Govt says will share flood buy-backs and protection costs with councils and insurers, but can't (or won't) say how (or when) the burden will be shared; Climate now changing faster than our politics
It's a beautiful fine winter's day in Wellington and the temperature is about what we'd have expected in early summer in my childhood. Yesterday I happened to get my hair cut by a barber who turned out to be from a small village in Siberia, where the taiga being on fire and the permafrost melting have become just the normal backdrop to life.
It's been normal throughout history for people in the second half of their lives to mistake their own approaching death for the apocalypse -- hence, older people have always been telling younger people that things are going to hell and the world will end shortly. What I find so confusing about my own experience of aging is that the world actually does seem to be going to hell, and so many older people are convinced it's fine and we don't need to do anything about it.
"That cost for the motorway in the Horowhenua would make the per-kilometre cost for the 24km road around $79 million, while the 4.5km Waterview tunnel and motorway in Auckland cost $311 million per-kilometre in 2017 and the ongoing City Rail Link rail project in Auckland is costing at least $1.6 billion per-kilometre for its 3.45 km of tunnels". To be more constructive, you should convert these biassed figures to $/km/per person transported.
In any social group, human or otherwise, there are two conflicting demands. One is to look after yourself and other is to look after the group. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to deduce that if the group doesn’t survive you won’t either. Good luck to all those who think they can survive the group.
There's no doubt this inaction-disaster-reparation cycle will become an increasing normality for us. Neo-liberalism, and its 'out-for-oneself' doctrine, did a real number on our social capability over the past decades.
There's also no doubt that, as Seymour and other numbnuts have tapped into, we are going to be talking a lot about 'moral hazard' with these sorts of government buy-backs (in that, 'rational' people might not bother to insure/protect themselves if they assume there will always be 'State Insurance' [sic])... I really hope however, we don't get too dragged into that bad line of thinking, because it's classic 'economics-brain' stuff: No-one *wants* their house to be filled with mud; no-one *wants* to wait months for government help... If we give people the bandwidth (money/time/access/community) to not have to face these problems, they will 100% use it.
Excellent summary of our current pickle and the potential of multiple crises in many places overwhelming our already limited capacity to psychologically cope. I love the idea of fast cycleway transformation using existing road space. I still remember the first time someone remarked how weird it is that people have an expectation that they can park their private property in public spaces as a right. It is unique to cars. I can't think of any other example where you can take something that belongs to you, plop it on public space and feel entitled to this. We need a strong communications campaign to challenge this. Street space is for moving, not storage of private property. Don't like it, build a garage, car pad or if in business a multi story building with carparking in it. Riding a bike is one of the most joyful activities there is and the co-benefits of more people out of cars and onto bikes are enormous.
> It means that every property use effectively has an unwritten guarantee by Government.
David Seymour's not wrong about this, but what he's not admitting is that this isn't precedent setting, this unwritten guarantee already exists. The public already expects they can privatise the gains and socialise the losses.
I'm curious at the contention by shop owners that if customers can't park immediately in front of their shop, the shop will go out of business. Is there any research to back that belief up? I would have thought that if the shop is so uncompelling that customers, unable to park right outside, will go somewhere else, is it really a business that should be supported anyway?
And have the shop owners considered the possibility that having slower moving potential customers outside their shop and better visibility of their shop due to no parked cars, might actually increase the appeal to passing customers?
I noted the vociferous objection of a bottle shop owner in Grey Lynn to the parking spot outside his shop being converted to a bus stop a few years ago, with considerable puzzlement. Surely having busloads of potential customers delivered right outside his door at the end of the working day was a golden opportunity? Apparently not. He spent his days putting hand written signs on the bus stop imploring Auckland Transport to move the bus stop elsewhere.
And that's before we even get started considering that climate impact and emissions reductions is going to mean that getting in our private car to get around the place (especially for short trips) is simply not going to be sustainable, and we'd better start making some changes to how we move around the place..
When will the mass ignorance end Bernard? No NZ$ burden needs to be shifted *at all* onto the firms and households. All NZ Gov spending is net income for the private sector. You can do your bit as an informed journalist to tell the correct story about NZ currency operations! The local councils are agents of the state, so they cannot truly ever lack currency for hiring builds, they can *always* hire any resources that are for sale in NZD, without any tax "pay for" or bond issuance. All council rates are a demand withdrawal operation which creates *extra* fiscal space for even more net spending, they're *not funding operations*. Get it through your thick skulls Kiwis! Please for heavens sake read to avoid at least your own ignorance and mal-reporting: 1) Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economics https://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Seven-Deadly-Innocent-Frauds-of-Warren-Mosler.pdf
You can disagree with MMT on finer points to do with power relations, but you cannot disagree about the currency operations, they are concrete Law of the Land. NZ is already and MMT system. So best to start analysing government fiscal policy form an MMT perspective, if not you are buying in to the disgusting classist and racist "tax payer funded" mythology, which is gross and against all progressive principles ever known to humankind. (Government need to tax *more* to offset increased fiscal net spending only when running a fixed exchange rate or peg or gld standard. They have no spending constraint on a fiat floating currency except real resource limits. But in NZ we are very, very far from getting even close to those limits in many sectors, Labour for one, too many unemployed to say we are close to real resource employment limits.) Like I just wrote, you may disagree, but if you do you place yourself into regressive "tax payer privileging class" conservative Tory ranks my friend.
Please add those two to your weekend reading, I humbly beg you. Write to me privately (achrononmaster at gmail) if you find anything puzzling (you shouldn't).
It's a beautiful fine winter's day in Wellington and the temperature is about what we'd have expected in early summer in my childhood. Yesterday I happened to get my hair cut by a barber who turned out to be from a small village in Siberia, where the taiga being on fire and the permafrost melting have become just the normal backdrop to life.
It's been normal throughout history for people in the second half of their lives to mistake their own approaching death for the apocalypse -- hence, older people have always been telling younger people that things are going to hell and the world will end shortly. What I find so confusing about my own experience of aging is that the world actually does seem to be going to hell, and so many older people are convinced it's fine and we don't need to do anything about it.
"That cost for the motorway in the Horowhenua would make the per-kilometre cost for the 24km road around $79 million, while the 4.5km Waterview tunnel and motorway in Auckland cost $311 million per-kilometre in 2017 and the ongoing City Rail Link rail project in Auckland is costing at least $1.6 billion per-kilometre for its 3.45 km of tunnels". To be more constructive, you should convert these biassed figures to $/km/per person transported.
In any social group, human or otherwise, there are two conflicting demands. One is to look after yourself and other is to look after the group. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to deduce that if the group doesn’t survive you won’t either. Good luck to all those who think they can survive the group.
There's no doubt this inaction-disaster-reparation cycle will become an increasing normality for us. Neo-liberalism, and its 'out-for-oneself' doctrine, did a real number on our social capability over the past decades.
There's also no doubt that, as Seymour and other numbnuts have tapped into, we are going to be talking a lot about 'moral hazard' with these sorts of government buy-backs (in that, 'rational' people might not bother to insure/protect themselves if they assume there will always be 'State Insurance' [sic])... I really hope however, we don't get too dragged into that bad line of thinking, because it's classic 'economics-brain' stuff: No-one *wants* their house to be filled with mud; no-one *wants* to wait months for government help... If we give people the bandwidth (money/time/access/community) to not have to face these problems, they will 100% use it.
Excellent summary of our current pickle and the potential of multiple crises in many places overwhelming our already limited capacity to psychologically cope. I love the idea of fast cycleway transformation using existing road space. I still remember the first time someone remarked how weird it is that people have an expectation that they can park their private property in public spaces as a right. It is unique to cars. I can't think of any other example where you can take something that belongs to you, plop it on public space and feel entitled to this. We need a strong communications campaign to challenge this. Street space is for moving, not storage of private property. Don't like it, build a garage, car pad or if in business a multi story building with carparking in it. Riding a bike is one of the most joyful activities there is and the co-benefits of more people out of cars and onto bikes are enormous.
> It means that every property use effectively has an unwritten guarantee by Government.
David Seymour's not wrong about this, but what he's not admitting is that this isn't precedent setting, this unwritten guarantee already exists. The public already expects they can privatise the gains and socialise the losses.
I trust you are comparing apples with apples. Can you point to where the comparative data can be found?
I'm curious at the contention by shop owners that if customers can't park immediately in front of their shop, the shop will go out of business. Is there any research to back that belief up? I would have thought that if the shop is so uncompelling that customers, unable to park right outside, will go somewhere else, is it really a business that should be supported anyway?
And have the shop owners considered the possibility that having slower moving potential customers outside their shop and better visibility of their shop due to no parked cars, might actually increase the appeal to passing customers?
I noted the vociferous objection of a bottle shop owner in Grey Lynn to the parking spot outside his shop being converted to a bus stop a few years ago, with considerable puzzlement. Surely having busloads of potential customers delivered right outside his door at the end of the working day was a golden opportunity? Apparently not. He spent his days putting hand written signs on the bus stop imploring Auckland Transport to move the bus stop elsewhere.
And that's before we even get started considering that climate impact and emissions reductions is going to mean that getting in our private car to get around the place (especially for short trips) is simply not going to be sustainable, and we'd better start making some changes to how we move around the place..
When will the mass ignorance end Bernard? No NZ$ burden needs to be shifted *at all* onto the firms and households. All NZ Gov spending is net income for the private sector. You can do your bit as an informed journalist to tell the correct story about NZ currency operations! The local councils are agents of the state, so they cannot truly ever lack currency for hiring builds, they can *always* hire any resources that are for sale in NZD, without any tax "pay for" or bond issuance. All council rates are a demand withdrawal operation which creates *extra* fiscal space for even more net spending, they're *not funding operations*. Get it through your thick skulls Kiwis! Please for heavens sake read to avoid at least your own ignorance and mal-reporting: 1) Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economics https://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Seven-Deadly-Innocent-Frauds-of-Warren-Mosler.pdf
2) Soft Currency Economics http://moslereconomics.com/mandatory-readings/soft-currency-economics/
You can disagree with MMT on finer points to do with power relations, but you cannot disagree about the currency operations, they are concrete Law of the Land. NZ is already and MMT system. So best to start analysing government fiscal policy form an MMT perspective, if not you are buying in to the disgusting classist and racist "tax payer funded" mythology, which is gross and against all progressive principles ever known to humankind. (Government need to tax *more* to offset increased fiscal net spending only when running a fixed exchange rate or peg or gld standard. They have no spending constraint on a fiat floating currency except real resource limits. But in NZ we are very, very far from getting even close to those limits in many sectors, Labour for one, too many unemployed to say we are close to real resource employment limits.) Like I just wrote, you may disagree, but if you do you place yourself into regressive "tax payer privileging class" conservative Tory ranks my friend.
Please add those two to your weekend reading, I humbly beg you. Write to me privately (achrononmaster at gmail) if you find anything puzzling (you shouldn't).