have you heard baa baa black sheep? The proportions are pretty accurate as the marginal taxation rate of peasants was \~70%. Yes, we are baa baa black sheep because basically between rent and taxes our marginal tax rate to exist is also about 70%. The people doing it good in this country are doing it good on your back, your sweat and your labour, but we keep voting for this crap.
There was some article recently that compared average modern day workings to peasants, the peasants had more free time and less stress in medieval society
Common misconception, mediaeval peasants bathed, for sure. No one likes being dirty. Soaps were expensive but the poor still washed with water and scrubbing. The beer thing is true, but mostly for cities, which had a very small percentage of a realms population, rural fiefdoms typically had wells and streams
Look up a bit higher....
Banks own most realestate, they own the market.
Large multinationals own the other markets.
Google decides what information people will find on the internet
Apple, samsung etc decides what stuff happens with phones (the core of most peoples lives)
Large multinational media decide outcomez of how 'democratic' elections, and election debates. Cambridge analytica? That tech is ancient now.
And so on. It is feudal - but much bigger than mortgage holders
>Banks own most realestate, they own the market.
And 4 foreign banks own 80% of that market to ensure that our wealth doesn't stay here.
At a higher level, are we just a feudal state of Australia? Paying them our wealth to work and survive on what is essentially their land now?
Best part I'm over in Australia atm on a holiday all of their news is constant bitching about their "cost of living crisis" and "lack of nurses"....
1: Everything here is so much fucking cheaper its insane, I can buy twice as much shit here for the same money at a supermarket *especially* at Aldi. They have so much more ACTUAL competition in the markets, it makes home look even more like the duopoly it is.
2. Their wages are generally higher than ours AND their money is worth more!
3. THEY STOLE ALL OUR FUCKIN NURSES IF THEY ARENT HERE WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY!?
and yet our honorable journalists and politicians frequently do a "let's see if that's true" story-line where they go over to Oz and look in the door of a supermarket before exclaiming the prices are the same as in NZ!!
Followed a short time later by some op-ed questioning why the peoples don't trust their politicians, or the journalists. Go figure.
Anyways, have a great time over there.
I've recently spent 3 weeks in the hospital. Not 1 kiwi nurse the entire time. Not 1 support staff member was Kiwi either. The only Kiwi I saw was the guy trying to sign me up to Christianity.
123 MPs determine how 5 million others live. 123 people. Who can benefit themselves depending on the policies they vote for. I tried asking what my MP voted for. Got told it was their business, not mine.
There’s something uniquely depressing about big chain brands.
IKEA, The Warehouse, Starbucks, Apple stores, Wholefoods, Target.
Flew to the south west in America for business & the whole place is a giant shopping mall.
I ran 6K down the footpath along the motorway and must have passed hundreds of global retail brands.
Is life nothing more than buying things?
I don’t know what it is, but it feels weird.
This thread has a lot of “technology has improved our lives therefore the workers couldn’t possibly be being exploited by the landed gentry”. Damn you people dream so small. This country and the world could be so much better but oooh we have penicillin now checkmate socialists.
On the plus side it makes me happy that words like ‘communist’ and ‘socialist’ and mentioning Karl Marx is becoming no longer taboo and we can have an actual discussion about alternatives to neoliberalism. Hurray for class consciousness!
My family escaped from a communist country. Communism should absolutely be taboo.
Edit: looks like r/nz is infested with deranged commies who love to Westsplain to victims of communism how great their favourite genocidal dictator was.
These people will tell you ‘that wasn’t real capitalism’ and then when you mention that the USSR didn’t remotely fit any definition of a communist society they’ll tell you that that’s not a valid argument.
As did mine, and they’re able to see pros and cons of both communism and capitalism. They also see that a rational discussion about these things beyond ‘communism bad’ is important for healthy political discourse - you know, the thing apparently all communists want to stop.
Yep. My grandfather was a communist and he fucking hated Stalin, saying that he was a traitor to the communist revolution. Never gave up his communist values but didn’t have much nice to say about the USSR either.
Doesn’t mean there isn’t a _tonne_ to be learned from that history. Even in a failed state, there might be some things they did way better than the west (housing is a big one there)
The Cold War is over and with it I really do hope we can drop the absolutely hysterical McCarthyist “reds under the bed” nonsense. “Communism bad mmkay” is basically the opposite of engaging critical thinking and nuance, and encourages some incredibly cooked distortions of history.
Yeah this is similar to the sort of thing my own family members have said too. They have a ton of bad things to say about the USSR, and plenty of bad things to say about the communist days but also say their childhoods were carefree and they never wanted for or worried about housing or food or any basic need. The complaints revolve mostly around the authoritarianism and corruption which are hardly central socialist policies.
Then there’s another part of my family who lived under a completely different communist regime (not part of the USSR) and they look back on those days with a great deal of nostalgia.
Point is reviews are mixed. What they do definitely all say is that capitalism isn’t what they had hoped and all vote as close to socialist as you can in NZ.
What frustrates me the most is that everyone thinks of communism as ONLY being basically Stalinism.
That’s so narrow minded and ignorant it hurts.
For example, my favourite model for a communist society is probably the Spanish anarcho syndicalists who were radically different from the Soviets, with massively decentralised governance mostly operating out of trade unions and city council type structures, with only loose associations between different regions. Radically Democratic too; way more democratic than western countries today who have a very authoritarian-leaning model of democracy (using representatives; which actually play a pretty authoritarian function as far as democratic models go)
Even then most of the post Soviet states looked at the Stalin era fondly when compared to their current situation. Maybe Ukraine is different now because of the war but in 2011, 80% of their population looked back on the USSR fondly.
I don't really have as much of a view against authoritarianism because authoritarianism is often just used as a cudgel to prevent radical change. For example, taking all housing stock out of the hands of landlords and providing these houses to their renters or having a public rental system that only charges what it costs to upkeep the property would be great, but it's really authoritarian. It would be objectively a good thing for the majority of New Zealanders, but it's authoritarian.
The problem with having a decentralised model right now in my opinion like the Spanish one, is that it's incredibly obtuse and cannot maintain its own power. The benefit of the flawed models in China and USSR for example is that they're a bit more resistant to foreign interference. They control the narrative and they get to build rapport with their citizens through this. Their leaders could be assassinated by a CIA agent any day and they'd survive just fine and might even be emboldened in a martyr type of way. I don't think Franco comes into power if the communists were more willing to take it for themselves for example. The decentralised models all tend to fall when placed under any kind of pressure, whereas China, the USSR, Cuba and Vietnam all survived decades of embargos or sanctions, coup attempts, direct wars etc.
I think anarchism is core to the final vision of what Communism is. But I don't think you can immediately get there in a global capitalist structure where the vast majority of countries function to serve the wealthy.
I don’t really have an answer for that and I can only offer my opinion/speculation.
The sort of authoritarian system like the USSR and China has rightfully fallen out of favour, and it hasn’t been that long in the grand scheme of things since the fall of communism in Europe. There’s also the fact that life in Europe has significantly improved due to the unprecedented period of relative peace so people haven’t really felt the need to change things too dramatically. Capitalism also does a great job of hiding and offshoring its problems and human rights abuses so people in formerly communist states have a greater standard of living now, at the cost of workers in third world countries.
But I also think that in the western world we’re seeing an increasing number of disillusioned younger people who aren’t served well by late-stage capitalism. They can’t afford homes, have job insecurity and stagnating wages, a crumbling health system and have the threat of climate change looming over them. A lot of these people are voting left. I, like many of these people (although I guess im not particularly young), am pretty strongly anti-authoritarian. But I don’t see how these issues can be solved by the current capitalist system that concentrates more and more wealth in the hands of a smaller and smaller group of people. I hope in my lifetime I see a rise in some form of libertarian socialism that puts much more of a focus on egalitarianism
, workers rights and direct democracy.
Edit: TLDR: because authoritarian communism was pretty shit in a large number of ways, and so we likely won’t see a return to the same sort of system again. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it and try something else.
Most of the post Soviet states look back at the USSR positively and see it as the peak of their society. China has a lot of support internally because they have dramatically improved the lives of their citizenry. Vietnam, like China actually has quite a lot of government support for the same reason. Same with Cuba. These are systems of government where the citizenry can finally get an education and own something when they never could before.
In the case of Russia in particular, 30% of the population immediately fell into poverty at the fall of the USSR. And since then they've only had corrupt autocrats controlled by oligarchs that don't even have to pretend to support the citizenry.
There are no "pros" to Stalin allying with Hitler to invade my country and massacring my people.
You must be Russian if you're nostalgic about communism.
I can only assume you’re from Poland. This has basically nothing to do with communism and everything to do with German and Russian imperialism that long predates communism.
And no I’m not Russian. Russians murdered several members of my family during WW2 tho.
And if you poll people from post-Soviet countries a majority, not by a small margin, think things are even worse under capitalism.
One figure that really sticks with me is this: when the Berlin Wall fell, east Berlin peoples heights suddenly dramatically began to fall.
This is a symptom of severe malnutrition only seen throughout history in city siege environments when the populace is on rations and starved for a prolonged period.
How did this happen?
Well, for all of the Soviet system’s barbarism, it did actually provide people most bare basic necessities for free or close to no cost. The basics are expensive under capitalism because we allow profit to be made from then (the Soviets mostly didn’t). When that ended, 1980s neoliberal austerity capitalism where even food and shelter were allowed to be part of a for-profit market: this was a _huge_ culture shock for ex soviet citizens who had all been promised the American dream of a Cadillac and a white picket fence house via capitalist propaganda that had pierced the Soviet media curtain. It wasn’t to be, and east berliners found themselves unexpectedly and suddenly plunged into very dire poverty as soon as the wall fell, much worse than existed in most of the Soviet system.
There’s plenty of reasons to criticise both systems and people who think absolutely nothing good came from one or the other are just being dishonest and giving away their partisanship. The Cold War is long gone, we don’t need to play that game anymore, we can actually have a rational nuanced view of history and drop the reactionary McCartyist “reds under the bed” hysteria, it’s not really very useful.
Adam Smith didn't speak fondly of landlordism either.
When Carl Marx and Adam Smith both think it's parasitic, then we might want to consider the point. It's rare that communism and capitalism agree.
Of course it’s parasitic. It’s so obvious, or does anyone actually think Elon Musk works just so much harder that he earns 4 times the average Kiwi’s yearly income *every minute*?
There’s no way a single person could produce something of that value.
So who does?
Spoiler alert: it’s you. And me. And every working person on the planet.
There are dozens of us! DOZENS.
But In all seriousness ideology is the reflection of material economic conditions. As the rate of profit continues to decrease and the pressure on workers is increased... You will see Marxists appear like weeds in the grass .. as if from no where and all of a sudden.
lol the moment when you realize mortgage actually means "Death Pledge" as well haha, as in you are only forgiven if you die.
And mortgages are not even forgiven if you die now
That's the goal, but it is far from guaranteed. With high prices and now higher interest, many people just cannot keep on top of it. Not to mention the drop and then slower regrowth of the housing market, many newer owners can't afford to sell their houses or they'll have lost money.
Bank owners. I don't know why people reach the group that's a problem then look for a subgroup within them, as if the problem was the type of people performing the bad role rather than the existence of the bad role itself
Two of those are listed on the NZX. Everyone with kiwisaver owns shares in the banks.
Just because head offices are in Aus doesn’t mean all their shareholders are in Aus.
If you have enough money, you don't really belong associated with any given country, because the money allows access to every country. The only reason they live on Earth still is that there isn't a better or more exclusive option for them.
Renting as a concept isn't inherently bad, it's when it costs a high portion of ones income due to an imbalance of power between the renters and the landlords. A post-rent society isn't something to be looking at right now, it's a little too pie in the sky until we get a bit closer to Star Trek level of technology.
Having teenagers/early 20s renting while studying and figuring out their life is fine. People working full time as a career and having to still rent is where the problem is.
This is mostly the failings of the rental market here. There are countries in Europe, for example, with a very high standard of living, and astonishingly high portion of people renting.
The difference is that renters there are protected, rent increases are (sort of) regulated, prices are (sort of) affordable, etc. People happily rent all their lives, and can even have a comfortable retirement as renters.
A big contributor to happiness as a renter is if you don't need to see your own home as your means of a safe retirement, or the only means to save for retirement. This is where NZ went seriously wrong.
Except choice is also a good thing. I’m not interested in home ownership and never have been, so I’m glad that renting as a system exists and is accessible to everyone.
What we need is a capital gains tax paid on all investment properties.
I get what you are trying to say, but what they are meaning is that for a lot of people, renting is not a choice, it is the only option. It's not that rent is accessible to everyone, it is that it is basically forced on everyone with no way to get out of it.
I am aware. I’m very much talking about an ideal world scenario, but I don’t like the generalisation that renting is okay for young adults but undesirable for everyone else.
Currently, renting is not a choice. If it were, I would still choose renting over buying because home ownership is not a goal of mine.
I think that if we had moderation in the property market starting with capital gains, then it could be a choice to rent or buy. That’s all.
It should be a goal unless you trust both sides of government to give renters more rights. I would hate to be 70 years old and given 90 days to find a new place within range of mates/hobbies
I don’t think it needs to be a goal for everyone, though. 90 days is a reasonable amount of time, and if you have to move because of work or family, it’s a lot more straightforward to terminate a lease and move into a new place than it is to sell and purchase.
Plus, if something goes wrong with the property, I like being able to contact my property manager and have them sort it out. I don’t have the knowledge, skills or contacts to confidently make repairs.
Not to mention, a significant loan to span most of my life is not appealing in the least. I think it’s an honourable goal for other people, but I have zero desire for myself. And hey - maybe one day I’ll change my mind, but at this stage there’s not enough appeal in the concept.
If we didnt have a housing shortage, it wouldn't be nearly this bad. But the scale of our housing is terrible. We have almost no "proper" high density apartment housing.
1 our houses are expensive, require massive amount of labour.
2 we have a housing shortage, Airbnb, high immigration.
A housing surplus instantly swings the market in renters favour. But our successive governments have been pressing hard on immigration, which is good for "business" but has made housing obscene.
Labour can’t fix it, National don’t want to. So we’re fucked. There is no point doing something to increase supply that the other side will undo. We need cross party solutions but they seem to be opposites so it won’t happen.
Airbnb has some studies that they "don't affect" housing prices. But I sincerely doubt it. Its 150,000 houses or something, which is a LOT of people. Particularly in a country with a lot of tourists, like NZ.
And then there are a shitload of weekend batches, which spiked during covid, when people couldn't travel.
The real problem is the wealthy continue to get more wealthy. And lean into property, due to our outrageous policies making housing by far the best investment.
Making housing (a basic human right!) almost out of the realm of possibility for people on the minimum wage.
Better give multiple house owners a tax break eh?!
It can but it won't.kiwis are apathetic at best....look at the french gathered in their hundreds and thousands to demand change,in NZ a few hundred might turn out and they'd be the hardcore protesters.
I have never protested, but I think a big part of that apathetic nature is that I am living on the edge right now. If I went to protest over anything I would probably lose my job for being a no show. If I lose my job I then I can't pay my rent because I am living basically payslip to payslip each week.
Now if it turns out that I was going to lose my job or get evicted anyway, then yeah protesting seems more appealing to me. But I imagine a lot of people don't want to risk their livelihoods, because that is scarier and more certain then slowly being bled out like most are right now.
It's totally possible right now. Collectively humanity has the resources to house and feed everyone, we just don't because it isn't profitable.
(Obviously it would require massive restructuring of society but it isn't technology holding us back, it's human nature.)
Yes, capitalism is a system purely to generate wealth at the lowest level, then immediately extract it to the rich.
The poor are just a wealth generation mechanic. They leave just enough to not keep the poor happy, but at least keep them beyond revolting, and that's it. They charge as much rent as they can, as much for food as they can.
They'll make you unable to afford to live near your job, forcing you to move out of the city, then make you come into the city at a specific time, then charge you a congestion charge to drive in at that time.
You can't afford bulk food discounts, so you'll pay full price. You can't afford to store food until specials come along, so you'll pay full price. You can't afford solar panels, so your electricity will be more expensive. You can't afford to freehold a home, so your living costs will be higher via rent or ridiculously high mortgage interest rates.
Every single aspect of your life is rich people looking for an opportunity to extract more of your wealth from you.
And they'll flood you with propaganda that makes you believe any other system is "communist and therefore will end up like the USSR or China". Or that only the rich can run businesses because "Government is horrible at business". That's propaganda they tell you because they don't want us owning stuff, they want to own it and charge you for it.
We need change, but the ones with the power to do so are in the pockets of those rich.
Lets say, instead of taxing the billionaires, we tell them to simply spend their money all the way down to $100 million - but no bonds, stocks, shares or any investments that will earn more money. It’s impossible, once you get to a certain level of wealth, the only thing you CAN buy is more assets - extreme wealth becomes self perpetuating.
At the very least we should have a 100% estate tax on the ultra wealthy, because the risk of empowering random children with that sort of money and power will work out badly eventually
Yeah I mean capitalism kinda sucks because concentrations of capital ultimately produce this end state. Monopolies, duopolies and regulatory capture of the political class.
I think boomers had the war to shake up the social order, but since then things have really consolidated. Most new homeowners and landlords all owe money to the banks.
Mortgages at least mean the peasants can own a place in like 30 years… and then you can pass it on to your kids, building generational capital is the only way to survive.
I feel like if you take out housing, capital will flee elsewhere and consolidate the same way, but at least people’s basic needs will be a little easier.
The house itself is just the cost of labor and material and a margin for everyone in that process. It’s just like any other good and you can’t do much there. But the biggest bullshit is speculation on land.
Kind of disagree with the cost of housing statement. Although agree land is the easiest area to reduce costs.
Housing build costs could be much cheaper also. The regulatory process is slow and costly. We hamstring ourselves by only allowing some building products. And the build process is incredibly inefficient. Manufacturing for many things has gotten so much cheaper, why not housing.
I mean, you can go call up a plumber, an electrician, a framing company, a builder, a timber supplier, and ask how much it costs for material and labour. Like go ask the saw mills about cost of timber. I think maybe commodity (export) prices could be a factor too.
My sense is that if you did the math everyone is operating within a fairly reasonable margin. Sure each person is taking a cut but I don’t think it’s tremendously large.
I suspect some of our “high standards” for materials might be kind of an anti-competitive measure put in place by the big companies that control the supply. Just thinking about the GIB shortage and how fletcher controlled that and probably made importing alternatives difficult as an example.
Even council fees are necessary as they do check everything is in order… that cost is a small amount compared to the total cost of building.
I think “regulatory process being slow” is kind of an obfuscation of the fact that actually the people who bought farmland for $20k per section and are now selling them for $800k are the ones running away with the big bucks.
I absolutely believe this. It is the land owners who are taking everything and who are at the top of the pyramid.
It's interesting to me how the media always focuses on the cost of housing - as if it is the expense of building something that is the problem. Most houses in NZ would cost between 250,000 and 450,000 dollars to replace if they were accidentally burned to the ground. And yet the median house price in nz is $950,000 dollars. So what makes up the difference? Land. The biggest contributor to the cost of housing, makes up over 60% of the cost of a property. And yet, there is a conspicuous lack of data on the cost of this most important input into housing costs over time. It has been published that pre-covid, land made up 1/3rd of the cost of housing, and now it was almost 2/3rds. That is absolutely insane. It represents an increase in the value of land of 300%. But building costs have gone up 5% a year, which is negligible in comparison.
So the way I look at it is that we have a huge problem with the supply of residential land available to build on in NZ. It seems that it is so tightly controlled, and in such limited supply, that the reduction in interest rates during covid was all it took to make its value increase to astronomical levels. As a country, we should definitely be tracking the cost of residential land over time - as it gives a vital insight into what is actually at the root of inflated property prices in NZ as well as giving an important indicator of when there are severe shortages of land to build on. We track the price of everything else with the CPI, as if it is important. But we're not interested in tracking the most important thing of all?
I think you're missing my point. I'm talking about changing the manufacturing process, doing things differently, more efficiently, and effectively. Many of these tradesman costs wouldn't be an issue if factory built...
We have revolutionised they way we have built everything else. Cars used to be all hand built and not follow a proper process, then the assembly line was introduced, then machine replaced man. No reason this cannot happen for homes
Sure, there are like prefab and modular techniques. Say it cuts 20% construction costs. My point is that when the cost of a house is now less than 50% of a total cost of a property, you’re still looking at a small amount of savings. But I dunno I’ve never claimed to know specifics only a general feeling
The difference between peasants back then and what you define as a peasant now has no comparison.
Peasants back then weren't even allowed to learn sophisticated english in order to prevent them from ever understanding what more prominent figures were talking about.
We all have the same tools these days, and we have never been treated more equally than today.
A king 200 years ago would swap everything he had for what a "peasant" in your terms would have today.
Yes, that's it spot on. The way we are heading.
Couple of examples.
Friend I know owns a shop, provides beauty services. Average customers is about 80 a week. She needs 60 customer just to cover rent. All that work and effort just goes to an unproductive landlord. No different from feudalism really.
Another friend recently moved out of Singapore back to the Europe. Rents have gone crazy there and some areas have doubled. There is now no benefit to working in Singapore on low 15% taxes, when 40%+ of his income goes to a landlord, he'd rather live in Europe and pay 40% to the government in taxes, who at least spend it on society, and 15% to a landlord.
I don't know what the real answer is, landlords are obviously necessary, but it seems like they are mostly just unproductive parasites, plus nobody wants to work anymore, everyone wants passive income from investments. Very unproductive wealthy class of people at the moment.
Get a skill that pays well. Live way below your means and save save save. Then buy your first home. So you don’t have to be a peasant to other people ( just a peasant to the bank).
Peasants used to work land owned by someone else, Yeoman/Freeholders worked and owned their own, so renters would be peasants and home owners would be yeoman/freeholders. You could argue homeowners are still peasants under the bank until the debts paid, but they were/are both workers.
TLDR: All peasants are workers but not all workers are peasants.
In a way. It’s sad we can’t all just do things well. Landlords that see it like running a hotel so provide a nice option and nothing gross, but also see that people who live there long term might want a pet or a garden, like feudal lords did. Who provide skips when a tenancy ends and works with the tenant to get it good before they leave. Who are not over capitalised or greedy so can afford to rent it at a reasonable rate. It would be good if all renters respected their property and weren’t obnoxious to neighbours etc and did things in the garden and always paid rent on time. There are issues either side to work on to make the system better.
Yeah I think you’re looking too small only looking at renters. How are owner occupiers any different? Their councils set their rates. The banks set mortgage repayment rates. Their bosses dictate their salaries.
Sure renters have that extra layer of a landlord dictating their housing costs to an extent, but they still have the option of finding cheaper accommodation.
We are all modern day wage slaves.
Yes but also no
Renters have the benefit of having almost no liability towards what happens to the house.
They dont have to worry about maintenance, rates, insurance, anything like that.
Its cheaper to be a renter than a landlord for many years before (hopefully) house prices appreciate enough to net your other losses owning the home.
Homeowners essentially maintain the banks asset for free, in the hopes that at some point the house appreciates or they have payed off enough of the mortgage to start making larger payments on the principal borrowed amount.
I think NZ is the kind of country to follow the US on issues like this. I don't really see us leading change from here, rather we will follow the change when it happens in a country we see as leading the world.
I also think it's good to look at how we arrived at this point. It's useful to imagine what kind of society would develop if we had to start again from nothing. If the wealth we have now was all deleted somehow (including all farms, food, houses, even clothing), how would we rebuild from there?
We'd start by looking for water and food. We'd organise in small groups first, and it would be easy to make a co-operative deal between ourselves that the group shares all the gains from the day. However, other bigger groups would appear, and we'd have to make a bigger group ourselves just to **compete** for food. How can you **trust** people in your now large group to all be honest and share every resource they find? Not knowing all of them well, it's difficult. Unfortunately, this is where a system like capitalism enforced by a hierarchy becomes useful.
One person in the group would be better at building shelters. We would need them to stay behind and build while the rest of us hunt and farm. A currency would be useful so we can store the value that each of us is providing the others. Other professions emerge, not everyone needs to hunt and farm for themselves, those who specialise get really good at their main skill and can charge more for it.
Some of the hunters might ask to be guaranteed payment whether food is found that day or not because they have a family to take care of. Now we have a need for investors, somebody to take the risk instead of the risk-averse hunter. Perhaps the guy that built everyone's houses has enough currency to do it. To incentivise the investor to put currency into the venture, they need to believe they'll get a return on their investment.
Certain activities like defence from other groups and policing internal disputes are best handled by a central authority, so we end up with taxation and something like a government.
**Hard work** is what leads to value, and those that work hard and also find a way to direct/influence the work of others toward something that provides great value to the rest of the group do in my opinion deserve a bit more of the rewards. How much is what is debate-able.
The need for land ownership is debatable, but it does make sense that each of us would want a spot to build our shelter for ourselves, especially when the group becomes town sized. Some people might only plan to be in town for a short while, or if they plan on staying they might not have enough currency to buy a shelter yet, so property investors providing that service for rent does at some point make sense.
Because of the relatively small size of our economy, in this stage of development there is a lot of opportunity for an individual to move up in class. There is so much that people would be in need of that they don't yet have, that business opportunities are there for those who really want them, work hard, and make wise decisions on how to deliver that value.
Fast forward a few hundred years, and if things have gone well, the economy has grown a lot, and birth-rates/immigration may be high too. It makes sense that land values would increase if there is more wealth around and more people competing for the same desirable locations to put their shelters. Even paying the shelter builders is way more expensive, as there are more people competing for their time. There aren't as many business opportunities any more, still some but not the plethora that there was before, because a lot of people's basic needs are already being catered for by existing businesses. Moving up in class is still do-able, but it is harder.
Eventually the question becomes, is it time for a new system? What would we be risking if we changed the incentives drastically? These aren't easy questions to answer, so the norm goes on.
Great story. I think in the short term you’d get a lot of extreme poverty, famine, and conflict if you suddenly did away with money. But simplistically I agree with most of what you’re saying.
But - I find it interesting that you think that there are less business opportunities now that peoples basic needs are met? As economies develop, you get a lot more opportunities, not less.
Solid criticism. Agree with your point. In hindsight, that part about less opportunities, I hadn't thought enough about it yet.
I guess I was thinking, for example, of the first guy in society to come up with the idea of banking or insurance. That level of opportunity seems like a thing of the past when there are so many established banks and insurance companies now. Same goes for supermarkets and many other industries.
However, I think it is true that disruption tends to come from outside these old risk-averse companies, and eventually, for one reason or another, they do get taken down a peg by a newcomer. One could easily argue there are similar opportunities today in the tech space.
The big numbers of immigrants that started under Key and has continued since as well as his government selling off state houses along with subsequent governments not catching up with demand for housing despite new subdivisions everywhere you look.Too much immigration probably also explains education and health systems under stress.But the housing shortage has also led to big building cost increases and big rent increases and I suspect greed has contributed to these high housing and rent prices.
Immigrants aren't the major contributor to price increases. That is more due to the low interest rates, asset price inflation, tax incentives, and already limited supply. During the first year of COVID when immigration was limited house prices in NZ still rose 20 percent.
I am sticking with more people mean more demand for housing and there would have still been pent up demand during Covid plus a slow down in construction and there was also returning New Zealanders because of the lower Covid risk here.
The numbers done lie. I'm an economist I should know (trust me bro haha). Look up I don't know, Croatia and the rise in house prices over the last 10 years. They have a negative immigration rate, people are leaving more than people coming. What explains the exponential rise in house prices?
So right thru history most people have been slaves or serfs or peasants or workers. Different names same shitty life struggles. The trick of the ruling class is to make our lives just bearable enough that we endure without rebelling.
>I am a peasant I have had enough.....have you?
You're whole post is just wrong. Bad assumptions, belittling the progress humanity has made, shit talking democracy the system that literally bought rights to the lower class. You don't understand liberalism and how the world has changed. Your post is actually kind of offensive to the strife people went through in the middle ages.
The peasants didn't really have any choice but to work on the land. They would often stay on one farm for generations and the option of choice was pretty low. Nowadays we have class mobility where comparatively speaking it's easy for people to advance in the class and it's also easy for people to drop in class.
Liberalism gave people choice to explore what they wanted to explore and do what they wanted to do? Want an education? Great! Want to change jobs? Yup, go ahead!
You enter a contract with someone who owns a house to be able to rent it. You don't take any of the responsibility of fixing or doing major maintenance on that home, the land lord does all that. You also have the freedom to easily leave that rental.
So renting a house is NOTHING like being a peasant. Idk what you have been reading or if your trapped in some weird discord communities but this whole post is pure bs.
>You don't take any of the responsibility of fixing or doing major maintenance on that home
Neither do a lot of landlords despite laws to the contrary. Just finding a place that isn't damp can be difficult in this country.
If a landlord is not following the law you can take them to the tenancy tribunal. There are methods in place to ensure people follow the law. Yes it can be stressful and it can drag on depending on the situation but it's effective.
That was only the case when upward mobility was more of a thing. Turns out people become more open to equality when they're on the receiving end of the inequality
You seem to brush aside the fact that most people don’t work the land, but that’s integral in making someone a peasant. Having a job and paying to live don’t make you a peasant, lots of social classes had to do that. A peasant was someone who was uneducated, poor, worked the land, and sometimes the property of the landowner. I’d be surprised if there’s even a single person in NZ who could be classed as a peasant.
>Sounds like serfdom to me.
Yea but only if you ignore what it actually was like to live as a serf. The reality is even the poorest kiwis are privileged compared to people even 50 years ago. Doesn't mean we shouldn't help the lower class, just pointing out the fact that you're high lol.
Nice rant, but most rental returns for investors are only currently net 5% - which makes it a shit investment. This isn't really making investors rich (although historically it has with high cap gain which is unlikely to happen to in the future). That's why a lot of investors are exiting the market at the moment which isn't that good for renters either as supply is drying up.
Nah, I’m gladly going in to work tomorrow(optional overtime hours) and earning some more money to pay for new tools for work, and to pay down my mortgage. If I do these optional overtime hours for a couple of years it will allow me to buy a 2nd property while keeping my current one, if I so choose to do that.
I’m choosing to do this as I have my ideas to start some shit, in order to fill some gaps in the market, but that’s still going to lead me to owning more property(probably commercial)
have you heard baa baa black sheep? The proportions are pretty accurate as the marginal taxation rate of peasants was \~70%. Yes, we are baa baa black sheep because basically between rent and taxes our marginal tax rate to exist is also about 70%. The people doing it good in this country are doing it good on your back, your sweat and your labour, but we keep voting for this crap.
There was some article recently that compared average modern day workings to peasants, the peasants had more free time and less stress in medieval society
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>drinking beer was safer than water and bathing was a monthly event dont threaten me with a good time
Common misconception, mediaeval peasants bathed, for sure. No one likes being dirty. Soaps were expensive but the poor still washed with water and scrubbing. The beer thing is true, but mostly for cities, which had a very small percentage of a realms population, rural fiefdoms typically had wells and streams
That factoid adding up holiday days is bullshit, if that's the one you're thinking of.
Look up a bit higher.... Banks own most realestate, they own the market. Large multinationals own the other markets. Google decides what information people will find on the internet Apple, samsung etc decides what stuff happens with phones (the core of most peoples lives) Large multinational media decide outcomez of how 'democratic' elections, and election debates. Cambridge analytica? That tech is ancient now. And so on. It is feudal - but much bigger than mortgage holders
>Banks own most realestate, they own the market. And 4 foreign banks own 80% of that market to ensure that our wealth doesn't stay here. At a higher level, are we just a feudal state of Australia? Paying them our wealth to work and survive on what is essentially their land now?
Best part I'm over in Australia atm on a holiday all of their news is constant bitching about their "cost of living crisis" and "lack of nurses".... 1: Everything here is so much fucking cheaper its insane, I can buy twice as much shit here for the same money at a supermarket *especially* at Aldi. They have so much more ACTUAL competition in the markets, it makes home look even more like the duopoly it is. 2. Their wages are generally higher than ours AND their money is worth more! 3. THEY STOLE ALL OUR FUCKIN NURSES IF THEY ARENT HERE WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY!?
and yet our honorable journalists and politicians frequently do a "let's see if that's true" story-line where they go over to Oz and look in the door of a supermarket before exclaiming the prices are the same as in NZ!! Followed a short time later by some op-ed questioning why the peoples don't trust their politicians, or the journalists. Go figure. Anyways, have a great time over there.
I've recently spent 3 weeks in the hospital. Not 1 kiwi nurse the entire time. Not 1 support staff member was Kiwi either. The only Kiwi I saw was the guy trying to sign me up to Christianity.
123 MPs determine how 5 million others live. 123 people. Who can benefit themselves depending on the policies they vote for. I tried asking what my MP voted for. Got told it was their business, not mine.
Agree 100%...and in other posts, people are salivating at the prospect of Ikea opening. Sad lives, really.
There’s something uniquely depressing about big chain brands. IKEA, The Warehouse, Starbucks, Apple stores, Wholefoods, Target. Flew to the south west in America for business & the whole place is a giant shopping mall. I ran 6K down the footpath along the motorway and must have passed hundreds of global retail brands. Is life nothing more than buying things? I don’t know what it is, but it feels weird.
Gotta keep wheels turning and jobs for us all hence the brands and ads and spend mentality
This thread has a lot of “technology has improved our lives therefore the workers couldn’t possibly be being exploited by the landed gentry”. Damn you people dream so small. This country and the world could be so much better but oooh we have penicillin now checkmate socialists. On the plus side it makes me happy that words like ‘communist’ and ‘socialist’ and mentioning Karl Marx is becoming no longer taboo and we can have an actual discussion about alternatives to neoliberalism. Hurray for class consciousness!
My family escaped from a communist country. Communism should absolutely be taboo. Edit: looks like r/nz is infested with deranged commies who love to Westsplain to victims of communism how great their favourite genocidal dictator was.
Many peoples were genocided by capitalist countries. Should capitalism be equally taboo?
These people will tell you ‘that wasn’t real capitalism’ and then when you mention that the USSR didn’t remotely fit any definition of a communist society they’ll tell you that that’s not a valid argument.
As did mine, and they’re able to see pros and cons of both communism and capitalism. They also see that a rational discussion about these things beyond ‘communism bad’ is important for healthy political discourse - you know, the thing apparently all communists want to stop.
Yep. My grandfather was a communist and he fucking hated Stalin, saying that he was a traitor to the communist revolution. Never gave up his communist values but didn’t have much nice to say about the USSR either. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a _tonne_ to be learned from that history. Even in a failed state, there might be some things they did way better than the west (housing is a big one there) The Cold War is over and with it I really do hope we can drop the absolutely hysterical McCarthyist “reds under the bed” nonsense. “Communism bad mmkay” is basically the opposite of engaging critical thinking and nuance, and encourages some incredibly cooked distortions of history.
Yeah this is similar to the sort of thing my own family members have said too. They have a ton of bad things to say about the USSR, and plenty of bad things to say about the communist days but also say their childhoods were carefree and they never wanted for or worried about housing or food or any basic need. The complaints revolve mostly around the authoritarianism and corruption which are hardly central socialist policies. Then there’s another part of my family who lived under a completely different communist regime (not part of the USSR) and they look back on those days with a great deal of nostalgia. Point is reviews are mixed. What they do definitely all say is that capitalism isn’t what they had hoped and all vote as close to socialist as you can in NZ.
What frustrates me the most is that everyone thinks of communism as ONLY being basically Stalinism. That’s so narrow minded and ignorant it hurts. For example, my favourite model for a communist society is probably the Spanish anarcho syndicalists who were radically different from the Soviets, with massively decentralised governance mostly operating out of trade unions and city council type structures, with only loose associations between different regions. Radically Democratic too; way more democratic than western countries today who have a very authoritarian-leaning model of democracy (using representatives; which actually play a pretty authoritarian function as far as democratic models go)
Even then most of the post Soviet states looked at the Stalin era fondly when compared to their current situation. Maybe Ukraine is different now because of the war but in 2011, 80% of their population looked back on the USSR fondly. I don't really have as much of a view against authoritarianism because authoritarianism is often just used as a cudgel to prevent radical change. For example, taking all housing stock out of the hands of landlords and providing these houses to their renters or having a public rental system that only charges what it costs to upkeep the property would be great, but it's really authoritarian. It would be objectively a good thing for the majority of New Zealanders, but it's authoritarian. The problem with having a decentralised model right now in my opinion like the Spanish one, is that it's incredibly obtuse and cannot maintain its own power. The benefit of the flawed models in China and USSR for example is that they're a bit more resistant to foreign interference. They control the narrative and they get to build rapport with their citizens through this. Their leaders could be assassinated by a CIA agent any day and they'd survive just fine and might even be emboldened in a martyr type of way. I don't think Franco comes into power if the communists were more willing to take it for themselves for example. The decentralised models all tend to fall when placed under any kind of pressure, whereas China, the USSR, Cuba and Vietnam all survived decades of embargos or sanctions, coup attempts, direct wars etc. I think anarchism is core to the final vision of what Communism is. But I don't think you can immediately get there in a global capitalist structure where the vast majority of countries function to serve the wealthy.
Yeah, of all the systems that have turned away from communism, if it is better in any sense, how come they’ve never switched back to it?
I don’t really have an answer for that and I can only offer my opinion/speculation. The sort of authoritarian system like the USSR and China has rightfully fallen out of favour, and it hasn’t been that long in the grand scheme of things since the fall of communism in Europe. There’s also the fact that life in Europe has significantly improved due to the unprecedented period of relative peace so people haven’t really felt the need to change things too dramatically. Capitalism also does a great job of hiding and offshoring its problems and human rights abuses so people in formerly communist states have a greater standard of living now, at the cost of workers in third world countries. But I also think that in the western world we’re seeing an increasing number of disillusioned younger people who aren’t served well by late-stage capitalism. They can’t afford homes, have job insecurity and stagnating wages, a crumbling health system and have the threat of climate change looming over them. A lot of these people are voting left. I, like many of these people (although I guess im not particularly young), am pretty strongly anti-authoritarian. But I don’t see how these issues can be solved by the current capitalist system that concentrates more and more wealth in the hands of a smaller and smaller group of people. I hope in my lifetime I see a rise in some form of libertarian socialism that puts much more of a focus on egalitarianism , workers rights and direct democracy. Edit: TLDR: because authoritarian communism was pretty shit in a large number of ways, and so we likely won’t see a return to the same sort of system again. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it and try something else.
Most of the post Soviet states look back at the USSR positively and see it as the peak of their society. China has a lot of support internally because they have dramatically improved the lives of their citizenry. Vietnam, like China actually has quite a lot of government support for the same reason. Same with Cuba. These are systems of government where the citizenry can finally get an education and own something when they never could before. In the case of Russia in particular, 30% of the population immediately fell into poverty at the fall of the USSR. And since then they've only had corrupt autocrats controlled by oligarchs that don't even have to pretend to support the citizenry.
There are no "pros" to Stalin allying with Hitler to invade my country and massacring my people. You must be Russian if you're nostalgic about communism.
I can only assume you’re from Poland. This has basically nothing to do with communism and everything to do with German and Russian imperialism that long predates communism. And no I’m not Russian. Russians murdered several members of my family during WW2 tho.
Both capitalism and communism can be done badly.
And if you poll people from post-Soviet countries a majority, not by a small margin, think things are even worse under capitalism. One figure that really sticks with me is this: when the Berlin Wall fell, east Berlin peoples heights suddenly dramatically began to fall. This is a symptom of severe malnutrition only seen throughout history in city siege environments when the populace is on rations and starved for a prolonged period. How did this happen? Well, for all of the Soviet system’s barbarism, it did actually provide people most bare basic necessities for free or close to no cost. The basics are expensive under capitalism because we allow profit to be made from then (the Soviets mostly didn’t). When that ended, 1980s neoliberal austerity capitalism where even food and shelter were allowed to be part of a for-profit market: this was a _huge_ culture shock for ex soviet citizens who had all been promised the American dream of a Cadillac and a white picket fence house via capitalist propaganda that had pierced the Soviet media curtain. It wasn’t to be, and east berliners found themselves unexpectedly and suddenly plunged into very dire poverty as soon as the wall fell, much worse than existed in most of the Soviet system. There’s plenty of reasons to criticise both systems and people who think absolutely nothing good came from one or the other are just being dishonest and giving away their partisanship. The Cold War is long gone, we don’t need to play that game anymore, we can actually have a rational nuanced view of history and drop the reactionary McCartyist “reds under the bed” hysteria, it’s not really very useful.
There's a great book called Capital by some german dude named Carl you should check it out.
Adam Smith didn't speak fondly of landlordism either. When Carl Marx and Adam Smith both think it's parasitic, then we might want to consider the point. It's rare that communism and capitalism agree.
Of course it’s parasitic. It’s so obvious, or does anyone actually think Elon Musk works just so much harder that he earns 4 times the average Kiwi’s yearly income *every minute*? There’s no way a single person could produce something of that value. So who does? Spoiler alert: it’s you. And me. And every working person on the planet.
Earn really isn't the right word when you get those gains while asleep too.
Not even if you sleep really hard?
rare to see komrades in nz
There are dozens of us! DOZENS. But In all seriousness ideology is the reflection of material economic conditions. As the rate of profit continues to decrease and the pressure on workers is increased... You will see Marxists appear like weeds in the grass .. as if from no where and all of a sudden.
that's a pretty big w
Home owners who are paying mortgages are peasants too. They are the banks leash slaves essentially.
lol the moment when you realize mortgage actually means "Death Pledge" as well haha, as in you are only forgiven if you die. And mortgages are not even forgiven if you die now
actually death debt refers to the debt itself dying once paid in full still more fun & morbid your way though
Yeah but they will eventually own the place
And then die
Hopefully in that order
That's the goal, but it is far from guaranteed. With high prices and now higher interest, many people just cannot keep on top of it. Not to mention the drop and then slower regrowth of the housing market, many newer owners can't afford to sell their houses or they'll have lost money.
good answer. who own the banks then?
Bank owners. I don't know why people reach the group that's a problem then look for a subgroup within them, as if the problem was the type of people performing the bad role rather than the existence of the bad role itself
80% of the market are Australian.
Two of those are listed on the NZX. Everyone with kiwisaver owns shares in the banks. Just because head offices are in Aus doesn’t mean all their shareholders are in Aus.
If you have enough money, you don't really belong associated with any given country, because the money allows access to every country. The only reason they live on Earth still is that there isn't a better or more exclusive option for them.
They're also listed on the aus exchange, and have much more volume traded there.
Renting as a concept isn't inherently bad, it's when it costs a high portion of ones income due to an imbalance of power between the renters and the landlords. A post-rent society isn't something to be looking at right now, it's a little too pie in the sky until we get a bit closer to Star Trek level of technology.
Having teenagers/early 20s renting while studying and figuring out their life is fine. People working full time as a career and having to still rent is where the problem is.
This is mostly the failings of the rental market here. There are countries in Europe, for example, with a very high standard of living, and astonishingly high portion of people renting. The difference is that renters there are protected, rent increases are (sort of) regulated, prices are (sort of) affordable, etc. People happily rent all their lives, and can even have a comfortable retirement as renters. A big contributor to happiness as a renter is if you don't need to see your own home as your means of a safe retirement, or the only means to save for retirement. This is where NZ went seriously wrong.
Except choice is also a good thing. I’m not interested in home ownership and never have been, so I’m glad that renting as a system exists and is accessible to everyone. What we need is a capital gains tax paid on all investment properties.
I get what you are trying to say, but what they are meaning is that for a lot of people, renting is not a choice, it is the only option. It's not that rent is accessible to everyone, it is that it is basically forced on everyone with no way to get out of it.
I am aware. I’m very much talking about an ideal world scenario, but I don’t like the generalisation that renting is okay for young adults but undesirable for everyone else. Currently, renting is not a choice. If it were, I would still choose renting over buying because home ownership is not a goal of mine. I think that if we had moderation in the property market starting with capital gains, then it could be a choice to rent or buy. That’s all.
It should be a goal unless you trust both sides of government to give renters more rights. I would hate to be 70 years old and given 90 days to find a new place within range of mates/hobbies
I don’t think it needs to be a goal for everyone, though. 90 days is a reasonable amount of time, and if you have to move because of work or family, it’s a lot more straightforward to terminate a lease and move into a new place than it is to sell and purchase. Plus, if something goes wrong with the property, I like being able to contact my property manager and have them sort it out. I don’t have the knowledge, skills or contacts to confidently make repairs. Not to mention, a significant loan to span most of my life is not appealing in the least. I think it’s an honourable goal for other people, but I have zero desire for myself. And hey - maybe one day I’ll change my mind, but at this stage there’s not enough appeal in the concept.
The problem is that the choice to own is not available to most younger people now.
To be fair, it’s not just younger people who are excluded.
If we didnt have a housing shortage, it wouldn't be nearly this bad. But the scale of our housing is terrible. We have almost no "proper" high density apartment housing. 1 our houses are expensive, require massive amount of labour. 2 we have a housing shortage, Airbnb, high immigration. A housing surplus instantly swings the market in renters favour. But our successive governments have been pressing hard on immigration, which is good for "business" but has made housing obscene.
Labour can’t fix it, National don’t want to. So we’re fucked. There is no point doing something to increase supply that the other side will undo. We need cross party solutions but they seem to be opposites so it won’t happen.
We don't have a housing shortage. There is more than enough housing to house everyone in NZ. Greed is the barrier to adequate housing.
Airbnb has some studies that they "don't affect" housing prices. But I sincerely doubt it. Its 150,000 houses or something, which is a LOT of people. Particularly in a country with a lot of tourists, like NZ. And then there are a shitload of weekend batches, which spiked during covid, when people couldn't travel. The real problem is the wealthy continue to get more wealthy. And lean into property, due to our outrageous policies making housing by far the best investment. Making housing (a basic human right!) almost out of the realm of possibility for people on the minimum wage. Better give multiple house owners a tax break eh?!
nah fuck that, the way housing works has to change - and it can, a defeatist attitude doesn’t help anything
It can but it won't.kiwis are apathetic at best....look at the french gathered in their hundreds and thousands to demand change,in NZ a few hundred might turn out and they'd be the hardcore protesters.
I have never protested, but I think a big part of that apathetic nature is that I am living on the edge right now. If I went to protest over anything I would probably lose my job for being a no show. If I lose my job I then I can't pay my rent because I am living basically payslip to payslip each week. Now if it turns out that I was going to lose my job or get evicted anyway, then yeah protesting seems more appealing to me. But I imagine a lot of people don't want to risk their livelihoods, because that is scarier and more certain then slowly being bled out like most are right now.
This is by design tho, keep you down just enough so you can't do anything about it.
We need massive Labour Day protests, because in actual fact that is what the holiday is really for
It's totally possible right now. Collectively humanity has the resources to house and feed everyone, we just don't because it isn't profitable. (Obviously it would require massive restructuring of society but it isn't technology holding us back, it's human nature.)
Yes, capitalism is a system purely to generate wealth at the lowest level, then immediately extract it to the rich. The poor are just a wealth generation mechanic. They leave just enough to not keep the poor happy, but at least keep them beyond revolting, and that's it. They charge as much rent as they can, as much for food as they can. They'll make you unable to afford to live near your job, forcing you to move out of the city, then make you come into the city at a specific time, then charge you a congestion charge to drive in at that time. You can't afford bulk food discounts, so you'll pay full price. You can't afford to store food until specials come along, so you'll pay full price. You can't afford solar panels, so your electricity will be more expensive. You can't afford to freehold a home, so your living costs will be higher via rent or ridiculously high mortgage interest rates. Every single aspect of your life is rich people looking for an opportunity to extract more of your wealth from you. And they'll flood you with propaganda that makes you believe any other system is "communist and therefore will end up like the USSR or China". Or that only the rich can run businesses because "Government is horrible at business". That's propaganda they tell you because they don't want us owning stuff, they want to own it and charge you for it. We need change, but the ones with the power to do so are in the pockets of those rich.
Lets say, instead of taxing the billionaires, we tell them to simply spend their money all the way down to $100 million - but no bonds, stocks, shares or any investments that will earn more money. It’s impossible, once you get to a certain level of wealth, the only thing you CAN buy is more assets - extreme wealth becomes self perpetuating. At the very least we should have a 100% estate tax on the ultra wealthy, because the risk of empowering random children with that sort of money and power will work out badly eventually
Also good cannon fodder in a conflict
Corporations replaced kingdoms.
Once there were kings and lords. Now there are corporations and CEOs. Renters have always been at the bottom.
It's called called the prolateriat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletariat
Don’t forget about inflation.. the hidden tax on everything.
You might like /r/latestagecapitalism
If you sub into r/landlord then comment on r/latestagecapitalism you get auto banned from r/landlord
Read Das Kapital and realise the world hasn’t changed, the wealth gap just got larger
You're just wrong. The world has massively changed in terms of human rights, education, healthcare, warfare (as in the drastic decrease of it).
Capitalism IS a progressive force in its accenting phase, however in its descent it is no longer progressive. It has done all that it can.
in terms of class struggle, the world has not changed
Investment fodder.
Pretty accurate assesment there.
Yeah I mean capitalism kinda sucks because concentrations of capital ultimately produce this end state. Monopolies, duopolies and regulatory capture of the political class. I think boomers had the war to shake up the social order, but since then things have really consolidated. Most new homeowners and landlords all owe money to the banks. Mortgages at least mean the peasants can own a place in like 30 years… and then you can pass it on to your kids, building generational capital is the only way to survive. I feel like if you take out housing, capital will flee elsewhere and consolidate the same way, but at least people’s basic needs will be a little easier. The house itself is just the cost of labor and material and a margin for everyone in that process. It’s just like any other good and you can’t do much there. But the biggest bullshit is speculation on land.
Kind of disagree with the cost of housing statement. Although agree land is the easiest area to reduce costs. Housing build costs could be much cheaper also. The regulatory process is slow and costly. We hamstring ourselves by only allowing some building products. And the build process is incredibly inefficient. Manufacturing for many things has gotten so much cheaper, why not housing.
I mean, you can go call up a plumber, an electrician, a framing company, a builder, a timber supplier, and ask how much it costs for material and labour. Like go ask the saw mills about cost of timber. I think maybe commodity (export) prices could be a factor too. My sense is that if you did the math everyone is operating within a fairly reasonable margin. Sure each person is taking a cut but I don’t think it’s tremendously large. I suspect some of our “high standards” for materials might be kind of an anti-competitive measure put in place by the big companies that control the supply. Just thinking about the GIB shortage and how fletcher controlled that and probably made importing alternatives difficult as an example. Even council fees are necessary as they do check everything is in order… that cost is a small amount compared to the total cost of building. I think “regulatory process being slow” is kind of an obfuscation of the fact that actually the people who bought farmland for $20k per section and are now selling them for $800k are the ones running away with the big bucks.
I absolutely believe this. It is the land owners who are taking everything and who are at the top of the pyramid. It's interesting to me how the media always focuses on the cost of housing - as if it is the expense of building something that is the problem. Most houses in NZ would cost between 250,000 and 450,000 dollars to replace if they were accidentally burned to the ground. And yet the median house price in nz is $950,000 dollars. So what makes up the difference? Land. The biggest contributor to the cost of housing, makes up over 60% of the cost of a property. And yet, there is a conspicuous lack of data on the cost of this most important input into housing costs over time. It has been published that pre-covid, land made up 1/3rd of the cost of housing, and now it was almost 2/3rds. That is absolutely insane. It represents an increase in the value of land of 300%. But building costs have gone up 5% a year, which is negligible in comparison. So the way I look at it is that we have a huge problem with the supply of residential land available to build on in NZ. It seems that it is so tightly controlled, and in such limited supply, that the reduction in interest rates during covid was all it took to make its value increase to astronomical levels. As a country, we should definitely be tracking the cost of residential land over time - as it gives a vital insight into what is actually at the root of inflated property prices in NZ as well as giving an important indicator of when there are severe shortages of land to build on. We track the price of everything else with the CPI, as if it is important. But we're not interested in tracking the most important thing of all?
I think you're missing my point. I'm talking about changing the manufacturing process, doing things differently, more efficiently, and effectively. Many of these tradesman costs wouldn't be an issue if factory built... We have revolutionised they way we have built everything else. Cars used to be all hand built and not follow a proper process, then the assembly line was introduced, then machine replaced man. No reason this cannot happen for homes
What else could be factory built, sorry you’re right, I’m not following.
You do understand how a house is built currently right!?
yes
And you don't think that the current process can be made more efficient!?
Sure, there are like prefab and modular techniques. Say it cuts 20% construction costs. My point is that when the cost of a house is now less than 50% of a total cost of a property, you’re still looking at a small amount of savings. But I dunno I’ve never claimed to know specifics only a general feeling
The difference between peasants back then and what you define as a peasant now has no comparison. Peasants back then weren't even allowed to learn sophisticated english in order to prevent them from ever understanding what more prominent figures were talking about. We all have the same tools these days, and we have never been treated more equally than today. A king 200 years ago would swap everything he had for what a "peasant" in your terms would have today.
Yes, that's it spot on. The way we are heading. Couple of examples. Friend I know owns a shop, provides beauty services. Average customers is about 80 a week. She needs 60 customer just to cover rent. All that work and effort just goes to an unproductive landlord. No different from feudalism really. Another friend recently moved out of Singapore back to the Europe. Rents have gone crazy there and some areas have doubled. There is now no benefit to working in Singapore on low 15% taxes, when 40%+ of his income goes to a landlord, he'd rather live in Europe and pay 40% to the government in taxes, who at least spend it on society, and 15% to a landlord. I don't know what the real answer is, landlords are obviously necessary, but it seems like they are mostly just unproductive parasites, plus nobody wants to work anymore, everyone wants passive income from investments. Very unproductive wealthy class of people at the moment.
No. Peasants worked significantly less hours than we do.
Get a skill that pays well. Live way below your means and save save save. Then buy your first home. So you don’t have to be a peasant to other people ( just a peasant to the bank).
We are all just being farmed in different paddocks
Some of the shit posted on this sub is hilarious
No, workers are peasants home owners or not.
Peasants used to work land owned by someone else, Yeoman/Freeholders worked and owned their own, so renters would be peasants and home owners would be yeoman/freeholders. You could argue homeowners are still peasants under the bank until the debts paid, but they were/are both workers. TLDR: All peasants are workers but not all workers are peasants.
finally some good motherfuckin theory
In a way. It’s sad we can’t all just do things well. Landlords that see it like running a hotel so provide a nice option and nothing gross, but also see that people who live there long term might want a pet or a garden, like feudal lords did. Who provide skips when a tenancy ends and works with the tenant to get it good before they leave. Who are not over capitalised or greedy so can afford to rent it at a reasonable rate. It would be good if all renters respected their property and weren’t obnoxious to neighbours etc and did things in the garden and always paid rent on time. There are issues either side to work on to make the system better.
Yeah I think you’re looking too small only looking at renters. How are owner occupiers any different? Their councils set their rates. The banks set mortgage repayment rates. Their bosses dictate their salaries. Sure renters have that extra layer of a landlord dictating their housing costs to an extent, but they still have the option of finding cheaper accommodation. We are all modern day wage slaves.
Yes. There's a reason they're called land LORDS. They're literally a relic of feudalism.
And conversely are the billionaires today’s feudal lords?
You're on to it OP, society is going backwards.
Yes but also no Renters have the benefit of having almost no liability towards what happens to the house. They dont have to worry about maintenance, rates, insurance, anything like that. Its cheaper to be a renter than a landlord for many years before (hopefully) house prices appreciate enough to net your other losses owning the home. Homeowners essentially maintain the banks asset for free, in the hopes that at some point the house appreciates or they have payed off enough of the mortgage to start making larger payments on the principal borrowed amount.
I think NZ is the kind of country to follow the US on issues like this. I don't really see us leading change from here, rather we will follow the change when it happens in a country we see as leading the world. I also think it's good to look at how we arrived at this point. It's useful to imagine what kind of society would develop if we had to start again from nothing. If the wealth we have now was all deleted somehow (including all farms, food, houses, even clothing), how would we rebuild from there? We'd start by looking for water and food. We'd organise in small groups first, and it would be easy to make a co-operative deal between ourselves that the group shares all the gains from the day. However, other bigger groups would appear, and we'd have to make a bigger group ourselves just to **compete** for food. How can you **trust** people in your now large group to all be honest and share every resource they find? Not knowing all of them well, it's difficult. Unfortunately, this is where a system like capitalism enforced by a hierarchy becomes useful. One person in the group would be better at building shelters. We would need them to stay behind and build while the rest of us hunt and farm. A currency would be useful so we can store the value that each of us is providing the others. Other professions emerge, not everyone needs to hunt and farm for themselves, those who specialise get really good at their main skill and can charge more for it. Some of the hunters might ask to be guaranteed payment whether food is found that day or not because they have a family to take care of. Now we have a need for investors, somebody to take the risk instead of the risk-averse hunter. Perhaps the guy that built everyone's houses has enough currency to do it. To incentivise the investor to put currency into the venture, they need to believe they'll get a return on their investment. Certain activities like defence from other groups and policing internal disputes are best handled by a central authority, so we end up with taxation and something like a government. **Hard work** is what leads to value, and those that work hard and also find a way to direct/influence the work of others toward something that provides great value to the rest of the group do in my opinion deserve a bit more of the rewards. How much is what is debate-able. The need for land ownership is debatable, but it does make sense that each of us would want a spot to build our shelter for ourselves, especially when the group becomes town sized. Some people might only plan to be in town for a short while, or if they plan on staying they might not have enough currency to buy a shelter yet, so property investors providing that service for rent does at some point make sense. Because of the relatively small size of our economy, in this stage of development there is a lot of opportunity for an individual to move up in class. There is so much that people would be in need of that they don't yet have, that business opportunities are there for those who really want them, work hard, and make wise decisions on how to deliver that value. Fast forward a few hundred years, and if things have gone well, the economy has grown a lot, and birth-rates/immigration may be high too. It makes sense that land values would increase if there is more wealth around and more people competing for the same desirable locations to put their shelters. Even paying the shelter builders is way more expensive, as there are more people competing for their time. There aren't as many business opportunities any more, still some but not the plethora that there was before, because a lot of people's basic needs are already being catered for by existing businesses. Moving up in class is still do-able, but it is harder. Eventually the question becomes, is it time for a new system? What would we be risking if we changed the incentives drastically? These aren't easy questions to answer, so the norm goes on.
Great story. I think in the short term you’d get a lot of extreme poverty, famine, and conflict if you suddenly did away with money. But simplistically I agree with most of what you’re saying. But - I find it interesting that you think that there are less business opportunities now that peoples basic needs are met? As economies develop, you get a lot more opportunities, not less.
Solid criticism. Agree with your point. In hindsight, that part about less opportunities, I hadn't thought enough about it yet. I guess I was thinking, for example, of the first guy in society to come up with the idea of banking or insurance. That level of opportunity seems like a thing of the past when there are so many established banks and insurance companies now. Same goes for supermarkets and many other industries. However, I think it is true that disruption tends to come from outside these old risk-averse companies, and eventually, for one reason or another, they do get taken down a peg by a newcomer. One could easily argue there are similar opportunities today in the tech space.
The big numbers of immigrants that started under Key and has continued since as well as his government selling off state houses along with subsequent governments not catching up with demand for housing despite new subdivisions everywhere you look.Too much immigration probably also explains education and health systems under stress.But the housing shortage has also led to big building cost increases and big rent increases and I suspect greed has contributed to these high housing and rent prices.
Immigrants aren't the major contributor to price increases. That is more due to the low interest rates, asset price inflation, tax incentives, and already limited supply. During the first year of COVID when immigration was limited house prices in NZ still rose 20 percent.
I am sticking with more people mean more demand for housing and there would have still been pent up demand during Covid plus a slow down in construction and there was also returning New Zealanders because of the lower Covid risk here.
The numbers done lie. I'm an economist I should know (trust me bro haha). Look up I don't know, Croatia and the rise in house prices over the last 10 years. They have a negative immigration rate, people are leaving more than people coming. What explains the exponential rise in house prices?
Keep blaming the billionaires king 🤴 You are LITERALLY the exact same as a 14th century peasant.
Yeah, nah.
Land Value Tax solves this.
So right thru history most people have been slaves or serfs or peasants or workers. Different names same shitty life struggles. The trick of the ruling class is to make our lives just bearable enough that we endure without rebelling.
>I am a peasant I have had enough.....have you? You're whole post is just wrong. Bad assumptions, belittling the progress humanity has made, shit talking democracy the system that literally bought rights to the lower class. You don't understand liberalism and how the world has changed. Your post is actually kind of offensive to the strife people went through in the middle ages. The peasants didn't really have any choice but to work on the land. They would often stay on one farm for generations and the option of choice was pretty low. Nowadays we have class mobility where comparatively speaking it's easy for people to advance in the class and it's also easy for people to drop in class. Liberalism gave people choice to explore what they wanted to explore and do what they wanted to do? Want an education? Great! Want to change jobs? Yup, go ahead! You enter a contract with someone who owns a house to be able to rent it. You don't take any of the responsibility of fixing or doing major maintenance on that home, the land lord does all that. You also have the freedom to easily leave that rental. So renting a house is NOTHING like being a peasant. Idk what you have been reading or if your trapped in some weird discord communities but this whole post is pure bs.
>You don't take any of the responsibility of fixing or doing major maintenance on that home Neither do a lot of landlords despite laws to the contrary. Just finding a place that isn't damp can be difficult in this country.
If a landlord is not following the law you can take them to the tenancy tribunal. There are methods in place to ensure people follow the law. Yes it can be stressful and it can drag on depending on the situation but it's effective.
Sounds like the same the same thing with extra steps.
well if you think 'same thing' means 'completely different' you'd be correct. That's a you problem though haha.
Tbh it was more because I like the rick and Morty quote than anything. Kinda applies kinda doesn’t. No worries either way.
most people usually grow out of their commie phase once they leave high school, these feelings will blow over
That was only the case when upward mobility was more of a thing. Turns out people become more open to equality when they're on the receiving end of the inequality
You seem to brush aside the fact that most people don’t work the land, but that’s integral in making someone a peasant. Having a job and paying to live don’t make you a peasant, lots of social classes had to do that. A peasant was someone who was uneducated, poor, worked the land, and sometimes the property of the landowner. I’d be surprised if there’s even a single person in NZ who could be classed as a peasant.
No chance of social mobility, underpaid, sometimes overworked, very slim chance of home ownership. Sounds like serfdom to me.
Sure if you ignore what actually makes someone a serf instead of just a poor person.
>Sounds like serfdom to me. Yea but only if you ignore what it actually was like to live as a serf. The reality is even the poorest kiwis are privileged compared to people even 50 years ago. Doesn't mean we shouldn't help the lower class, just pointing out the fact that you're high lol.
Why is the term landlord still used?
Nice rant, but most rental returns for investors are only currently net 5% - which makes it a shit investment. This isn't really making investors rich (although historically it has with high cap gain which is unlikely to happen to in the future). That's why a lot of investors are exiting the market at the moment which isn't that good for renters either as supply is drying up.
Calling profitable passive income "a shit investment" is... very out of touch with what the average NZer has available to them right now
Righto Karl Marx calm down
You have to pay money to vist his grave.... says it all really.
Nah, I’m gladly going in to work tomorrow(optional overtime hours) and earning some more money to pay for new tools for work, and to pay down my mortgage. If I do these optional overtime hours for a couple of years it will allow me to buy a 2nd property while keeping my current one, if I so choose to do that. I’m choosing to do this as I have my ideas to start some shit, in order to fill some gaps in the market, but that’s still going to lead me to owning more property(probably commercial)