The food crisis Bryan Bruce Documentary tonight

[Lilith7]

No one wins every game of golf, or gets every birthday present they deserve. Sometimes I think we let excuses get in the way of trying something and miss out on an adventure. And, I think we are spoiled by our city lives. We see that as soon as the power goes out, or water is turned off. Or storm the supermarket the day before a public holiday...

Mind you, I still get a bit panicky if I am near to running out of tea bags. Or library books...

Spoilt city woman that I am.

Running out of tea or coffee (just the one a day but I enjoy that one - proper coffee, not instant) would seriously worry me. I hope never to run out of books I've still got the odd bookcase or four about the place, & the library's handy.

[Lilith7]

Came across this just now.

National’s Foreign Buyer’s Tax Deeply Flawed.

National are offering tax cuts as part of their economic policy. To help fund that scheme they propose reversing the ban on non-NZ resident buying existing homes , reducing the bright line test down to two years and charging a 15% surtax on non-NZ purchasers buying homes worth over $2 million.
National’s claim is that this would raise $740 million a year .

Putting aside for the moment the undesirability of non -NZ residents buying up our homes and the fact that to raise that amount the policy would require foreign buyers to purchase roughly half of all our top end properties each year, there are a couple of other issues voters really need to think about.

1. If their scheme worked as National claims it would, then it would trigger what Canadian Social Geographer Prof David Ley (a world expert on immigration and cities) once described to me in an interview as “the ripple effect”.
This is where a rich foreign buyer purchases a home at the top of the market that would previously have been purchased by a local.
The wealthy local can’t compete and so moves down to the next layer in the market and so on until you get to the people at the bottom of the property market who can no longer buy because the prices have risen beyond their means.

2. Would Naional's foreign buyer tax policy really raise money for the government?
In 2016 Vancouver imposed a 15% foreign buyer tax and later raised it to 20% in order to cool rampant speculation on properties by foreign buyers . Which it did!
So how would a tax designed to COOL a property market encourage foreign buyers to purchase our homes?

The answer presumably lies in National's proposal to drop down the Brightline test to two years to encourage non-NZ residents to speculate in our property market.( Oh oh..! See 1. above)
Really? Is this what we want? Did we learn nothing from the last time we allowed foreign buyers to buy and sell our homes?
Your call in October.
#nzpol #nzpolitics #bryanbruce

[Oh_hunnihunni]

I have just one question when these policy statements are made - who benefits?

The answer usually points me in the right voting direction.

By the way, did you see the Need Or Greed doco on last night? Eye opening stuff where neither political party came out looking good.

[Lilith7]

I have just one question when these policy statements are made - who benefits?

The answer usually points me in the right voting direction.

By the way, did you see the Need Or Greed doco on last night? Eye opening stuff where neither political party came out looking good.

Yes I did - bunch of self serving bastards really not bothered about others except when it comes time to get votes. 

We did once have politicians who were concerned with the well being of the entire country as well as remaining in power... long ago.  Some of whom set about building state housing during the depression which helped both the need for housing & the need for work.


These days, they're more like this:

https://www.tiktok.com/@spiderhoof/video...fQlyxIXQ9p