%20Localism.pdf
As was the speech that the Swiss Ambassador to NZ gave at its launch.
Yes sure there are a few, in terms of rankings though,
NB a suicide is just pick the easiest method
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
Guns per 100 and rank,
Switzerland 45.74
Deaths by guns, considerably less than thier ranking,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death…
3.18 per 100k total
0.52 homicides per 100k, with 45.7% gun ownership V 0.26 per 100k in NZ with a 26% gun ownership. When you look at the numbers of gun owners x2 actually pretty close to NZ.
Ive not met many swiss but Ive liked them all, cant say I agree on your view of them.
regards
Totally agree with the above. We have referendums for the smacking law, asset sales.....is who and how many live in our backyard not as or more important? Just take a look at the almost Arab state of Denmark .....with 8.1 children it's no wonder the Ayotolloh said they'd reign by not lifting a weapon. What do u want NZ to look like for your grandkids? Another few years of open door policy and we will be an offshore farm for China just as Africa is fast becoming an offshore farm for Saudi Arabia. There is a water and food shortage worldwide.....or do we continue to put our heads in the sand...and why oh why does our government not protect this beautul jewel of a land. And where are the journalists reporting what is really happening, particularly in the streets of Auckland.....Propert guru gives ample evidence of the extent of Chinese ownership but no one with the power to influence this seems to give a rats.
No cohort of humanity in history, grew as rapidly as the Anglos 1780 to 1920. Fact.
When King Dick Seddon's government borrowed up BIG to build an NZ national rail system, they expected a population of 30 million by 1930.
The reason this didn't happen, was improving conditions back in Britain, due to food supplies from efficient colonial producers and due to major improvements in urban living conditions. The reduction on overcrowding possible from new means of transport, was an inherent part of this improvement everywhere it has happened.
But NZ was left grossly over-capitalised in terms of certain infrastructure, and has been paying for it ever since. It is a great pity the big investment splurge wasn't 50 years later, and autobahns built rather than rail lines.
From one of Belich's books, I remember that in something like 1900 New Zealand had the second most rails per capita after the US. We also have an impressive amount of roads per capita. What we don't have is motorways, bike lanes, commuter rail/public transport systems to efficiently get around and between our major urban areas. Until relatively recently it was illegal to transport freight by road more than 100km. Rail and coastal shipping were kings.
I think this indicates several things. After a binge of transport spending a century ago we have been cruising along on our inherited infrastructure and gradually building up a deficit leading to our current abysmal city congestion figures.
Secondly that our transport system is orientated to our agricultural specialities. Stock and milk trucks don't need motorways but do need an extensive network of unsealed roads. Imports only need to arrive to one location -Auckland and then can be slowly distributed around the country. Unfortunately this promotes monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies who have little to fear from local competition. The New Zealand disease...
Absolutely spot on, Brendon, we can do with more people as knowledgeable as you on here.
Have you read Belich's "Replenishing the Earth: The Anglo World and the Settler Revolution"? One of the most interesting, knowledge-broadening books I have ever read.
Our primary sector is what is "over capitalised", even after Rogernomics and the abolition of direct subsidies, our primary sector is effectively subsidised while our urban economies are actually starved of infrastructure. As you know, I am not a Greenie, but I think the most marginal portion of NZ farmland might as well have been left in wilderness for all the net contribution it has made to the country economically and socially.
Seeing that all the growth in the global economy has been in the urban economies while the terms of trade for primary produce has declined fourfold over the last 70 years, it is insane to be starving our cities of infrastructure and relying on a comfort blanky myth about primary products.
If we allowed our urban land proportion to grow from 0.7% to 1.4%, no-one would miss the "lost net income and taxes paid" from the primary sector. But there would be massive potential gains, compounding, from our urban economies.
I often put it like this: many highly congested urban arterials carry 30,000 cars a day yet we "can't afford" to 4-lane them. But we have hundreds of thousands of kilometers of rural road network that does not carry anything LIKE 30,000 vehicles per day in total - and I know which road users will pay the most taxes of all kinds to the government, by a wide margin.
Are you aware that in international data (TomTom) Dorkland and Wellington are probably the two most congestion-delayed cities in the world of their size? Worse than Los Angeles, which is the worst in the USA - and of course it has 14 million people. Typical low density automobile dependent Indianapolis and Nashville and Salt Lake City and numerous others of sizes comparable to ours, have one third or less LA's delay, leaving our cities looking like Franz Kafka and William Heath Robinson designed their transport policies.
Yes I have read Belich's "Replenishing the Earth: The Anglo World and the Settler Revolution" following your recommendation earlier in the year and I would recommend his books to anyone interested in New Zealand. I think he is one of New Zealand's best academics....
Christchurch also has massive difference between peak and non peak travel times indicating a big congestion problem. Given Christchurch is on a a flat plain with what must be cheap road construction costs this is just madnes on our part.
Undercapitalised urban areas is a big bugbear of mine. I think if we could solve that, then New Zealand would go from being a good place to live in to being an amazing place. By urban areas I don't just mean our big three cities but also places like Napier/Hastings, Tauranga, Nelson, Wanaka etc. These would be highly desirable places if there was more public investment in vocational education, transport and good urban planning giving affordable housing. This will only happen if those regions control how some of their own taxes are spent using the subsidiarity principle. As discussed by the NZ initiative.
As for you SK...just keep selling those properties to your new best friends , you know the deepest pocket types, pardon me but I take your barb with the cynicism it deserves.....when you get marginalised at least you had it coming.
BTW can you buy property in China yet, I mean in all fairness...huh.? T...pot
The Chinese are 20% of foreign buyers of NZ houses.
Aussies are 22%. Poms, 13%.
Of course the "80%" have the right colour skin and the right eye shape.
I am with SK on this.
NZ would be even more socio-economically stuffed than it is, without its hard-working, thrifty Asians.
Says the uninformed... and your knee-jerk reaction is growth growth growth I persume?
You don't need to be racist to think that the sustainable carrying capacitiy of our country certainly isn't much more than now and most likely less. I expect the typical knee-jerk reaction of the uniformed to this to be but growth growth growth...
Factboy;
How does making every first home buyer take on $200,000+ too much mortgage debt because we are wusses about growth, help to future-proof the economy? Mightn't that money have paid for quite a lot of sustainable energy generation infrastructure?
I am with the positive thinkers on this.
http://www.creative.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/future-proof-podcasts
This story is "old hat".
Olly Newland saw the effects of immigration and the coming spike in property prices 18 months ago.
“Slow but steady immigration and increase in population. New Zealand’s population is growing by a small percent annually - 1% or so. By itself, that means an extra 40,000 people who will need at least 10,000 houses before actually getting ahead of the current problem”.
link:
For his latest review of the market click here:
http://www.ollynewland.co.nz/december-review-of-the-market/5805/
Slow and steady increase to what, go on, give us a number.
Me, I think we have enough, we are living in a world that needs the human race to accept that we must REDUCE our population not increase it. I suggest that countries and religiions that encourage people to breed willy-nilly be off any possible immigration target list
Lawdy, it's hard to even breathe on this 'ere thread, what with the stench of dead horses bein' flogged to - er, um - being deathier, I s'pose.
I suspect the article's closing sentence may have escaped the attention of the Ravening Mob:
"most of the [current] change in net migration is resulting from the choices of New Zealand citizens rather than from an additional inflow of foreign citizens."
I take that to mean Kiwis, coming home wiv their pockets stuffed fulla Pounds, Euros and similar Foreign Dosh. Or, or rather, Plus, Kiwis not choosing the Big Dry Red Land to our west.
Now, can we kindly have more Light, less Heat?
Forgive me Waymad, but you can't go wrong with property mate is the most flogged horse not withstanding Mr Hickey's Gen warmongering .While there appears to be strong opinion on this thread ,I for one welcome some of the thoughtful considered comment that appears a reasonable reflection of a community feeling somewhat under threat of being marginalised through poor policy designed to curry favor with a very large trading partner.
thank you Factboy and others for making this an interesting read.
Dove-Meyer was hated by the left and the right. He built things. He was also married a bunch of times, including once to a 17yr-old for 1 month (he still got elected twice after that).
He couldn't go to war because he had terrible eyesight and a bad back from injuries sustained as a sidecar racing champion. Walked shirtless to work every morning.
Now there's a statue of him in Aotea Square
I just want a mayor who will build infrastructure. City rail loop. Bike lane clipon for harbour Rail to airport. Medium-high density green housing in city fringe. Move the port to whangarei and turn port into park.Oh and every plant to council plants would have to be edible.
Vanderlei I would want a Canterbury version of the above infrastructure public goods.
But no Mayor can provide anything like this because Local government do not have the financial resources. Our Local government is not like Northern European local government that have wide tax bases, receiving 10 to 30% of the countries tax revenue. Our local governments do not receive adequate funding for new residents to provide the necessary new capital infrastructure to keep their municipalities running smoothly.
A lot of our housing mess is blamed on naive and incompetent bureacrats implementing a left wing 'smart growth' ideology and I agree with that criticism. But it only describes half the problem. Actually our system of local government is this weird social compact between right and left wing ideologies.
The right wing ideology is that local government does not provide local public goods but provides user pays services. This being the logic behind financial and development contributions. This kind of works for the services immediately attached to new residences -the 3 waters (sewage, clean and storm water), paths and local roads. It begins to fall down for bigger public services with a wider base of beneficiaries. Such as moving the port, new motorways or public transport links.
The problem we have is that as time passes our old public amentities that were mainly provided pre 80s under a different ideological regime are no longer fit for purpose but we lack the systems to change, modernise and upgrade our local public amentities.
Remember that the Supercity was an ACT -Hide creation, who wanted some all powerful business tycoon type. And by all powerful we mean someone who could trim down services, sell off assets and cut rates. Not someone who could build new public amentities.....
Anyway Auckland got Brown who has used that all powerful position to fool around and create a political impregnable position....
Good points, Brendon.
A small technicality which is kind of important for AKL is that, because a mayor is elected at large by the whole electorate they can only be removed from office if they are convicted of a specific set of crimes. Presumably it is the Minister of LG who would do the technical removal and declare the vacancy.
In practice, however, even though the mayor only has one vote - same as every other councillor - they do get to set the agenda and have preferential access to senior staff and national politicians. If a mayor is seen as successful and effective (and this is Len Brown's real problem not the motions of censure) it is because they parleyed those informal advantages into consensus around the table. Again, if they have an effective working relationship with their CEO, they can influence operations within the council even though they are supposed to stay out of that.
Even John Banks who was the anointed mayor of the new Supercity could not have done all the things you say unilaterally.
Ok my statement "by all powerful we mean someone who could trim services, sell assets and cut rates" was an exageration. So thanks for clarifying that. Your comments on Local government are always good and factual. But that doesn't affect my or Vanderlei arguments that the nature of Local government should have been considered a little more deeply before the creation of the Supercity.
Oh, agreed!!!
There were three logical reasons for creating a single city within the NZ framework:
- Better local transport
- One City Plan instead of six
- Greater efficiency
How is the "Super"-city going to stack up?
Auckland City doesn't have budgetary control over highways or rail so it's ability to deliver a city you can actually get around in is nil.
AC has delivered a draft Unitary Plan but the government almost immediately intervened to make it workable.
As I often say there is an inverse relationship between council size and its efficiency and effectiveness. The problem is they are complex businesses that are hard to co-ordinate - size works against them.
Thanks Kumbel and heres a link for Steven. The electric bike trend is gathering speed. But can't see Auckland or anywhere else in New Zealand providing the infrastructure to really benefit from this new technology. Not like the City of Copenhagen that was behind the latest development.
And for Vanderlei Helsinki which is the size of Auckland moved its harbour and gained a considerable amount of land for commercial and residential developments (something like 30,000 apartments from memory).
Ah OK, not a 3kw sort of thing.
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/672005649/2000W3000W_Electric_Motoriz…
It's Li-ion (or was it Metal Hydride) battery and smart controller.
It doesn't remove the need to pedal, it just assists.
I think it is fast chargable at home/work, then when you go to those "not flat places" it helps speed things up. Kind of a hybrid bicycle technology. Because it's not sole motive energy it has much longer range and isn't likely to leave a person stranded. It comes in the 250 and 350 W power depending on the registration rules in the destination countries.
Fluid, unless superfluid, involves resistance. And is still kinetic energy storage (ie mass x velocity). At least the flywheel can be stored in an evacuated chamber to reduce loss.
Good machine for the commuter. If Fonterra can kick out $8 for next 3yrs probably test one out down on the farm, instead of the petrol burning motorbikes.
Where a lot of the low energy systems fall down, is they can't handle variable loads - could you do your Christmas shop on a bike? Could you take your partner to a formal business dinner on one? That means we then need twice the products manufacture, capital and storage to do the transport tasks, under current lifestyle arrangements.
The Dorkland Unitary Plan entirely deserves to share THIS fate:
http://www.newgeography.com/content/004108-the-laws-no-ass-rejecting-hollywood-densification#new
“……..The city of Los Angeles received a stunning rebuke, when California Superior Court Judge Alan J. Goodman invalidated the Hollywood Community Plan. The Hollywood district, well known for its entertainment focus, contains approximately 5% of the city of Los Angeles’ population. The Hollywood Plan was the basis of the city's vision for a far more dense Hollywood, with substantial high rise development in "transit oriented developments" adjacent to transit rail stations.
The Hollywood Plan had been challenged by three community groups (Savehollywood.org, La Mirada Avenue Neighborhood Association of Hollywood, and Fix the City), which argued that the approval process had violated provisions of California law, and most particularly had relied on population projections that were both obsolete and inaccurate.
Judge Goodman called the Hollywood Plan "fatally flawed," and noted that it relied on errors of both "fact and law." He ordered the City to:
(1) Rescind, set aside and vacate all actions approving the Hollywood Plan and prepare a replacement that is lawful and consistent with the City's general plan.
(2) Grant no permits or entitlements from the Hollywood Plan until it has been replaced with a lawful substitute……
“…….The City defended using the stale and erroneous population data. Judge Goodman commented: "That clearly is a post-hoc rationalization of City's failure to recognize that the HCPU (Hollywood Plan) was unsupported by anything other than wishful thinking" (parentheses and emphasis by author). The Judge continued that this resulted in a "manifest failure to comply with statutory requirements."
Abuse of Discretion
The La Mirada Avenue Neighborhood Association argued that the city of Los Angeles had failed to exercise "good faith effort at full disclosure," contrary to the requirements of California environmental law. Judge Goodman appeared to agree, finding that the city of Los Angeles had abused its discretion, noting "A prejudicial abuse of discretion occurs if the failure to include relevant information precludes informed decision-making and informed public participation, thereby thwarting the goals of" the environmental process……”
Note the excellent comment from Scott Zwartz, who was a tireless fighter against the Hollywood Plan.
“……..The important point was that the City knowingly used false data as the basis for the entire Hollywood Community Plan…….”
By gum, is that the Dorkland Unitary Plan, in spades.....!!!!
"......Imagine if Banks, as our mayor, was in the court for what he is currently accused of......."
He hasn't been proven guilty yet. Precedents have been set on this that mean it would be selective to charge Banks. One politician and political party after another have been let off over the years.
Labour, after passing all the draconian laws about funding and disclosure, promptly raised several hundred grand for the 2008 election by the "declared" means of passing the hat round at fundraising evenings. Oh, it just had $200,000 in cash in it on that particular night. How are we to know who put in what quantity?
The lefty scum had already worked out when they passed the laws, how they were going to circumvent them (while the honest plodders on the centre right would do it all above board and suffer the disadvantage). They were never charged; it is perfectly logical that no-one else has been either. If Banks is charged, it would raise major questions of Police impartiality.
Who owns the Gummint??.
Why those who make the rules, bend them to their will. Public Servants and banks. MPs and the like.
Why, No mention of Len today, he got off scott free.
And it cost even more to find out, the rules are totally inadequate.
Morally bankrupt is New Zealand.
Some can do what they like, spit in yer eye, suck on the tit at ratepayers expense and still get a million dollar guaranteed income, expenses, perks etc.
And who pays, you do.
Now just who is the sucker.
You try not paying your rates. Your mortgage, The rules are quite firm on that.
If your firm goes bankrupt, because trade is bad, you lose everything. But you still have to pay your rates, your taxes, your life away.
Nothing is free, never more certain, than death and taxes and those taxes follow you to the grave and beyond.
This country is run for the benefits of the high and mighty and you are all just indentured serfs.
Take petrol, mostly taxes. Take GST on everything you buy, rates on the rise as prices rise.
All after being taxed on the money you earned as an indentured slave.
I could go on. No point.
Some know how to work around the rules. It helps if you make em.
You even get to bail out banks, that you paid for, over and over again, with fractional money.
And who keeps borrowing on your behalf.
The State and just what a state the world is in. They cannot even agree with each other.
The entitled are the problem, never the solution.
That is why the world is revolting. Who needs em.... they think you do.
Most unfortunate for you, they made the rules.
to do anything else you would require sources of food, shelter and energy that aren't government dependant.
You would need financing arrangements and skills, and to build up enough distributed capital that passive income was continuous and not at risk from environmental factors.
Then you can mentor and connect people. .......
As the capital grows, and your people are educated in the reality of the situation, then you can reinvest into your system, and support from within it's own infrastructure. And it in turn can provide capital for worthwhile projects.
But how long will the government let it run??
Which brings us back full circle. Why does Auckland and Canterbury not have the capital to provide their own new infrastructure?
At one point they were self sufficient in their infrastructure capital requirements. Canterbury for instance built a 2.7km long rail tunnel using its own resources. But from Vogel's to Brownlee's time Wellington has been careful not to let Auckland, Canterbury or anywhere else have control over their capital goods.
Any independent spirit is carefully directed to safe arenas, such as sport. Provincial rugby has been sanctioned from Wellington with support for things like the Ranfurley shield. Brownlee sees Canterbury becoming the sports capital of New Zealand.
Circus and free bread anyone....
I have asked that many times of many people. Trust in the government is about the only thing anyone will say, most just say "wot?"
The Bread and circus is interesting if you ever get to look it up. The bread was actually low quality corn, which had to be processed and baked. Thus one took ones dole to the people for processing, and they kept a little, the citizen got basic low quality living ration, the processors got a "free" tradable item which had good margin. Essentially a trickle up system.
The circus were mandatory for voting males, often it was prisoners fighting or executed. Womenfolk and children and slaves could watch from the nosebleed seats, usually while waiting for the family patriarch. The point of the circus wasn't so much for entertainment, but as a reminder of what happens to those who break the laws of Rome. Thus the "Justice must be seen" (to be effective for the rest of the population) idea.
Thre are Latin scholars such as myself developing nosebleeds all over the world reading your spaghetti epic version of classical history.
'Corn' is an English term that means any cereal at all. When you read about the corn dole in Rome it was wheat - possibly grown in Italy but almost certainly grown in Egypt by the time of the Julo-Claudian dynasty (I, CLAVDIVS etc). All Roman citizens living in the city of Rome were entitled to a free allowance of flour but remember they were outnumbered by non-citizen residents. It was a bit of a bribe because both consuls in the Republic and ,later, Emperors were uneasy about having legions too close to the seat of power so there wasn't a well-developed security appararatus anywhere near Rome (lictores and the Praetorian Guard aside). So,it wasa good idea to keep the populace quiet hence the bread and circuses.
The circus was acutally the horse-track - the Circus Maximus was an oval shaped race-track just outside the Emperor's palace and that is where the chariot racing took place. Games took place in an amphitheatre. The most famous amphitheatre was the Coliseum named for the colossal statue of the Emperor Nero that once stood outside it. Aucklanders may be interested to know that we also get the word 'fornication' from the amphitheatres. The favourite place for prostututes to ply their wares was in the arches (fornices) supporting the structure of the amphitheatre.
The origins of the games is pretty obscure and may have had something to do with blood sacrifices to the gods rather than a display of 'imperium' (power from which the modern word 'empire').
Apart from that good on you for your wide reading.
Merry Xmas
"bread and circus" is a colliquial term, thus the literal accuracy of "circus" (and "bread") is not detailled.
The wheat wouldn't have been wheat as we know it, as our wheat is a hybrid (whose origin I used to know but can't recall). It (the "corn ration) wasn't a millet or lentil and some historians argue that it's more like a maize (due to the flour and grinding required, as you've noted). And yes "corn"/"korn" is the old word for cereal...and is today for some of the US commodity trade.
Many of the ampitheatre were much smaller, and if you get a chance to ever visit, the acoustics are amazing. The colliseum being the "Cake-tin" version.
Re: origins. Nah. Academics are too far up the Maslow pyramid. Rome was created by 3 tribes of bandits, and while atheism/secularism was very rare in a day when the gods were expected to wander around beating up unbelievers (and taking it out on their believers - thus the need to appease first). Original pagan worship is more similar to Christmas and its Santa deity. (offerings, rituals, hymns, stuff being sold to the gullible) than the more organised religion. Organised religion is an urban creation, as the work and time required for even simple temple and sacriment is considerable ... which is the whole point, to awe the working classes into "feeling the divine" and following the "gods'" instructions.
So when things are few generations and we have our Nero's we see big things, probably copying other major civilisations and growing with trade and technology
"bread and circuses" comes straight from the Roman writer Juvenal (late 1stC). He knew exactly what he was writing about. As someone who is both a professional baker and an honours graduate in Latin I will back my knowledge of the "annonum" (corn dole).
Merry Xmas.
Who owns our government? In our top down political sytem our rulers have more loyalty to the global elite, whether it is Helen Clark's UN ambitions or John Keys Merril Lynch/ international finance connections.
An alternative system of Subsidiarity, where power is directed back to local people has been carefully avoided in New Zealand despite that been the political direction of people worldwide since at least the American and French revolutions.
Are you following what the NZ Initiative people are saying?
http://nzinitiative.org.nz/site/nzinitiative/A%20Global%20Perspective%20on%20Localism.pdf
So according to the OECD, sub-central spending accounts for about 30% of all government spending. At 11%, the figure for New Zealand is not even half this international average, which means the central government in Wellington controls 89% of all public spending.
Across the OECD, only Greece and Ireland have less local government spending, but these two countries are probably not the best benchmarks for good governance.
Astonishingly, even supposedly super-centralised countries like France have a greater devolution of government spending than New Zealand. French local government accounts for about 21% of France’s government spending. P.18
Interesting that it was the overly centralised countries that were worst affected by the GFC. Is NZ also heading for a boom and a bust?
Not so sure, the USA looks in a bad way, cities defaulting, counties close to it. Bear in mind that NZ with 4million is smaller than many city councils, hence its not surprising we are not so devolved. I cant see how you can link these non-devolved == worst effected myself. Oh and UK is pretty bad and they have a welsh and scotish assembly and county and city councils.
Personally yes I think we are heading for a bust, we use a lot of fossil fuel per capita...
regards
So New Zealand’s local government is small by international standards. Unsurprisingly, New Zealand also lags in local government’s share in public investment. Across the OECD, more than 60% of public investment is driven by sub-central governments. In New Zealand, it is only 44%.
The underlying reason for New Zealand’s small size of local government is historical. Few early settlers had money, and only the state could borrow from abroad and use the money for schools, hospitals etc. It seldom trusted local authorities to spend wisely the money it had raised. As a result, whereas local government in most other OECD countries fulfils a large variety of roles in public services, it is completely absent in some areas of government in New Zealand:
• Across the OECD, sub-central government accounts for more than half of all government spending on education. In New Zealand, it is zero. P.23
New Zealand's puny local government is unique and very different from similiar sized countries like Denmark, Finland and Norway.
Glad you're enthusiastic about this, Brendon.
The Swiss Ambassador to NZ gave an amazing speech when that paper and initiative was launched, in Wellington a few weeks ago.
Steven: what matters most for a country's economic vulnerability; the rate of use of fossil fuels, or the amount of discretionary income left over after housing costs?
Last I looked, the low-housing-cost cities of the USA were the strongest local economies in the world. Using a little more fossil fuel is just irrelevant, especially given the scope for downsizing the vehicle fleet average size and engine size.
High-housing-cost countries will have collapsed in total social disorder long before the low-housing-cost cities of Southern and rural heartland USA will have just traded down a couple of vehicle sizes on average and still be going strong. You just never get this, do you?
Have you looked at my link to Unitec's urban design people amd their ideas for a "future proof" Auckland yet? I am so pleased to discover that there are positive, "can-do" Kiwis working on this; there is hope yet that the Malthusians won't impose a self-fulfilling-prophecy collapse on us.
THIS is the right spirit too:
Rate of use of fossil fuels, as its a critical dependancy. Typical example was an American saying if petrol went up another 10 cents he'd have to quit his job. The fuel had eaten all his "discretionary" income up.....that's American surbubia, gas guzzlers and highyway mentality for you..
The US has a low housing cost, yet its Trillions in debt and many of its cities, states and counties are close to default.
"High-housing-cost countries will have collapsed in total social disorder" really? yet Detriot has low cost housing, its a basket case as are many others, your fabled Houston in 2010 was pretty close to default as well I believe...
Switzerland's cost of housing btw?
"The house price to income ratio was 6.1 in Q2 2013, higher than the long-term average of 5.2."
http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Europe/Switzerland/Price-History
Cant see thats close to collapse myself.
regards
Hayek pointed out the link between the philosophical and economic reasons favouring local government. Hayek, like de Tocqueville, was concerned about the dangers of centralised power. As Lord Acton famously said, "All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
But the argument in favour of local government goes beyond such reasoning. Hayek saw local government as the best provider of the services that markets cannot produce at all or do not produce adequately.
As an economic liberal, Hayek was suspicious of government as a service provider. But if there was to be a public service provider, then he clearly preferred local government to central government.
Hayek’s preference is valid from an economic perspective. Apart from government intervention, economists fear few things more than monopolies. Where a national government provides public services, it would be a monopoly. For an economist, these are two evils in one.
Economists therefore favour competition in the provision of public services, and one way to ensure competition is to let local government provide public services. This idea goes back to a seminal article, ‘A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures’, published in 1956 by Charles Tiebout in The Journal of Political Economy.7 p.14
Yet of course the UK/ NZ model which has local health boards you vote for has amongst the most low cost healthssystems in terms of GDP. I mean there are at least 2 faults or assumptions here....that there is a more efficient alternative and competition brings it. We can argue in central = bad, yet real world evidence says not necessarily. So some economists think this. Myself I'd suggest that there are economies of scale....
Maybe its how the funds are provided (centrally) yet controlled via local health boards.
regards
The NZ system would collapse fiscally if if was not for the fact that nearly half the population trusts it so little that they have private health insurance.
The best of both worlds, would be to make private health insurance tax deductible as well as have a "public" system that rations care and keeps costs low.
The US system is expensive because of mandates on insurers re level of coverage; tort costs; "defensive medicine"; and minimal rationing (especially of care for the growing cohort of the insured elderly). They could have the best of both worlds by making health insurance tax deductible to individuals as well as businesses, and extending free treatment to everyone uninsured, under MediCare or Medicaid. They would do well to reign in tort adventurism and allow private hospitals to ration care to similar levels as exist in public systems like NZ and Canada. For example, we don't give every patient every scan under the sun just in case we miss something that we will get sued for later. We do an x-ray, act on that if necessary, and if someone dies a few months later because something was missed, that is just tough biccy.
Numerous conditions that people are encouraged to manage with "self help" here, would require an insurer in the USA to be paying for regular massage therapy, gymn sessions, spas, in-home care equipment, etc etc.
We also have Pharmac deciding what drugs are too expensive to fund. There is no such escape for US insurers.
30% of the US health care costs is in administration. Every needle, bandage, patient interaction needs to be accounted for, recorded, tallied, billed for, debt collected.
The US healthcare industry is full of such inefficiencies.
Nobody is campaigning to get rid of the publicly provided aspects of the US healthcare -medicaid etc.
Healthcare may be one of the few areas where a centralise government system actually works best....
"Nobody is campaigning to get rid of the publicly provided aspects of the US healthcare -medicaid etc"
Medicaid, well if you read what the GOP wants, well I'd sort of disagree on that, though I guess they are trying/want to kill it by stealth and not outright policy.
Id also throw in that a lot of the US health costs are covering of ass, ie they do lots of xrays etc just to try and make sure they miss nothing. Then the US drugs are I think the most expensive in the world? ie Americans go over the border into canada and buy what they need there, its a lot cheaper for the same thing.
Obamacare will I think see the GOP go ga ga....not that they are not already there anyway...ppl are savign money big time.
regards
Campaigning before Obama's election the Republicians were obviously against expanding the public healthcare system. And in front of crowds of older white votes they would list all the problems of publicly provided healthcare. But none of them were honest enough to tell the crowd they would get rid of the existing public health system for over 65s -Medicare....
"For example, we don't give every patient every scan" (and also drugs)
Correct....but neither do private NZ insurers. Now if you want to pay a private add on insurance, OK get that "extra" cover.
Personally I use just the public system and have been very happy with the level of care over the decades.
regards
Re: "The NZ (Health) system would collapse fiscally if if was not for the fact that nearly half the population trusts it so little that they have private health insurance."
Sorry Phil you are wrong, it is the private sector that cherry picks the easiest most marketable areas while leaving the hardyards to be done by the public sector. For instance there is no private intensive care units because they are expensive to set up and run. But the private sector offers lots of easy and highly marketable surgical operations. A certain percentage of these will have complications requiring the patient be transferred to intensive care.
The public health system can survive without the private health insurance market but not visca versa.
The health system is full of market failures that make the free market difficult to apply. Assymetric information, localised monopolies in specialist consultants and diagnostic/treatment equipment, moral goods and bads -should the mentally ill be left to huddle around campfires with the homeless? Should doctors/pharmacists be allowed to sell recreational drugs. Is the market for female circumcision a good thing?
Taking the public interest out of healthcare is easier said than done.
yep....
Though Im not sure what you mean by taking out the "public interest" To me its a public system sp there should be a public input. Danger then of course is some areas of health provision get starved of a fair share of resources, mental health certainly was one, dont know if it still is.
regards
'Public interest' is a simple statement for setting up systems to manage the above issues to the benefit of the general public. It doesn't always have to be public provision of healthcare, at the margins the 'free' market can help. But it is not really a 'free' market, the market is created and regulated by rules and public institutions provided by elected politicians hopeful for the benefit of the voters.
For instance my wife works in the area of medical research doing work for drug trials. There is all sorts of regulations and public bodies -ethics committees etc that need to be abided with to prevent another thalidomide disaster. The only reason the market exists is the temporary monopoly that pharmaceutical companies get from the patent system makes the massive investment worthwhile. Despite the bad publicity that drug companies sometimes get the system seems to be working well. In the mental health field the medications have improved significantly since I started working, the new medications are more effective or have much less side effects.
This is the sort of 'growth' I like -a definite improvement to real people but no increase in energy or resource use.
PhilBest To answer your question. Yes I am aware of them and generally agree with their analysis. I think they need to tweek some of their proposed solutions. For their recent big bang housing and local government proposals I made the following comments.
I think the grant given to Local Authorities should represent the construction costs for the new residence not the underlying land costs. Otherwise there is too much incentive for the Councils to bugger around with the planning process to increase land prices. The whole point of this plan is for the Councils to not want to bugger around with the planning process to increase land prices.
Also large cities will get higher grants than smaller towns because of their higher land prices and it is not clear to me why we need to incentivise big city growth over small town growth.
Giving Local Authorities a small PAYE tax, say a few cents in the dollar on local residents might be a better idea than giving all the GST on new 'house and land costs'. This extra revenue would allow our towns and cities to address their underlying infrastructure deficit that the recent congestion figures indicate.
Your reasoning is brilliant, mate, well done and I will take that on board.
There is a related racket going on right now regarding development contributions for "parks and reserves".
It is a requirement under s.203 of the LGA 2002 that the Council’s development contributions for "parks and reserves" must not exceed the greater of 7.5% of the value of the additional allotments created by a subdivision or the value equivalent of 20 square metres of land for each additional household unit created by the development.
The obvious problem with this, is that the higher that the Council can force the land values under their planning policies, the more they are legally allowed to sock developers for Parks and Reserves Contributions. I hadn’t “got” this angle until recently, and I think it is important.
My rough estimates looking at the CCC’s guidelines, are that they are allowing for costs of something like $100,000 per acre for “regional reserves”, $100,000 per acre for neighbourhood parks, and $750,000 per acre for suburban parks.
The inflated level of these sorts of prices for land, if true, is either their stupid fault or is a dastardly ploy. They have had the responsibility for planning this for decades and could have bought all the land inside their UGB for chicken feed decades ago if they had any foresight. In the absence of a UGB, land could cost as little as $30,000 - $70,000 per acre.
It is even possible that Councils have flogged off some of the land they did once have set aside, and are now having to pay top dollar to buy it back, and are lumbering the cost onto developers.
It is adding insult to injury to the developer to require him to pay development contributions for top dollar land prices that are the result of the Council’s UGB policy anyway, and are the result of the Council’s own failure of management – on top of forcing the developer to pay what are effectively oligopoly prices for the land due to the UGB policy.
I cannot understand why some good lawyers haven’t already fought this and had it overturned. I think lawyers and developers need some good “urban economics” advisors.
Vanderlei Luxemburgo
That brings back memories. The little dynamo. Cant remember robbie or any of those around his time getting up to the nonsense they get up to today .. Teapots, Sexting, Hotel Upgrades, Nookie, JohnBanks, JohnKey, KimDotcom, Lenny Brown .. aaaagh .. its a different world .. different times
You lot often ask “how do we stop house price inflation” and “how do we stop investment in houses”. In my opinion here’s your answer, three words, no population growth. It is guaranteed to rein in house price inflation, when that happens there will be little incentive to invest in property. We’ll be able to get our infrastructure sorted, we’ll have the same amount of wealth spread amongst less people. And we’ll be better able preserve our culture and our way of life.
as population requires house growth, then house price increase is evitable in a growing population.
Cf towns with dropping population vs centers with increasing numbers reveals that the link is solid. Even more importantly dropping the population slowly (vs revaluation of the whole area) results in a slow drop in property value, and longer price-hold times (ie less voilatility) as opposed to major disruption (earthquake) or major employer leaving town which creates temporary effects)
Between 2000 and 2010, there was little or no house price inflation in:
Houston, which grew from 3.9 million people to 5 million
Atlanta, which grew from 3.5 million to 4.5 million
Austin, which grew from 900,000 to 1.35 million
Charlotte, NC, which grew from 760,000 to 1.25 million
Raleigh, NC, which grew from 540,000 to 880,000
They just get on and build freakin' houses in those cities.
In 1950's and 1960's California, there was even faster growth rates yet the affordability was legendary.
But 2000 - 2007, LA, SF, San Jose and a few other significant cities were almost stagnating in population, but their house prices went from a median multiple of around 4, to over 11. The unaffordability literally caused the stagnation to worsen.
Very interesting that immigration increases house prices
BUT
Read here
Had no effect on GDP
Very strange.
Immigration is all about making an economy look good for the government of the day. Without immigration we would have zero growth in GDP
Note the denials form the (not so independant) experts
Impact of migration flows on NZ house price inflation.
Tuesday February 15th 2011 /*-->*/
The Savings Working Group two weeks ago released their report on New Zealand’s
savings problem warning that we stand on the edge of an abyss. That terminology is
somewhat sensationalist and hopefully hasn’t panicked anyone into leaving the country in
case we go the same way as Greece and Ireland. Actually we already did that back in the
1980s when the economy had to be deregulated to face a changed world and the
government had to get its finances back in order after years of ballooning deficits.
One of the claims made in the Savings report is that migrants push up house prices and
therefore maybe if some controls were placed on immigration prices would not be so high
and we Kiwis would save through bank accounts and such like rather than buying each
other’s houses. They report cites a particular study showing that about a 1% of
population boost in immigration lifts house prices about 10%.
However there is another study of migration and housing which finds that looked at from
a local as opposed to national level one cannot find evidence of more than about a 0.2%
- 0.5% lift in house prices. This study also suggests that maybe it is not the migrants
(foreigners) affecting house prices if such an effect exists, but returning Kiwis – which is
what we will examine here.
Would we believe experts employed by tobacco companies?
"savings problem"?
Why on earth would anyone save cash in NZ? You'd have to have every bill and mortgage paid off, because not one "savings location" is offering anything close to the charged interested rates!!
And with the poverty inflicted on NZer's by government, councils, IRD and RBNZ (and banks) not many people have "dcotors and lawyers wages" to run in pure cash (and own house, paid off) mode!
I hope the taxpayers didn't have to pay for the report, or the imbeciles provding it. "savings problem" my hairy b...
The long-term strategic results of current migration policy --
1. encourage talented young kiwis to go overseas and come back with loads of $ and experiences to contribute to NZ economy in future at a mid or senior ages.
2. encourage wealthy and/or skilled foreigners to come to NZ at a young age to build up NZ economy now
3. Kiwis who fall outside of 1 and 2 are screaming at the current migration policies. Why? They are worse off. So, in long term, this may incentivise this bunch to do better, and work harder.
What are the strategic pros and cons of the current migration policy? Do pros outweigh cons in long term?
*/
While immigration played a key role in house inflation in the three years after 2001 (Reserve
Bank 2007), it is unknown to what extent on-going immigration continued to drive price rises.
The housing boom has meant good profits for many New Zealand companies supplying
materials and building services, but it implies investors would rather invest in their country’s
homes rather than its businesses (Bollard 2005). The high returns for property has attracted
finance and reduced the capital available for productive investment (Moody, 2006). The
consequence is investment is going in to industries with limited capacity to increase per capita
incomes. For example, real estate and building are domestically bound and do not have the
market potential of export industries. They also have less opportunity to increase productivity
through new processes and products. The irony is, as these sectors grow, they have incurred
skills shortages which in turn has increased demand for skilled immigrants. The Department
of Statistics ‘Long Term Skill Shortage List’ of 28/3/2006 includes carpenter/joiner, plumber,
electricians, fitter and turners, fitter welders; all indicative of a nation building its
construction/property sector.
There is a danger that a sector of the economy is being augmented that is totally reliant on a
small domestic economy. Not only do these industries have limited potential for per-capita
growth but ‘deriving growth via factor inputs such as labour places pressure on infrastructure
such as transport and land supply, and ultimately have a further negative impact on growth
(ARC 2005). Finally, as the sector gets larger, it gains in lobbying/political strength and can
lobby for immigration regardless if it is the best interests of the economy as a whole. This
could be seen in Canada where the development industry has lobbied hard for high sustained
immigration levels (Ley and Tutchener 2001).
....
NEW ZEALAND IMMIGRATION POLICY
Dr Greg Clydesdale (PhD)
Senior Lecturer
Department of Management and International Business
Massey University - Albany
The REAL irony is that Dr PhD has decide to overlook that the shortage in skill was created by a lack of willingness to hire apprentices 10 years earlier.
Due to a shortage of cashflow and changes in the apprenticeship system business were unable to take on the new high priced apprentices - those few companies booming at the time, had no trained staff or budget available to take on trainees.
That is what caused the skill shortage. Both were flow on effects from government choices 10 & 20 years earlier to that.
Old story; you throw a rock in a pond you get ripples travelling out. Only the highly educated are smart enough not to see it
New Zealand has a real problem training the right number of people with the right skills.
If you think about it you will realise the problem is that education is another area of market failure. Firms need skilled workers but if they pay to upskill their workers those workers are free to take those skills elsewhere. Some firms choose not to educate their workers but to poach workers from elsewhere. The end result is a shortage of skilled workers. Sound familiar?
The solution is some pragmatic public body organises the training -apprentices, polytechnics, universities. But our public bodies have been ideological battlegrounds -neoliberalism, identity politics -sex, race etc. So not a lot of pragmatism there....
We need skilled people, not more people sold paper from the education bubble.
You want to educate (or train) workers, companies need profits to do so. solid reliable -profit-. It costs money and time and is highly risky to train people, especially in an insanely pro-worker pro-tax environment like NZ. With government and RBNZ actively seeking to reduce business profits and lift costs (interest, extra compliance) where is the money coming from to fund the training? With minimum wage up so high, and revenue a challenge, who is going to bother taking the risk.
The Poms, since 1947, have suffered from a steady increase in the proportion of cost of a house that is "land".
In healthy undistorted housing markets, a quarter acre section is around 20% of the cost of the total package.
In recently distorted markets like Australia and NZ, you get 1/10 of an acre sections that are 50% of the cost of the total package.
The Poms now have 1/20 of an acre "sections" (townhouses or row-houses on them) which are 80% of the cost of the total package.
Developers need to secure and carry sites for 7 to 14 years as they run the gauntlet of permission procedures before they finally get to sell a finished structure that they built in the final couple of months of the process; and the raw land cost plus the Danegeld to the local Council and assorted blood-suckers comes to around a million pounds per acre.
Guess what this has done to the actual construction sector in Pommie-land?
The actual number of houses per year getting built, is about 1/4 what it was in the 1950's, even though the population has increased considerably and the number of older houses needing replacement has ballooned.
The size of the sector and the level of employment in it has collapsed. Some incredibly high percentage of firms every decade, go bankrupt (surprise, surprise).
And sector productivity is in the toilet.
Really, really smart policy to emulate in this part of the world. NOT.
Why do we get what we get?
[some suggestions]
Influencial people gain direct advantage from immigration (left and right).
Well off people aren't effected.
Elite in group sees itself as superior to the the people of their own ethnicity (or nationallity) and form and view those opposed to immigration as their "out group".
The Third Culture (people able to compete with migrants and ability to move around where it suits them); influentail and largely unaffected?
Academic disciplines self-select, grow and spew out journalists and fill the political parties of the left who view anti immigration sentiment from a Marxists perspective as having the goal of maintaining white dominance
A political concensus means immigration issues aren't aired as when the productivity commision agreed it's terms should be
relatively uncontroversial given the desire to establish broad political support for the Commission
http://issues.co.nz/diversityissues
http://newsettlers.massey.ac.nz/staff.php
The antidote is understanding the true nature of human beings and our adaptive evolutionary environment.
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/category/evolutionary-psychology/
and seeing humanity as a bilogical species which overshoots it's environmentla constraints then seek to traverse borders for greener pastures.
Oh for Pete's sake, not one person following NZ's premier economics and finance blog has worked out (or at least, not commented on this thread) that we could just build freakin' houses at a slightly higher rate than what we do, keep the prices affordable, and get everyone housed, both the "yellow peril" that the Winston First Xenophobes are having frissons about, and young people and lower income earners who we are currently "pricing out" and blaming it on the "yellow peril" instead of our own freakin' pig-headedness when it comes to building freakin' houses........
We built 3 to 5 times as many per year from the 1950's to the 1980's.
Oh, we should have put the full-up sign up when the population hit 500,000, and our great-granddaddy should have tied a knot in it or stayed in Liverpool.
There are 118 million people in Japan. There are 17 million people in the Netherlands, which is the same size as Canterbury Province.
Oh, horrors - the Dutch should have stopped breeding when there was 20,000 of them.
What a pack of post-enlightenment drop-kicks Kiwis are becoming........
The japanese housing market has been in the doldrums for 3 decades, the dutch housing market looks bad....The japanese cant feed themselves, they grow 36% of what they need. They have no oil...massive, crippling debt about to be called in by the retirees...
Yeah sure they are doing well, not.
regards
Both countries have suffered from urban land price volatility due to actual shortage of land (at least for food security, not for housing though).
It is absurd for countries without this shortage, to lumber their economies with the same disadvantage by way of regulations. It is like going into a war with an enemy whose people all only have one leg, and all chopping off one of of our own legs too so we don't have an unfair advantage.
It says a lot that you use these countries as an excuse for what we have done with our own urban land markets here in NZ. We are now more expensive than Japan, per square foot. That can hardly be helpful for an electronics manufacturer, say, deciding whether to build new production facilities here or in Japan.
The Netherlands, for decades, managed its housing market a lot better than the Poms (who are not as short of land) by using "compulsory acquisition" of all land designated for urban growth under the urban plans for each city.
I would actually respect "save the planet" activists and politicians who said it is essential to do this along with the imposition of UGB's. Or at least enact Land Value Taxes. But then their source of "donations" from land bankers and big property investors would dry up.
Certain Rockefellers were up to their eyeballs in the start of the land conservation movement in California in the 1970's. None of the hippies who were in bed with them would seem to have connected any dots about the effect on the value of urban property investments.
George Soros is another Croesus who is a liberal donor to "conservation" groups. This stuff is probably endemic everywhere there is urban planning. The potential for corruption is massive, and the MSM seems to be particularly incurious about it. In fact the MSM is shite-scared of losing advertising revenue from the property and finance sectors if they shine too many bright lights into the wrong dark corners.
Innovation and Population vs Maltus and Chicken Littles
Dow Jones Commodity Index 1934-2013
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/01/julian-simon-still-more-right-than-luc…
This is the one to be afraid of gummy...
http://inflationdata.com/articles/2013/08/09/deflation-warning/
regards
If on the other hand you pick oil,
http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/images/charts/Oil/Inflation_Adj_Oil_Prices_Chart.htm
Way different.
On top of that your graph is flattening near the end....so trend? maybe, maybe not, probably not.
regards
A TECHNIQUE called “directional drilling” has transformed the energy business. Fifteen years ago the best drillers could force a well-shaft into a gentle arc. These days shafts can be drilled vertically to a depth of several kilometres—then made to turn sharply and continue horizontally for up to 12km (or 7 miles). Will Grace of Schlumberger, an oilfield services company, likens it to dropping a plumb-line from the top of the Empire State Building and then guiding it through the rear and front windscreens of every car parked in the nearby streets.
What has been lost in the horizontal drilling/fracking argument is that so much more of the oil or gas in a reservoir is now recoverable .... which mitigates the greater cost of these techniques ...
... hence the ramp up in US oil production ... and the envious stance the UK government has taken , having signed off 60 % of their landmass for hydrocarbon feasibility studies ...
If any nation wishes to reduce their " carbon foot print " , the shift away from coal & oil to nat-gas is the most cost efficient way to go , currently ..
Actually when you look at the number of wells and rigs to do it, and the depletion rate ie 2 or 3 years its really un-sustainable. Oil plays are also looking very limited, is a few great spots in the shale plays and the rest dont look too great output wise. You just have to look at the rig/well locations to see that.
Also the Ngas price has collapsed, oil not...dont get the 2 mixed up, then there is the water use to do it.
Currently, yes thats a maybe, just how long is "currently" gonna last though.
http://fcnp.com/2013/12/23/the-peak-oil-crisis-the-mother-of-all-bubble…
regards
Industry estimates say the Permian, which helped put the United States on the path to becoming the world's largest crude producer, has recoverable reserves that exceed all oil and gas produced there over the last 90 years, according to the Texas Railroad Commission.
fracking without fresh water.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/21/us-apache-water-idUSBRE9AK08Z…
The only sphere where human ingenuity appears to have been an abject failure is in creating an anti-virus software programme to eliminate " Malthusian ludditicus " ... a particularly nasty virulent disease , commonly known hereabouts as the " Chicken Little " syndrome ...
... sadly , interest.co.nz is rife with it .... despite the best efforts of Messers Chaston , Hargreaves , and Vaughan .... bless them , one and all ...
I certainly hope so , too .... those of us who invest in the betterment of mankind deserve to be richly rewarded ...
... it may not work out so ...
Butcha gotta be in , to win ...
... failing that , my investments in genetic crop research & Monsanto should bring home the bacon ...
"By around 2020, the United States is projected to become the largest global oil producer," he wrote. "The result is a continued fall in US oil imports, to the extent that North America becomes a net oil exporter around 2030."The United States, which currently imports around 20 per cent of its total energy needs, becomes all but self-sufficient in net terms – a dramatic reversal of the trend seen in most other energy-importing countries." Fatih Birol credible enough for you? Imagine what happens when other countries get fracking.
... imagine the potentialiality of an economic power shift in Europe as the UK utilises it's massive reserves of clean shale gas , whereas Germany buries it's head in the sand with idiotic Green's energy policies ( because of an earthquake in Japan ... how bizarre is that ! ) ...
No vested interests in "we're running out"?
The reality is that the vested interests that spend the most money are by a wide margin are those that stand to make something for nothing. The "vested interests" who actually do honest work to supply stuff, don't have anything like the same inclination. After all, competition will always keep them honest.
It is the vested interests in constraint and "shutting down" and cutting off the process of free market "churn" that are always the ones telling lies and spreading propaganda. It is only too convenient that these filthy rich rent-seekers have several legions of "useful idiot" footsoldiers in ideological Greens and social justice types, who are incapable of grasping a single principle of basic economics anyway, and hence incapable of seeing what they are useful idiots for.
Add to that a nihilistic rage based on envy, and they really don't mind what damage they do, or whether the alleged objectives (saving the planet, etc) are even served at all in the process.
His second bet,
"Simon issued a challenge for a second bet in 1995. In an essay in the San Francisco Chronicle, he claimed that "Every measure of material and environmental welfare in the United States and in the world has improved rather than deteriorated."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/longterm-unemployment-recession-charts
Back to trolling with select charts/data?
Thought you'd decided to do better.
regards
So I post a 79 year index of a basket of commodities and the you post an oil chart and I get accused of trolling and cherry picking select charts...
Another chart for ya'. Things aren't so bad.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-billion-people-…
or maybe some climate change graphs,
GRL: “We conclude that the 20th century warming of the incoming intermediate North Atlantic water has had no equivalent during the last thousand years.“
JGR: “The last decades of the past millennium are characterized again by warm temperatures that seem to be unprecedented in the context of the last 1600 years.
regards
Someone better tell the trapped boat in Antartica. I wonder what will get there first global warming or the ice breakers.
Here's another cherry. Cursed satellites.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeser…
Zanyzane if you wanted a house next to the beach you should have jumped on the global warming gravy train like Gillard and Flannery. Spend other peoples money on scare stories about runaway sea level rise and build $15 billion on now mothballed desal plants etc - while quietly buying a beach front property... Global sea ice is the same now as when satellite records (and SUV's) began.
Oh right been reading whaleoil then.
Yep its a cherry pick alright,
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
The artics has less.
maybe this,
"US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016"
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/09/us-nav…
"Fram Strait, in the month that the sea ice coverage receded to the second lowest extent since records began"
BTW Climate change predicts we get more extremes, that means cold extreams, hot extremes, more and severe floods and dry periods. Whaleoil it seems is incapable of seperating a weather event from a climate change.
Like say California in the driest year,
"California Gripped By Driest Year Ever; With No Relief In Sight"
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/27/3104861/california-driest-y…
regards
Nothing much has happened in global sea ice since satellite records began, its the same as it was in 1979 as I'm sure your well aware. Having trouble with the paste function at mo.
Given the same US Navy surfaced a sub at the North Pole before SUV's were invented I doubt they are too concerned about Arctic ice areas.
Global warming zealots predicted runaway global warming, that didn't work out so that changed the name to climate change to keep the gravy train running. The type of human ingenuity I don't admire. If only that billion dollars a days spent on global warming scares was spent on fresh water for the worlds poor and malaria research we would have been much better off.
The climate scientists still do worry there is a tipping point, they admit they dont know at waht temp...
"global"? and "sea" aiming to cherry pick again.
Summer sea ice will be gone in the artic within some years, making the military problems in the sea far more complex.
Of course you could look at real science and stop cherry picking the odd thing,
Antartic sea ice v land ice, great cherry pick on your part,
http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm
Forgot to mention land ice didnt we....
No Im sure you didnt forget...
"In glaciology and particularly with respect to Antarctic ice, not all things are created equal. Let us consider the following differences. Antarctic land ice is the ice which has accumulated over thousands of years on the Antarctica landmass itself through snowfall. This land ice therefore is actually stored ocean water that once fell as precipitation. Sea ice in Antarctica is quite different as it is ice which forms in salt water primarily during the winter months. When land ice melts and flows into the oceans global sea levels rise on average; when sea ice melts sea levels do not change measurably."
"One must also be careful how you interpret trends in Antarctic sea ice. Currently this ice is increasing overall and has been for years but is this the smoking gun against climate change? Not quite. Antarctic sea ice is gaining because of many different reasons but the most accepted recent explanations are listed below:
i) Ozone levels over Antarctica have dropped causing stratospheric cooling and increasing winds which lead to more areas of open water that can be frozen (Gillet 2003, Thompson 2002, Turner 2009).
and
ii) The Southern Ocean is freshening because of increased rain and snowfall as well as an increase in meltwater coming from the edges of Antarctica's land ice (Zhang 2007,Bintanga et al. 2013). Together, these change the composition of the different layers in the ocean there causing less mixing between warm and cold layers and thus less melted sea and coastal land ice.
All the sea ice talk aside, it is quite clear that really when it comes to Antarctic ice and sea levels, sea ice is not the most important thing to measure. In Antarctica, the largest and most important ice mass is the land ice of the West Antarctic and East Antarctic ice sheets."
Then there is Greenland's land ice...
regards
Refreshing that climate scientists admit they don't know. Though I guess if they did know something they would have predicted the past 17 years of flat temperature trends.
Perhaps they could stop spending our money now.
I post a 74 year commodity index, you post an oil chart and accuse me of cherry picking. I post a global sea ice chart http://www.climate4you.com/images/NSIDC%20GlobalArcticAntarctic%20SeaIc… and you go on about arctic summer ice predictions of the type that have made Al Gore look foolish and accuse me of cherry picking...
You always ask me to post links, which I do. Do you ask me to post links so you can accuse me of cherry picking?
Out of interest (npi) what would you sooner have taxpayer money spent on - global warming scare predictions that might happen or clean water/malaria research - problems that actually exist?
Sea ice is, well sea ice and doesnt really contibute to water level rise, it freezes and thaws each year more or less hence its mute, the one of impact is historic land ice melting into the sea, that will and is causing sea level rise and extreme events.
Not 17 years of flat actually, but on an upward trend as the latest "hockey stick" shows....
"Even if we focus exclusively on global surface temperatures, Cowtan & Way (2013) shows that when we account for temperatures across the entire globe (including the Arctic, which is the part of the planet warming fastest), the global surface warming trend for 1997–2012 is approximatley 0.11 to 0.12°C per decade."
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm
Simple, spend money on peak oil then AGW as the latter is an extinction event, first of our economy and then us.
regards
Actual 2013 research paper,
Cherry picking... even the author cautions.
“No difficult scientific problem is ever solved in a single paper. I don’t expect our paper to be the last word on this, but I hope we have advanced the discussion.”
Judy Curry:
I don’t think Cowtan and Wray’s analysis adds anything to our understanding of the global surface temperature field and the ‘pause.’
You're onto it. But be aware, Steven is probably a paid troll, you will never outlast him. This site has had numerous people come and go over the years, taking the side of truth and reason, but none of them stand a chance against the Goliath of the vested interests in the CAGW scam, of which Steven is just one example of how far their tentacles reach.
You can't even place a comment on an obscure and "dead" thread on an Amazon book review, without CAGW trolls swamping it with their propaganda (it sure ain't science at all).
The whole debate is so manipulated by them that people are led to believe that nasty big vested interests are lined up against the dear honourable climate activists. The truth is 180 degrees opposite. CAGW alarmism is funded to the extent of some 100 times plus, greater than CAGW skepticism.
It is an old, old story in political economy. "Vested interests" who make their money by honestly supplying goods and services for which there is demand, seldom get involved in political manipulation or self-defence or funding of activism. The activities of vested interests who stand to straight-out get "something for nothing" are far more significant, and CAGW is just a typical illustration of this. I highly recommend "The Great American Bubble Machine" by Matt Taibbi. The technical term is "rent seeking".
Bear in mind that Steven does not have a single brain cell capable of grasping a single basic principle of economics. He won't ever engage with the role of markets and price systems and unintended consequences and so on. The fact that the policies pushed and assented to by he and his CAGW comrades are ineffective at best, and have opposite consequences to those alleged, at worst, is not something you will ever get him or his comrades to engage with. For example, Kyoto style policies have increased CO2 emissions globally by driving industry away from advanced economies to less developed ones where they use more coal.
The whole thing is a classic illustration of everything people like Hayek said about the kind of people who get to the top of policy making and planning under Statist systems. Slope browed, pig-ignorant, thuggish, arrogant and bullying types with nothing more than ideologically based certainties and the ability to exist in a paralell universe to that of facts and reason. The current manifestation is not actually conducting Kangaroo Court show trials and exiling people to Gulags and conducting "purges", but one can see the shared vices on the part of those who are rising to the top in Statist democratic systems with a self-policing mainstream media.
Truth shines through, eh what.
Tell you what, try finding evidence of what you asert.
Bullying? kangaroo court?
didnt you give ppl 10 votes each and me a yellow card?
Or admit you "out" ppl on "your" web sites and get them banned?
Try to get me banned from here?
All the while advertising web sites /bloggers that push your agenda?
Wipe your chin you are drooling......
regards
You bet I want you banned from here. This is a specialist finance and economics blog and you are a time waster who devalues the whole purpose of the forum. It is Chaston's funeral if he wants to let you do it.
I would defend to the death your right to participate on WhaleOilBeefHooked and indeed so would they. But it is a funny thing, Lefty and Eco-fascist stooges are perfectly free to participate on general-purpose blogs hosted by staunch right wingers like Cam Slater; but they don't.
Because they can't hack the total kicking they get from the other commenters.
Lefty and eco-fascist echo chamber blogs, on the other hand, shut out contrary commenters with heavy handed moderation (censorship). The same goes for CAGW alarmist sites.
The "skeptic" sites, on the other hand, happily engage in complex arguments with alarmists who participate. In fact, what is becoming known as "peer to peer" engagement is advancing real science far more rapidly than "peer review" and journal publication.
I note the skeptics argue like this: Read Michael Mann's book and A W Montford's book and make up your own mind. The alarmists rise up in unison and anathemise A W Montford's book and assure us that we will go straight to hell if we dare to read it (and Montford is a member of satanist organisations that conduct child sacrifices).
Heck, we might as well have stuck with the medieval Papal hierarchy and not had a Reformation and an Enlightenment at all. Or gone straight from religion to secular-humanistic Communism like the Jacobins or the Bolsheviks.
When have I ever said I am against a "decent environment"? This is a classic straw man ploy against people arguing against environmental fundamentalist over-reach.
No humanity has ever achieved "decent environments" without a number of political and cultural pre-conditions. This is why people have never lived in "decent environments" in Communist countries or in pagan, nature-worshipping cultures.
I recommend Patrick Moore's book, "Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout" for a good explanation of where I am coming from. Bjorn Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist" is excellent too, and deeper, if you are a real scholar.
Patrick Moore was one of the founders of Greenpeace in the 1960's. In 1986, he made a proposal at an international conference of the top people in the organisation, to the effect that it was "time to declare victory" and move on to helping the developing world and pressurising the communist bloc into cleaning up their act. In the developed world, the air was getting cleaner, waterways were getting cleaner, waste was being properly processed, toxins were being eradicated from industrial processes; species were being preserved; forest cover was being increased; and so on.
This is due to a combination of technological advancement; people with basic needs met who can care about cleaning up their surroundings; leading to regulations; and the accumulated capital and discretionary income to apply to the problem.
Moore became aware that his fellow Greenpeacers were becoming restive, and sat down eventually to a stony silence. Then one of his colleagues shouted: "don't you realise that our mission is to destroy global capitalism" - which produced rousing applause.
What I am against is a political return to a kind of paganism, where inanimate and superabundant landforms are sacred. Had the Pike River mine been done open-cast, it would have been famous for the environmentalist protests it produced instead of for 29 dead miners. But no-one would have actually witnessed or been affected by the damage to the Gaia Earth Mother at the hands of rapacious global capitalism.
I am against leaving resources in the ground because of religious values systems that should have no place in a secular country. It is impossible to find mines at random on Google Earth without prior knowledge of their existence. They are not a series of rampaging scars on the face of the earth. No-one is suggesting mining Milford Sound or Mount Cook. There is millions of percent more territory that is not Milford Sound or Mount Cook.
We use around 40% of NZ for farming, which is a highly visible alteration of land cover. 0.1% of the same space devoted to mining could possibly earn similar export revenue.
Our urban areas are 0.7% of our space. People have to live somewhere. There is no justification for cooping them up like battery hens to "save the planet". People could conceivably live at one family to the acre with far less overall impact on the environment than the status quo. We actually have academics in NZ thinking along the right lines now:
http://www.creative.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/future-proof-podcasts
If we had Samsung Electronics in NZ (which would employ around 40% of our workforce), that would be of greater value to the NZ economy than our entire farming sector that takes up 40% of our land. And the space required for the NZ Samsung would probably be less than 0.1% of that.
Ironically, though I am not a "Greenie" in the modern sense of the world, I think NZ would have been better off to have left a lot more of its territory to wilderness. Some significant proportion of our total "rural" economic activity in the history of NZ has been marginal in terms of net contribution to the nation's wealth. The national rail infrastructure, for example, has run at a loss for its entire existence apart from the main trunk between Wgtn and Auckl some of the time. This malinvestment was done by the Seddon government based on projected population growth (by migration from the UK) to 30 million by 1930. We are grossly over-capitalised in rail freight infrastructure investment and this represents a massive unpriced subsidy to the rural economy.
Simultaneously, we are grossly under-capitalised in infrastructure for urban transport, which for our population levels and our terrain, means roads. We have one of the highest road lane-miles scores per capita in the world, but it is all rural. We have one of the lowest scores in the world for urban highway lane-miles per capita. We can't provide 4 lanes for 30,000+ people per day in dozens of urban situations; yet we have provided tens of thousands of kms of 2 lane roads all over the entire country for a few hicks to use and a few cattle trucks to drive down with their low-value loads.
If NZ was a business, it would have a large loss-making division to which the staff of the whole company was sentimentally attached and willing to all accept lower incomes in return for not closing it.
Thanks, Gummy, all the best to you too. I don't think I have done much at all in 2013; to be quite honest, it is too discouraging a waste of time. But of course that is what the people backing professional trolls like Steven want to hear.
Possibly the biggest discouragement of all is the inability of the Interest.Co.NZ team themselves to get real about the implications of successful rent-seeking in urban land for the broader economic interest. I have my suspicions about "why". Similar reason why print media have never told the truth about it, and why other specialist media have been warned off the subject.
Hopefully a massive crash will wipe out the worst of the vested interests and a courageous government will seize the opportunity to reform things so it will never happen again. That is about the best one can wish for now. Opportunities were tragically missed earlier.
One of the most tragic of all was in Australia, where reform was NEARLY introduced in 2003 after a brilliant report was produced: "The Prime Minister's Task Force Report on Housing Affordability". PM John Howard personally shut down his colleagues reform initiatives. Australia has since gone on to pumping up the world's biggest unburst house price bubble. The fact that it keeps pumping up is not evidence that "Australia is different" and "the fundamentals are sound". It just means that "the mess is going to be VERY big when it finally does blow".
NZ's missed opportunity was probably 2005. But the Key government has been mucking around in a state of tiptoing through life quietly, ever since it won in 2008. It was too late in 2008 to avoid the worst of the damage, but like Australia, we have had a bubble defying gravity and giving courage to the specufestors while the Nats sit on their hands.
Interest.Co.NZ is not among the honourable few who have been right all along or who have even "come around" YET. They seem to me to be more like the Amy Adamses than the Bill English's and Nick Smiths. The "beautiful people" "property investment-can't lose" class are more important than the broader economic and socio-economic interest.
Thanks for the advice Steven but I'll stick to climate science sites like Judy Curry. Activist sites like Realclimate are an echo chamber. And as for Skepticalscience if they have to resort to post dated forum edits to "prove" something that says it all. I feel pity when a poster links to that site. Isn't Cook a cartoonist or something?! Surely an actual climate scientist like Judy Curry has to be a better option to find the "truth" as you put it.
As for throwing up confusion - you were the one who bought up global warming after I posted a commodity index chart... nice hijack, right out of the playbook.
Is the land ice as measured by satellites, increasing or decreasing? Either way, you and your comrades are going to say it is proof of anthropogenic CO2 "changing the climate". If it is decreasing, you will say it is melting because of elevated global temperatures, because of anthropogenic CO2. If it is increasing, you will say something else.
Your type used to say one thing; then it is another. The theory is continually changed to fit "anthropogenic CO2 is doing it", to the real life evidence. This is not science at all.
The sites I will follow are the ones that permit proper debate, to which a lot of real scientists contribute. Not the ones that act like the medieval papal hierarchy with their anathemas on heretics.
Do you mean proper debate where you are concerned, or is anthropogenic climate change still up for consideration. Is it,as I suspect, are you just huddling together with the deniers in the hope that enough of you get together then you can feel safe in your belief that all the scientists are actually wrong
Here is a quote from one of "all of the scientists". I suspect you don't even know what a "denier" is. Some caricature I suspect. No one suggests man does not play a part in "climate change".
What is up for debate is how much of a part does man play and do we need to spend a billion dollars a day of tax payers money "combating" it. Imagine if that sort of money was spent on todays problems like clean drinking water or malaria research rather than on some gravy train for watermelons like future predictions of runaway "climate change". But I guess optimist like me are be despised like #3 in the top ten today.
"The bottom line remains Ed Hawkins’ figure that compares climate model simulations for regions where the surface observations exist. This is the appropriate way to compare climate models to surface observations, and the outstanding issue is that the climate models and observations disagree."
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2013-12/26/content_17199158.htm
Maybe growth is not all it is cracked-up to be.
Maybe they will be getting tough on the incentives to do business with us.
Maybe a lesson in our under-capacity.
Maybe a Super City, is not what is needed.
Maybe, we should cut back on the kick-backs.
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