29 Comments

Richard Harman of Politik pours cold water on the Herald's '65% support capital gains tax' headline:

NOT SUCH BIG SUPPORT FOR CAPITAL GAINS TAX

The NZ Herald’s coverage of the Ipsos capital gains tax poll failed to note that, in fact, there was less than 50 per cent support for a CGT in most of the situations where it might be applied.

The Herald trumpeted that there was 65 per cent support for a CGT but that is not what the poll said.

Respondents were asked whether they would support a capital gains tax in each of the following situations:

Would support (%yes/%no) if imposed on

Sale of an investment property: 57/32

Sale of a business: 43/41

Sale of other assets; e.g boats, cars paintings: 22/64

Sale of a family home: 13/78

About all that poll endorses is an extension of the current brightline test on the sale of investment property.

Expand full comment
Nov 2·edited Nov 2

What the CGT poll tells us, I think, is that people vote for what they perceive to be in their own interest, without regard for the consequences to society as a whole.

New Zealand has become atomised; it is ceasing to be a society.

We see this, for instance, in health, where as the public health service declines, each person who signs up for private health insurance becomes one more person who does NOT want to be taxed for more money to be spent on free health care for everyone.

We see it in housing, where each person who has the expectation of being a house owner becomes indifferent to the need of others for affordable tax-financed state housing fit for habitation; and each person who aspires to be a landlord becomes less inclined to support mandatory warrants of fitness for rental housing.

In Parliament, the register of the pecuniary interests of MPs gives a strong clue why Labour, whenever it has been in power over the past 40 years, has tended merely to be 'National Lite', just minding the shop while the real owners are on furlough.

Expand full comment

Yes - agreed. I was disappointed with the MSM coverage of this. As noted, when you actually unpack the numbers the majority of NZers do not want to change the status quo (e.g. no widespread support for CGT on all property) as they do not see this as in their personal interests.

Expand full comment

My reading of the data is that 57% feel a CGT should apply to the sale of an investment property. I agree with that %'age as speculation in housing has been a major factor in price rises in my lifetime. We have a temporary PM who while he was earning an excessive poured his considerable excess cash into property and sat back. Thats not enterprise. It's cashing in on flaws in the tax regime. If he really was enterprising which businesses did he help start or support?

Expand full comment

I'm disappointed with the MSM coverage of most things. I'm glad someone posted the questions. I've been asked questions before for these surveys and all too often the question is loaded to get a predetermined answer.

Expand full comment

One way to change this bureaucracy of power in Wellington would be to move many government departments to regional cities.

This would stop one bureaucrate moving from one department to another, an example of this is one qualified accountant moving from one government department 3 times within 12 months, and obtaining a significantly higher salary at each step, and is now a deputy ceo at the Electrual Commission.

This would build resilience in the government department when the expected big earthquake hits Wellington, as well as being an economic boon to the cities where these entities are relocated.

Then this would reduce the political elites controlling the particular department.

Expand full comment
founding
Nov 14Liked by Bryce Edwards

Great piece Bryce, as always! I agree with most of this, my only caution is using language like “cartel-like behaviour is endemic across our economy.” - I keep coming back to making sure we are talking about corruption at the right level: is it people, sectors, groups or the whole system and how is that different from lack of accountability? I think unpacking these ideas and being as specific as possible matters. And as communicators I feel we have a. Reasonability to not make things seem worst or better than they are. What I agree with the strongest is the need for more effective accountability mechanism for the non-publicly elected officials, Chief Executives and Deputy Chief Executives of the Public Service have little to no way of being help accountable, not just by the public but by the people that work for them. Im not an economist, so there is a lot in here I don’t really understand, so I’ll abstain on that front. I do like the Why Nations Fail and The Narrow Corridor, so it was nice to see them mentioned. I’ll read Daryl’s article too. Thanks for writing - Nat

Expand full comment

The conflict of interest and the failure of the regulatory agencies runs deep. I look forward to seeing an article by you expressing your own opinion on the global corporations and global organisation holds and controls over New Zealand. While it is not pretty, I myself am quite happy that more are seeing the corruption and injustices that we've lived with for decades.

Expand full comment

Your experiment with expressing your own analysis, possibly on broader topics than just the latest issue of the day and quoting fact-based commentary rather than spin works for me...No-one can deny NZ economic and environmental balance is out of kilter and young kiwi are leaving home to the detriment of families and the potential for a self-sustaining broad-based economy. Imagine importing expensive solar panels for householders to generate their own power when generations ago more than sufficient hydroelectricity went in, with the power lines to deliver it and the Cook Strait cable to boot

Expand full comment

New Zealand is starting to really feel like a Soviet state. The primary and productive sector is failing through dictats from on high - the Party. Basic foods and building materials are often in shortage or out of stock: when did you ever hear about not being able to buy simple 4x2 timber?! The government simply ignores the people: MPs don’t answer emails or phone calls. The powers-that-be ignore and deny alternative view points and experimental science, preferring their “own science” (actually ideology). Public consultation is simply a farce. The Courts ignore the laws and write their own.

Is it possible for NZ to have a “colour revolution” or “spring” of our own, like various countries in Europe and elsewhere? I fear not. Because the general public is just as lacking in integrity as the politicians and public servants, and just as greedy. I think many don’t actually hate their leaders, but envy them. Just look at the last batch of newbie MPs - I knew some of them and had high hopes, but in a matter of months, weeks, or even days, they became the same as their venal colleagues.

The 1990s revolutions were underpinned by strongly religious cultures, most of them Christian, and many of them Catholic. Priests were on the front lines. We have nothing like that in New Zealand to support a popular uprising.

Instead, it is just “every man for himself” with the strong heading for the departure gates and the weak consigned to misery, poverty and servitude.

Expand full comment

Am so glad you are applying you skill and time to this depressing and infuriating destruction of our society. I have no expertise in economics but have some knowhow in social sciences.

Since the 1980s when the post war work of the Mont Peleron Society made its way to be fed and stabilised by the Chicago School hence to our Business Round Table and the helpful knights of the parliament, we have been IMHO, washed up on the rocks. Is it still called neoliberalism? I don’t know.

It is a rentier economy. Jane Kelsey labels it the FIRE economy - Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. I have no clear understanding of details except she says it is really hard to undo.

Seems to me that it’s all about playing fast and loose with money.

I hate that all my children have had to make their lives overseas.

I hope hugely that you will carry on with this subject.

Expand full comment

And now the root of Neoliberalism, deregulation, privatisation, corporate welfare & public austerity has been linked to the Atlas Network. An umbrella network of mega corps & oligarchs - led by BigOil, & Koch-funded. They operate the same play book in every country they get a foothold in. Our coalition government is riddled with them, & they are being put into key positions throughout public services & media:

Massive cuts; demolishing public services; privatising public assets; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations; destroying regs that protect workers, vulnerable people & the living world; supporting landlords against tenants

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/06/rishi-sunak-javier-milei-donald-trump-atlas-network

Expand full comment

The financial service sector, which is far from doing us a service, has been a parasite sucking the economic lifeblood out of our society, reducing us to a debt slave colony. I gift this 3.5 hour summary of my over two decades of financial system research to my nation. It makes it very clear how we have been ripped off but more importantly it contains modern precedence's of how other nations have stood up for themselves after suffering the same as we are now.

New Zealand Financial System Madness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0hh34MAPos

The most comprehensive contemporary case study of the flaws of the New Zealand financial system as it presently stands in a global context in an easy to follow chronological order.

It contains evidence of the cause of increasing inequality and solutions from highly reputable sources.

0 - 5 Introduction

5 min 30 sec New Zealand entirely privately owned foreign investment bank based money supply.

20 min How the privately owned investment bank funded US Federal Reserve works.

45 mins Deeper proof of privately owned investment influence over New Zealand's political system.

1 hr 16 mins Icelands revolution against financial system fraud.

2 hr 2 mins The case for state direct monetary financing by Adair Turner.

3 hr 33 mins How Indonesia used direct monetary financing to get through the COVID Pandemic without the biblical proportion of foreign debt New Zealand did.

3 hr 38 mins The International Monetary Fund complimentary of what Indonesia did.

Expand full comment

An excellent approach Bryce. I like it.

Expand full comment

Thank you Bryce! What strikes me is that many of the problems with low productivity and high migration arising from oligopolistic markets and rent seeking are very hard to escape in a small nation state. Obvious solution, join the confederation on the other side of the Tasman. The Wellington power elites will of course resist this to the last man and woman, and maybe the NZ voter won’t be keen either but apparently the brightest among us are taking that path already.

Expand full comment

As a 70's refugee that fled across the ditch what you are seeking would be quite simple. It is written within the Australian constitution that there is always a place for NZ to join. Despite all the faults here from what I'm reading things are worse there.

Expand full comment

Well written Bryce. The million dollar question. Can (will) New Zealand be able to avoid the cliff it’s heading for? Taking bets…..

Expand full comment

Thank you Bryce, I like the new experiment! Your analysis was clear and easy to understand and made total sense to me, even though I know very little about economics or politics, I was very enlightened. More please...

Expand full comment

There is a general crisis of western democracy, manifested, for example, in the current US presidential election, events and trends in Europe, and declining participation across all jurisdictions. New Zealand is subject to the general crisis, but has particular elements that arise out of its colonial history and its present status as a colonial society (a claim which may be controversial but is not difficult to substantiate). No one in establishment politics wants to admit that the general crisis of democracy reflects the failure of the system of political representation to channel or adequately respond to popular concerns and no one in establishment politics wants to contemplate the radical structural reforms which are necessary to correct the situation. So we are moving towards a period of increased international warfare coupled with domestic conflicts which could easily progress into civil wars. The Marxists argue that the problem fundamentally lies in the economic system, and that a burgeoning economic crisis is merely spilling over into the political system. While I accept that the underlying economic factors are important, I believe that the basic problem is political and that therefore the solution lies in radical reform of political systems. Aotearoa has a head start there because in rangatiratanga we have a superior alternative to Westminster's pseudo-democracy.

Expand full comment

I left NZ in 1960 because it had failed then. One could not survive on the salaries that were being paid, so I went to the USA and within a month of arriving I could afford so much more from a decent salary for my job. ( I was a highly qualified banker) Although I loved NZ, and my family lived there, I only went back on visits.

Expand full comment

I rememebr years ago reading an article of a youg American girl who went to work in Africa, trying to elevate 'these poor people' to better econimc propserity. 12-18 months later she wrote an article of her experience, pointing out that she found peole vying for a govt job, and once they got one, they would steal at every opportunity to enrich themselves and their families. It is hardly any different in NZ, it is just disguised better. And we're one of the few countries in the world that make the investigation of corruption really difficult, hence the 'squeaky clean' illussion.

Expand full comment

I'm a bit on the fence about this new style of column. It was good yes, but it did feel slightly redundant as I'd already read McLauchlan's piece.

I'd say your more regular articles that weave in a large number of quotes from lots of places are your strength (the Roundups). But that said if you write more in this style I'll definitely read them.

Expand full comment